The thirty five year old mother at the gym who looks at the fifteen pound dumbbells and thinks “too heavy” is often the same women you’ll see carrying her thirty pound toddler around for hours on end later that day. With the dumbbells, she refuses to attempt even a single rep. With a crying child in her arms though, she’s stronger than Superman. It isn’t that this mother doesn’t have the strength to lift the dumbbells. Obviously she is capable of carrying that much weight. The reason she has for carrying her child though far outweighs the silly weights.

The strength we have to carry something is directly related to the love and passion we bear towards it. If your chosen career path is not something you’re truly passionate about, then chances are you will not find the strength to carry the load when times get tough. 

There is nothing more practical than doing what you love because your passion has a way of giving us the super human strength needed to execute.

In 2001, Jules Naudet, and his brother Gedeon were two French filmmakers creating a documentary on rookie firefighters in New York City. On the morning of September 11th, when a group of men at Engine 7 were investigating a supposed gas leak at the corner of Church and Lispenard Streets, just over a mile away from the World Trade Center, Jules was riding along, camera rolling. At 8:46am the group was distracted by the sound of a plane flying overhead. Being able to hear a plane over the busy streets of Manhattan is quite rare. Moments later, Jules fixed his camera on the sky and caught on tape one of only three known recordings of American Airlines Flight 11 hitting the North Tower. Jules and his brother probably didn’t realize it at the time, but the subject of their documentary had just completely changed. Over the course of the next twenty four hours, and eventually over the course of the next year, the Naudet brothers, along with firefighter James Hanlon, created the famous film entitled 9/11. 

This is a common theme around many documentaries. The filmmakers set out with a certain subject in mind, then circumstances change, which causes them to discover what the real project is. Their original subject may have been a trivial, or even bad idea, but without taking action on it, they would have never discovered what their film was really supposed to be.

Don’t worry too much about starting the right project. Start A project. Circumstances have a way of guiding us to the right one. The question is, will we listen and find the courage to adapt when your project shows you what it’s really supposed to be?

When I was a kid, one of my favorite movies was Finding Forrester. With an unquenchable passion for both writing and basketball, this was the perfect film for me.

The story tells of an aging, ex-famous author (played by Sean Connery) who risks his much valued hermit lifestyle to spend his afternoons giving private writing lessons to an inner city, basketball playing, boy-genius. Their sessions start with one simple lesson.

"The first key to writing...is to write."

Many of us suffer from a backwards view of the creative process. We believe we must first find motivation, and then we can start working. So we spend hours staring at the blinking cursor or blank canvas and wonder why divine inspiration refuses to strike.

The truth though, is exactly what Todd Henry writes in his book, The Accidental Creative, "Action breeds motivation, not the other way around."

Think of it this way, if we always waited to pray until we felt fully immersed in the presence of God's Holy Spirit, then my guess is that most of us would have a pretty weak prayer life. When we are diligent about prayer though, regardless of how "inspired" we are to do it, that posture of obedience increases our sensitivity for a powerful encounter with God.

In the same way, we must be obedient to our craft. We cannot wait to be inspired to take action. We must deliberately take action in order to activate the creative muscles that make us more attune to inspiration when it finally does come. Momentum has a much stronger effect on what is already moving than an object that is standing still.

Sending a well thought out email.
Creating a detailed Evernote document.
Drafting a giant spreadsheet entitled "Plan of Action".

These are all dangerous activities for the creative person.

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that planning is a bad thing. Planning is necessary. We always want to set ourselves up for success. The danger comes in confusing the planning with the doing. Just because you planned to start that blog or launch that product, doesn't mean you've done it.

Planning can be dangerous because it feels a lot like doing, and is therefore one of the best excuses to avoid the actual doing. Planning takes work, but it isn't THE work. We can spend all day planning and feel like we've accomplished a whole lot when in reality, nothing has really been done.

Never confuse planning with doing. Plan a little bit, then get to work.

Back in February, I did a blog post about how there are essentially two different types of creativity. There is helpful, what I call "vital creativity" and then there is unhelpful, which can be called ego offspring, fluff, or lying. As someone who wants to make an impact with the creative work they do, it's important to be able to differentiate between the two.

The defining characteristic of vital creativity is that it brings value to your audience. The value you bring can take on many different forms. It could be a service, a product, information, inspiration, the list goes on and on. Regardless of the type of value you bring, it must be helpful to your specific niche audience.

