“Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.” This is a quote from W.H. Murray, penned during or after a Scottish Himalayan expedition he was on and it’s a fitting context for this post.

I may be conflating several aspects here but bear with me, I’m being creative.

My point is you can and should think all manner of wonderful things but ultimately, you should go beyond the thinking. You should give birth to them, in some form or other and experience your thinking, validate it in a way, through action.

Of course this doesn’t have to apply in all cases but to not do it at all would be a waste of thinking.

Let’s take all these aspects into consideration separately.

Seeds of potentiality 🌷

This is where you have the germ of an idea, inspiration, hypothesis, etc. It’s the beginning of something that may or may not end up going somewhere.

Not everything needs to be pursued or go somewhere. In fact, you would do well to weed things out from the get-go, so you don’t pursue things unnecessarily.

Evaluate your seeds and determine what really has value, what really drives you and will sustain you, especially if it is going to be a hard slog, like starting a business based on an idea.

Growth Mindset 🧠

I think to take things to the next level, you have to have a growth mindset. You have to be willing to invest time and effort and a lot of that will have to do with learning.

It’s also about mindset and having a beginner’s mind, knowing that you don’t know much and have to work towards a certain depth of knowledge.

This could all serve to get you to a next decision point. That decision could be that you have learned enough on a particular subject to be able to take action or that you need to learn more still. Or to simply take no further action.

lived experience 🚀

Now that you have done the groundwork and there is a basis for further action, take it. Indecision is your enemy here.

What you are trying to do at this stage is to gain knowledge through direct, first-hand involvement and experience beyond the thoughts, assumptions and constructs you have built up from your thinking and what you may have gained from other people, research, or media.

Lived experience in other words and there is no better teacher than experience.

As you may know I create DanelDoodle’s and I have for this occasion too. This one, unlike some others, I am making freely available.

I have explained a little behind the purpose of my doodles here: The creative and supply process for artwork on this site.

That post also explains how to use it on different canvases and for different purposes.

To put it simply, you can reuse this any way you like, if you want to.

You can download the original artwork simply by right clicking on the image and downloading it (save image as).

You will get high quality artwork that you can use as you wish.

Maybe it will inspire yours and others seeds of potentiality, growth mindset and lived experience.