Some years back, I was in a meeting\u00a0with Magic Johnson to discuss a book he wanted to write about business. He told\u00a0me he\u2019d had two ambitions in his life ever since he was young. Basketball and\u00a0business. He had accomplished the first one and become a champion. Now he was accomplishing\u00a0the second one: Being a successful businessman and inspiring the younger\u00a0generation.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou knew what you wanted to do since\u00a0you were young,\u201d I said. \u201cWhat advice would you give people who don\u2019t know what\u00a0they want to do?\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t hesitate. \u201cThey should\u00a0try everything until they find something they like. When they do, they should\u00a0give it their all.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was fortunate to know what I\u00a0wanted to do from a very young age. When I was six, my mother showed me a\u00a0photograph of prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn. She was standing on the tips of\u00a0her toes in a sparking tutu, her ankles swathed in satin ribbons, her arms
making a graceful arc above her head, her jeweled tiara placed just so on her\u00a0head. That was when my training began. I pranced around our dining room table, I\u00a0practiced my pirouettes, and when I opened the refrigerator door, I threw a leg\u00a0out behind me and clobbered whomever had the bad luck of standing there.<\/p>\n
Since I retired from the ballet,\u00a0I\u2019ve flexed my creative muscles by knitting beautiful sweaters, studying\u00a0healing in the Philippines and I write every day. With each of these endeavors,\u00a0I wasn\u2019t good at first. When I started dancing, I had no turnout and I couldn\u2019t\u00a0do the splits. When I learned to knit, the first sweater I made was too big for\u00a0my father. When I began studying healing, I read everything I could find on the\u00a0topic and over a decade I took ten trips to the Philippines to research the\u00a0faith healers. When I started writing, I wrote terrible poetry and bad prose.\u00a0But whatever I was doing, I didn\u2019t think about what I couldn\u2019t do. I focused on what I wanted to do, I practiced every day and I kept my attention on my goals.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not one of those people who was\u00a0a natural dancer, a fashion designer, a healer or a great writer. I wasn\u2019t one\u00a0of those writers who flew up the bestseller list with my first book. It took me\u00a0years of practice to get where I am today and I\u2019m still learning. When someone\u00a0asked gold medal champions gymnast Simone Biles and swimmer Michael Phelps how\u00a0they rose to the top of their sport, they said the same thing. \u201cI wasn\u2019t necessarily\u00a0better than anyone else. I just practiced more.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I started writing my blog, I\u00a0didn\u2019t think I had much to say. But each week, I put all of my attention on\u00a0what I was doing. Eventually, ideas came to me more easily and this is blog\u00a0number 388. I\u2019m not trying to tout what I\u2019ve accomplished. I simply want to\u00a0inspire my readers to do what they love or to try something new. If you\u2019re not
sure what you want to do, remember what Magic Johnson said. Try it all and when\u00a0you find something that gets your attention, put everything you have into it.\u00a0It doesn\u2019t matter how good you are. It\u2019s not your job to critique your work. All\u00a0that matters is that it\u2019s your personal expression and there is nothing like itvin the entire world.<\/p>\n
During this unprecedented time of\u00a0angst and disappointment, I don\u2019t know what I\u2019d do if I didn\u2019t have my writing\u00a0to dive into. Of course, it feels great to get a publishing deal but that isn\u2019t\u00a0my end game anymore. These days, I write to express my feelings, process my
life and unburden my heart. I\u2019m a huge figure skater enthusiast, and when an\u00a0announcer says that a particular skater is doing it for herself, those are the\u00a0performances that rise above the rest.<\/p>\n
Creativity takes courage. I know\u00a0someone in her early sixties who told me she\u2019s bored these days and doesn\u2019t\u00a0know what she wants to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve told me that you love\u00a0guitar music,\u201d I said. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you learn to play the guitar?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to\u00a0start anything new at my age and be bad at it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was stuck and most likely, she\u2019ll\u00a0remain that way. I feel sorry for her because being creative seems to be the\u00a0only way to endure this rough patch we\u2019re in. Albert Einstein said, \u201cCreativity\u00a0is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has\u00a0thought. It\u2019s intelligence having fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Creativity offers me the element of\u00a0surprise. It’s a delight when I set out to write something and something\u00a0entirely different shows up. My heart and my mind open. I feel encouraged to go\u00a0into unexplored territory. I let my mind wander with no hard edges or\u00a0obstacles. I feel the flow of life in my bones and I follow the stream in the\u00a0direction it\u2019s going. The name, Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of education,
creativity and music, comes from the Sanskrit word \u201csaras\u201d which means \u201cthat\u00a0which is fluid.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the most valuable gifts of\u00a0creativity it that is never runs dry. You may think it does, but it\u2019s simply\u00a0waiting for you to catch up. Maya Angelou said, \u201cYou can\u2019t use up creativity.
The more you use, the more you have.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some years back, I was in a meeting\u00a0with Magic Johnson to discuss a book he wanted to write about business. He told\u00a0me he\u2019d had two ambitions in his life ever since he was young. Basketball and\u00a0business. He had accomplished the first one and become a champion. Now he was accomplishing\u00a0the second one: Being a successful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2616,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2615\/revisions\/2616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}