What if the thing you've been wishing someone would create is something you could bring into the world yourself? Dr. J.J. Peterson explores why we hesitate to act on meaningful ideas, how creativity contributes to happiness, and what becomes possible when we give our imagination room to grow—and invite others to participate.
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What's stopping you from creating the thing you wish existed? Often, it isn't a lack of ideas or ability. It's the uncertainty of putting something personal into the world. Fear of failure, doubts about whether anyone will participate, and the belief that we're not creative enough can keep good ideas from becoming real. But creativity doesn't require artistic talent or certainty about the outcome. It begins with giving yourself permission to imagine, taking a step toward making something real, and inviting others to contribute.
Why Is Creating Something New So Vulnerable?
Having an idea is exciting. Sharing it with other people introduces an entirely different set of emotions.
What if nobody shows up? What if the experience doesn't meet expectations? What if something that feels meaningful to its creator doesn't matter to anyone else?
Dr. J.J. Peterson spent years considering two gatherings he wanted to create. One would bring entrepreneurs together to work on their businesses and help one another. The other was a personal celebration inspired by the holiday traditions his father had created.
Even with encouragement from others, Peterson hesitated. Bringing those ideas to life meant allowing other people to experience, respond to, and potentially change something that had previously existed only in his imagination.
That vulnerability is part of creating. But so is the possibility of making something meaningful.
How Does Creativity Contribute to Happiness?
Creating something can contribute to three ingredients of happiness: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.
Author and happiness researcher Arthur Brooks explored these components at Will Guidara's Welcome Conference. Together, they offer a useful way to think about why creating something can be rewarding beyond its financial or practical results.
Enjoyment: The Experience Matters
Brooks describes enjoyment as pleasure combined with people and memory.
He shared research showing that people enjoyed eating chocolate more when they shared the experience with someone else. The chocolate hadn't changed, but the experience had.
The same principle offers an interesting perspective on business.
Products, services, and deliverables matter. But so does the experience of working with someone. A client might remember feeling heard, building a new relationship, or being part of something meaningful long after the work is complete.
Those experiences don't always fit neatly into a list of deliverables, but they can be part of the value a business creates.
What if business owners thought not only about solving customers' problems, but also about contributing to their happiness?
Satisfaction: The Reward of Doing the Work
Watching someone else build something can be inspiring. Actually creating something requires effort.
There will be decisions to make without knowing the answers, people to ask for help, and setbacks that take longer to resolve than expected.
It's tempting to interpret those challenges as signs that an idea isn't worth pursuing. But satisfaction can come from making progress toward something meaningful, even when the work is difficult.
As Peterson explains:
"If I treat every difficult part as evidence that I shouldn't be doing it, I'll stop before I get to experience the satisfaction of making it happen."
The struggle isn't necessarily evidence that something is wrong. Sometimes it's part of what makes creating worthwhile.
Meaning: Connecting Our Work to Something Bigger
The third ingredient is meaning: understanding why the work matters.
A business can be profitable without necessarily feeling purposeful. Meaning might come from helping customers, supporting a family, creating opportunities for others, or bringing people together.
Creating something allows people to connect their efforts to what they value. And when others participate, the result can become more meaningful than the creator originally imagined.
None of this guarantees happiness. But creating something can make room for enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning in ways that simply consuming what others have made cannot.
Why Don't Entrepreneurs Think They're Creative?
Many adults associate creativity with artistic talent. If they can't paint, write music, or make art, they assume they aren't creative.
Duncan Wardle, Disney's former head of innovation and creativity, challenged that assumption at the Welcome Conference.
He asked attendees whether they considered themselves creative. Many kept their hands down. Then he invited them to imagine planning a Star Wars-themed birthday party.
Suddenly, people who hadn't identified as creative were generating imaginative ideas.
The exercise demonstrated how quickly people can limit themselves through the way they define creativity.
Building a business is itself a creative act. Entrepreneurs imagine something that doesn't exist, figure out how it could work, and bring the pieces together to make it real.
They may need more practice or support, but that doesn't mean they lack imagination.
Start by Asking "What If?"
Wardle also encouraged people to challenge familiar assumptions by asking, "What if?"
Experience helps people recognize what works, but it can also make them dismiss possibilities because they already know how things are usually done.
Asking "What if?" creates space to consider alternatives before deciding whether they're practical.
What if a service could be delivered differently? What if an event created opportunities for participants to help one another? What if the customer experience mattered as much as the finished product?
Creativity often begins when people allow themselves to consider a possibility they would normally dismiss.
Why Does Your Brain Need Room to Wander?
More information doesn't always lead to better ideas. Sometimes creativity requires stepping away.
Research discussed by Wardle, including work by Benjamin Baird and colleagues, examined how breaks affect creative problem-solving. Participants whose breaks involved an undemanding activity that allowed their minds to wander showed greater improvement when returning to problems they had previously encountered.
