the yes you don’t need to earn

Dec 18

Dear Reader,

A lot of people say they want to be more creative, but what they’re really describing is a wish to feel more free. Creativity gets difficult the moment we demand it make sense. When every idea has to be useful, polished, or defensible, we stop making things and start auditioning instead.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that permission comes after proof. We earn our way into things by being good at them, productive with them, or praised for them. Creativity doesn’t work that way. It asks for the kind of yes that comes first, before the result is impressive.

This is often where people get stuck. They wait until they have more time, confidence, or clarity that it will be worth it. But creativity is not a reward for being ready. It’s a practice of becoming ready through doing.

The shift is subtle but powerful: choosing to create as an act of permission rather than performance. Letting yourself write the paragraph that no one will read. Sketch the thing that looks wrong at first. Cook without needing it to be impressive. Start the project without deciding what it will become. When the pressure to be excellent loosens, something else has room to appear: play, curiosity, aliveness.

The yes you don’t need to earn is honest. It’s the recognition that making something, even poorly, even privately, is part of being human. And the more often you allow that yes, the more natural it becomes to trust your own creative life again.

Yours in the journey,