Creativity is hard.

This is a personal confession and maybe you feel it as well.

The tools I use to define the world around me, make it so simple, so safe and so predictable, that I sometimes I find myself managing data more often than I spend time creating data. And that, my friends, is a dangerous and slippery (yet well groomed) slope from conformity to mediocrity.

As my friend, Steven Pressfield says in his book, The War of Art, the Resistance we face each day is relentless on keeping us from the act of creation. It comes from friends, teachers, parents and bosses as well as our own self-deprecation. It is so strong that it manipulates our mind with to-do lists and clamoring busywork to avoid the untrained act of creating something from nothing. It is a quiet whisper amidst a noisy world.

This struggle of creativity I face every day feels more in line with a battle I must overcome. So how do I prepare for this daily war?

I Surrender.

I surrender to the beautiful uncertainty and reckless abandonment of the creative process.

I dedicate time and allow myself permission to let go of managing tidy boxes and am completely present in the moment. “The space between the notes” I am vulnerable and consciously aware that what I am doing is more important that any lists, emails, phone calls, focus groups or financials.

There is no greater joy in this world than chasing down a truly creative thought.

Today is the time to practice taking a breath. To close your eyes to the world around you, turn off your phone and become present. Give yourself the freedom to hop a train headed west without knowing the destination. Like a fearless samurai, or a wild western gunslinger, come face to face with “tabula rasa” a blank piece of paper and do the work. Today is the time for you, and your passionate childlike imagination, to remember your first love.

Today is the day to UNTHINK and unleash your mind to re-discover your own creative genius