The research suggests that giving the mind room to wander can help people return to creative challenges with fresh possibilities.
Yet quiet moments are increasingly easy to fill with podcasts, apps, and other people's advice.
Peterson suggests something simple: take a walk without listening to anything, or stand in line without immediately reaching for a phone.
For someone who has spent months consuming advice about an idea, a little quiet might help them reconnect with what they originally wanted to create.
What Happens When You Invite Other People Into Your Imagination?
Creating something is only part of the experience. The people who participate can bring something its creator never anticipated.
Peterson eventually brought both of his long-imagined gatherings to life.
For Become the Obvious Choice, he partnered with Julie Firth and Sonia Widham to create a business gathering where entrepreneurs could work through challenges together. The first event sold out in its opening week, and the conversations and relationships that developed became an important part of what made it meaningful.
His personal gathering, Sounds and Tastes of Fall, created a different kind of connection. Inspired by his father's holiday traditions, it brought people together to share experiences and stories.
One unexpected moment came from a six-year-old named Esme, who shared an imaginative story involving a unicorn. In her story, the characters struggled to find their way back:
"They tried and tried to figure out how to get back, but they couldn't remember because they grew up."
For Peterson, the story became a reminder of how easily adults can lose touch with their imagination.
Neither the business conversations nor Esme's story could have been planned in advance. They happened because someone created a space where others could contribute.
That's one of the possibilities of bringing an idea into the world. What other people add may become just as meaningful as what its creator originally imagined.
How Do You Begin Creating the World You Wish Existed?
Start with something you've wished someone else would create.
It might be a gathering, a business idea, a better customer experience, or an opportunity for people to connect.
Understanding the people you serve still matters. Their needs and feedback should help shape what you build. But your own experiences and imagination can give you somewhere to begin.
Then take one step. Share the idea with someone who will ask a thoughtful question. Give yourself room to imagine what could be possible. Stop treating every uncertainty as evidence that you shouldn't try.
And consider one more possibility: the thing you've been wishing existed might be something someone else has been waiting for, too.
An Invitation to Join the Room
Become the Obvious Choice is one example of what can happen when an imagined experience becomes a shared one.
On December 4 in Nashville, Dr. J.J. Peterson, Julie Firth, and Sonia Widham are bringing entrepreneurs together again to work on their businesses, exchange ideas, and learn from the people around them.
If that's the kind of room you've been wishing existed, we'd love for you to be part of it.
Learn more about Become the Obvious Choice.
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The Fear of Creating Something New
You have an idea, you're excited about it, it's something you wanna make, but then you have to figure out if anybody else is gonna be excited enough to show up or to buy it. Creating something new and putting it out in the world and then inviting other people to participate, that is so scary . Which is why I actually want to talk about it today.
Sometimes you have to talk about the thing that you're the most scared of
Welcome to Badass Softie, a podcast for leaders who are unapologetically ambitious and want to lead with heart because you're allowed to chase big goals without losing what makes you human. I'm your host, Dr. JJ Peterson. Sometimes when I say this next sentence, it feels like a brag, and maybe it is a little bit, but I was at Will Guidara's Welcome Conference, uh, in New York recently.
A friend of mine gave me a ticket and I got in. It's a sold-out conference. It was incredible. And there was a point in the conference where Will was on stage, and he was interviewing Ruth Rogers, who founded and runs a legendary restaurant called the River Cafe in London. And if you know this restaurant, you know it is one of the most respected, creative, welcoming restaurants in the world.
They have held a Michelin star since 1997, which is kind of unbelievable. And towards the end, Will asked Ruth this question. He said, "How do you balance making something you know other people want and making something that you want to make?" And I was so excited when he asked this question, 'cause I, I, I feel like a l- I struggle with this a lot, and so do a lot of entrepreneurs and business leaders.
You know, you, you have an idea. You're excited about it. It's something you wanna make, but then you have to figure out if anybody else is gonna be excited enough to show up or to buy it. And that's always feels like there's this balance of which one do I lean into? And Ruth gave, uh, you know, an incredible answer, which was kind of in line with this idea that create what brings you joy and makes you alive.
And then Will shared a thought after that I just loved, and I, I'm paraphrasing here 'cause I don't have the exact words, but the idea was maybe you create the world you would have wanted and then invite other people into your imagination. And I love that actually. Well, I, I kinda cried a little bit about it because I know what it feels like to want something to exist and then immediately start to explain to myself why I probably shouldn't be the person who makes it.
You know, maybe somebody else is already doing it. H- I don't have enough time. Who am I to do this? Will anyone even pay for this if I put it out there? And it can be so debilitating that often I don't do anything with my ideas. They, they just sit there. Now, uh, you know, the truth is sometimes after careful consideration I come to the conclusion that maybe it's not wise to move forward at this time because of resources or how much energy it would take, but most of the time when I come up with a creative idea, if I'm not moving forward and putting it out in the world, it's because I'm overwhelmed or afraid.