If what you're creating does not bring value to those who follow you, then it's not vitally creative. If you can figure out how to bring that value though, then you’ll be one step closer to making the impact you desire.

In Exodus 16 the Israelites find themselves wandering in the Desert of Sin. Here, the text says that “the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.” 

“If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” (Exodus 16:3)

Launching a project, movement, or mass exodus feels really good at the beginning. Ideas flow, energy sparks, and inspiration runs wild. If we work long enough though, before we enter our Promised Land, we all will inevitably make our way into the desert.

The desert is the treacherous space between the starting line and the end result. It’s where problems arise, tensions take root, and comfort ceases to exist. The far majority of our creative process is spent here in the desert. It is where most projects go to die, or even worse, to turn back.

The creative process has never been easy. Living a life driven by your passions has never been easy. Pursuing the Promised Land has never been easy. All require us to go through the desert. The Israelites quickly learned that slavery seems comfortable compared to the discomfort and uncertainty experienced en route to the Promised Land.

Discomfort and uncertainty are the prices we pay for living a life that’s remarkable.

Discomfort and uncertainty are not signs that we should turn back. They actually serve as proof that we are on the right track. Going back may seem easier, but going back means surrendering to your old life of slavery.

Move through the desert. The Promised Land depends on it.

Everyone loves to say that there are no bad ideas. This is wrong. There are millions, even billions of bad ideas. The key is to remember that bad ideas are often times a very good thing.

In John 12 Jesus said that “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it yields much fruit.” The part of the tree that is considered “dead” or “useless” is actually the foundation on which new life is built.

This is true in the work we do creatively as well. Yes, it’s true, we prune away at the bad ideas in order to discover the more juicy, fruitful ones. But we also must that the bad ideas we cut away have the potential to take root and resurrect into a harvest of genius. Think back to the last five bad ideas you threw out. Could there possibly be the potential for that failed project to be reworked into the next successful one?

Great artists know that your last bad idea is sometimes just the starting point for your next great one.

What keeps you up at night?
What wrong needs to be righted?
What situation gives rise to a righteous anger within you?
Where do you look at the world and say to yourself, “something is missing here”?

It is in answering these questions that we discover our why. It may be the increasing price of higher education in the US. It may be injustice in Sudan. It may be that you just want people to smile at each other more. Whatever it is, make sure it rocks you to your core and burns deep in your gut, because your why is what will fuel you as you begin to create your project and build your platform to create a giant impact.

Conventional logic tells leaders to give blame and accept credit within our teams. Looking good in the victory and making sure the defeat wasn’t your fault is the fastest way to climb the ladder. We think that always being right and never being wrong will help us establish authority, when in fact, the exact opposite is true.

The most effective leaders look to give credit and accept blame whenever possible.

When things go wrong they ask, “Where can I accept responsibility?”

When things go right they ask, “Who can I credit this victory to?”

Nowhere is this servant-type leadership better modeled then in the person of Jesus. On the cross, he took our blame upon Himself. He bore the weight of our faults. Then, in the resurrection, He credits to us the treasure of redemption that came with the victory. His perfect love casts out all fear of condemnation, which sets us free to truly live.

Love is greater than fear. Everytime.  A team that fears condemnation and blame will always shy away from taking creative risks. Out of fear, they will only ever seek to get it right, which only ensures that they will always get it wrong. When a leader is willing to bear the weight of failure and give away the accolades of success, this frees her team from the chains of fear. From that place of freedom, her team will begin taking the necessary risks in order to produce something vitally creative.

Little Timmy wants to be an All-State athlete, so he decides to join the tennis team. It’s doesn’t take long to realize that Little Timmy is the worst player on the team because Little Timmy is not so little. He weighs over three hundred pounds, is very slow, and so strong that most of his backhands go sailing over the boundary line and over the fence. Little Timmy is not going to make the All-State team in tennis, because his genetic make up is that of an offensive lineman.

Doing work that matters starts with leaning into your DNA. If you’re 350 pounds and ‘strong like bull’, tennis is not your game. Play football instead.

I could try and design clothes that encourage and inspire people, but I don’t have the DNA of a fashion designer. I have the DNA of a writer. So I write.

What makes up your DNA? What are your strengths? It could be anything. It could be dancing, sewing, cooking, or creating Bible study curriculum for toddlers. What’s important is to recognize your strengths, embrace your genetic make up, and start leveraging them to make an impact.

Don’t be a lineman trying to make the tennis team. Quit the tennis team. Play football, and make an impact.