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Your brain has a really awesome survival feature. Whenever you are in a positive mood, your brain will widen your focus, but whenever you’re in a negative mood, your brain will automatically narrow your focus. This allows it to focus on any threats or problems your facing. It’s a cool survival instinct that’s built into the brain. It’s designed so that when there’s a significant problem, your brain can shut off any of the unnecessary thoughts that’d decrease your chances for survival and focus on the problem in front of you.

The problem in the modern age is that we can find ourselves frustrated or in a negative mood even though we’re not in danger, but the brain still has its old evolutionary traits where it wants to narrow your focus to solve a problem.

So how do we use this?

The most important thing you can do is realize that this is a natural part of how your brain is wired. This is the natural way it wants to handle being gin a negative mood. The next time you’re frustrated with a creativity block, acknowledge that you’re being blocked. Acknowledge that you’re frustrated. And then realize that the natural response that your brain wants to use is (in this case) old and outdated. So instead, realize that even though it feels like you need to double-down and focus on this narrow problem… for the creative person it’s a better strategy to disengage from the problem and come back with a fresh perspective.

Being in a negative mood is great when you are trying to get creative inspiration. For example, an inventor might be inspired to create a new product because of a negative mood or event in their life. They use it for inspiration to solve the problem.

However, once you’re inspired, being in a negative mood tends to lower creativity by overly narrowing your focus and shutting out many potential building blocks for new ideas. So recognize that this is inside you and don’t be afraid to take a break and come back with a fresh perspective.

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