From: You
Subject: Your Creative Life
Date: Today
To: You
--------------------------------------------------------
Dear You:
Remember me? I'm you, but it's 20 years down the road.
I know this is kinda weird because you don't remember
writing this e-mail, but I'm sending it anyway.
I wanted to remind you that you're amazing, you have
what it takes, and your creative life is astounding. It's
imperative that you keep creating. What I've realized
(now that it's 20 years later) is that many people depend
on your work. You may not feel like your work matters, but
it does. So keep creating. Keep living a creative life.
Don't stop.
Don't worry if it's bad.
Just keep working.
Your potential is limited only by you and the fear you
allow to speak. Once you silence that fear, the freedom
that's already living in you is revealed and loosed.
You're gonna love where the journey takes you. Life
is mostly made of saying 'yes' rather than saying 'no.' So
focus on saying yes. It's a more positive and powerful
way to live and create.
+Yes to projects.
+Yes to community.
+Yes to making space and time.
+Yes to discipline.
+Yes to joy.
+Yes to belief.
Have at it.
Author: Andrew Zahn
I'm a son, husband, dad, business owner, actor and good sleeper/eater.
On this blog, I pave a highway for creative growth by providing food, water, and shelter for those wishing to live, work, and play with creative zest.
View all posts by Andrew Zahn
Encouragement and “yes” is so important in a world that’s programmed us to say “no” to ourselves and to creative ideas. Needed this today….Thanks!!!!
Thanks for your awesome, stellar guest post today as well! Started my day off right Christine!
+ Yes to Joy indeed. It is VERY EASY to be unhappy. It takes intention to have joy.
I think it helps to define your success too. My definition of success is this: to create and then share what I made-PERIOD. I can’t control how others respond to it.
That’s a great definition of success Jim. Couple that with choosing joy and your creativity is unstoppable.
I think that fear is what holds us back. We are afraid to fail. We are afraid to be successful. We are afraid to put ourselves out there. We are afraid to extend ourselves. We are afraid to grow.
So, we don’t create.
I heard a story of an inventor (Edison I believe) who failed scores of times. He didn’t count any of them as failures because those so-called ‘failures’ are what brought about the actual invention.
Lately discipline is my trouble. That’s what’s keeping this email message in “delivery failure notification” mode. I need to type in the address correctly, and resend this email to myself EVERY DAY!
Thank you for ensuring this got to my inbox!!!!
Maybe set up an automatic text message to yourself as well!
We all struggle at times with discipline. It’s often just pushing through those initial feelings and making the project happen anyway.
Don’t compare and despair.
Don’t buy into the illusion of invisibility.
Succinct wisdom!
Very encouraging, something I needed to read today. Thank you.