Just Create?

Just create what you want.  Just create. Just create.  Just create.  It sounds easy, certainly obvious, and yet sometimes it doesn’t seem so easy (or obvious).  If you find yourself stuck a lot in terms of moving forward or even focusing on creating what you want, there’s one simple reason why:  You haven’t articulated your vision clearly enough so that it pulls you forward toward it.  This is important so I’m going to say it again (a bit differently): If you’ve articulated what you want to create and there’s no forward movement, then you haven’t articulated what you want.

Last post, I talked about Old Games and the impact that these games have on our ability to create.  One of the reasons that we continue to play our old games despite the fact that we may understand intellectually that they don’t take us where we want to go is we don’t see another choice.  The things we want to create somehow don’t seem as real to us as our old games.

We’ve all had this experience.  There have been creations in your life that move from mere inklings to “good ideas in theory” to real pursuits.  If you examine some of those creations where at the outset, you didn’t think it was possible or it just didn’t seem real, you’ll see the idea itself shifted over time.  In the mere inkling or even the “good idea in theory” stage, the reasons why not like seemed more real than the possibility of creating what you wanted.  The barriers to what you wanted may have seemed insurmountable, but then time passed, and something shifted.  The barriers didn’t necessarily go away, but something in the way you saw the creation itself crystallized to a point where suddenly the barriers were no longer reasons why not; instead, they were just things to handle.

Some people ask me, “But Bill, aren’t there times when the barriers really are insurmountable no matter how you think of the vision?” and my answer is always “I don’t know.”  What I do know is when they ask me that question, they are deflecting the reality of the situation, which is they are stuck, they see barriers, AND they want what they want.  Too often, the default solution in this situation is to put aside what you want as a mere childish dream instead of doing the work to actually articulate what you want sufficiently so the creative process works.

The practice here then is to resist the urge to dive in and analyze and better understand the barriers to what you want.  Instead, turn your attention to what you want to create and find a way to make it more real to you in the way that you are framing the creation in language.  You must come up with a richer, more authentic, more complete expression of what you want to create.  Somehow, someway, you are leaving something out.

And when you get it, you’ll know it.  Your relationship to the creation and your participation in the creative process will shift.  Suddenly, everything that was stopping you will just be “things to handle” and you’ll be ready to act.

You’ll be … just creating.