I take my daughter to music class every week, and the teacher always tells us “every child is musical.” And yet, plenty of adults grow up to be tone deaf, afraid to sing, or inept with musical instruments. The same can be said for creativity; have you ever met a child who wasn’t creative, who didn’t have a wild imagination? They tell the most vivid stories and create entire worlds in their heads. They often come up with the craziest answers to questions, even better than what the actual answer is. And they’re not afraid to tell you every detail.

So why is it that as adults, we’re so terrified of our own creativity? It’s in there… Why don’t we use it?

When I launched my first collection in 2012, I was terrified of what other people would think. I got about 95% of the way done and was almost ready to launch when it occurred to me: what if people hate it? Thanks to training and guidance from the job I held prior to starting my own business, as well as reading lots of Seth Godin, I knew that I had to just get it done and ignore my lizard brain telling me I was going to fail. I had to just ship on time and worry about whether it was successful later.

All these years later, I look at how my business and product offerings have evolved and I’m thankful I ignored that overwhelming voice that says “you suck at this” and just started somewhere. Even writing this blog post is scary; someone’s going to roll his or her eyes at it, but you can’t let it stop you. Because everyone starts somewhere. Creativity is ever-evolving. Maya Angelou once said “you can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” And it’s true. If you don’t fearlessly start somewhere, you never know where you can go, and I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere wonderful.

—–