We've all met people who are "negative" – negative thinkers who consistently see the glass as half empty. In certain situations, particularly stressful ones, even the most positive person can fall victim to this distorted thinking. As a creative artist, this kind of thinking can keep us away from our art and can keep us from enjoying it even when we manage to keep at it.

Here are the top 10 reasons to say "NO," in service of your creativity and self-care.

When we procrastinate, we fuel our inner critic's statements that, "You're no good", "You can't do it" and "You'll never finish it". We provide evidence that those messages are true, and we sink a little lower in our seats and a little father away from our passion. When we gain momentum in the creative flow, however, quite the opposite occurs.

In my life, sleep is the number one way that I can either enhance my self-care and nourish myself or defeat my self-care and deplete my energy, peace of mind & productivity all in one shot.

Have you ever gone out of your way to NOT take care of yourself? Does it ever seem like you're working against yourself? Do you ever ask yourself "Why did I do that??".

Self-care is the path to creative expression. By paying closer attention to your self-care, you can have easier access to your creativity, to your muse and to your inner strength and resilience.

Stage fright doesn't only inhibit performing artists. If you're not a performer, you can substitute the word performance with any creative situation that really scares you, or puts you in a position of feeling like you have to measure up or get out of your comfort zone.

And then I read this section of Michael Gelb's "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci," and I got it. The section is called, "Sfumato: A willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox and uncertainty."

I love this life and wouldn't have it any other way and yet sometimes it wears me down just a little bit, usually when one of two possible things is occurring. The first thing is that someone has asked me, "So what do you do?" and I'm having a hard time deciding which of many possible answers to give. The second is that I'm striving to focus on a new project when all of my current projects still need my attention.

It's important to recognize which phase of the creative process you're in. Be there while you're there, enjoy it, play with it and revel in your creative gifts.