I actually launched two events last week, which is kind of crazy for me to say out loud. Even when I say it, it kind of still blows my mind. O- o- one event was a business gathering called Become The Obvious Choice, and the other was more of a friends and family kind of gathering that is called Sounds and Tastes of Fall.
They're very different events, but both started with something I wanted people to be able to experience together. And yes, for both of them, I worried nobody would come You know, on the business side of things, I, I've be- I've had people asking me for a while when I was going to put on an event. I, I had people interested.
There was actually evidence out there that somebody wanted this thing, and I was still putting it off. Apparently, I needed more evidence than people just saying, "We would like you to do this. We want to come." And it really took my friends Julie and Sonia, Julie Firth and Sonia Widham of Story 22, to push me to do it.
They, they came alongside me, and we made it happen together. Um, I'll tell you a little bit more about that later. But the Sounds and Tastes event was something I've wanted to do myself for a very long time as well, and it was not a, a business idea. Um, y- you know, when I was a kid, my dad and, and my mom used to put on this event called Sounds and Tastes of Christmas every year, where he would invite people to our church and ask them to bring a song or a story or just some food to share.
So I, I wanted to put it out there a little bit as a connection and a way of honoring my dad, but also just 'cause I wanted to put something out there for whimsy and fun. But honestly, I didn't know if anybody would wanna come to that either. Are they gonna come and share a song or food? You know, that can be a little scary to put yourself out there like that.
And I had dreamed about both of these events, very honestly, for a very long time, a- and I had a clear vision, and I had some evidence that people would want to come and receive what I was offering, but honestly, I, it, it took me a very long time. I couldn't take the plunge. Creating something new and putting it out in the world and then inviting other to, people to participate, I mean, that's vulnerable.
That is so scary, which is why I actually want to talk about it today. Sometimes you have to talk about the thing that you're the most scared of. Because I also suspect that some of you are sitting on something as well. It might be an offer you wanna launch. It might be a different way of serving your clients.
You might wanna bring people together around a problem you know how to help them solve or just launch something for fun, and you keep thinking about it, and every time you get close to doing something, you find another reason to wait. I get it But I want you to feel free to create, to, to take the thing that you can imagine and give other people a chance to experience it.
Because I truly believe, and have experienced for myself, that not only will it do wonders for you, but it will be a gift to others. So let's talk about creating and some of the things that I've been learning lately.
3 Ingredients of Happiness
So there were a couple speakers at Welcome Conference who helped me think about why creativity matters.
One of them, probably my favorite speaker at the conference, was Dr. Arthur Brooks, and he studies happiness and teaches about it at Harvard. He has, like, a 420-person waiting list for his class. Brooks talks about three things that make up a happy life: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. He calls them the macronutrients of happiness, meaning, uh, they're the things you need in life to feed and create happiness.
And he makes this distinction that I really appreciate. Happiness is bigger than the feeling you have at any given moment. The feeling gives you information about your life, but a happy life involves more than just keeping yourself in a good mood, which is a relief, because I can be in a terrible mood and still have a life I'm very grateful for.
Just ask my husband. Um, the first piece of Brooks' happiness framework is enjoyment. Enjoyment is different than pleasure. So Brooks describes enjoyment as pleasure, plus people, plus memory.
Why Shared Experiences Matter
And there's research that helps back up the idea that sharing an experience can make it more enjoyable. In fact, there's, uh, one experiment where people who...
Uh, he, they gave people chocolate, and they found out that they, people liked chocolate more when they tasted it at the same time as another person than when a person was nearby but doing something else. The chocolate was the same, but sharing the moment changed how they experienced it. And I think about hearing a song I love at a concert.
I've heard it before, but singing along with other people in that moment gives me a memory I, I can share with them for years. The song was already good. The experience, being at the concert with everybody else, made it mean more. And as someone who works with business owners, that makes me think differently about what we're creating, because we often talk about the product, the service, what's included, how long it takes.
Uh, all of that matters. People should know what they're paying for. But when you're imagining what you want to build, you can also ask yourself what it feels like to be a part of it Will people get to know each other? Will somebody feel comfortable enough to ask the question they've been embarrassed to ask?
What will they remember afterwards? How did you make them feel when they're with you? Those are also business questions. And if you've ever had a client say, "I don't know exactly how to describe it, but working with you felt different," you know that there are parts of the experience that don't fit neatly into a list of deliverables.
You helped them feel something. You made room for them, and that was part of what you created. W- when I heard Brooks talk about this, it made me realize that when I create something that I share with others, not only is that fun for me, but I contribute to their happiness as well. I sometimes think of products as something I offer that just solves problems or offers a ton of value, but what if I started thinking about them actually contributing to people's happiness because we experienced a shared memory together?
That is where enjoyment happens, and that is where ultimately happiness happens. But in order for any of that to happen, you have to create something that other people experience.
Finding Satisfaction in the Creative Process
Now, the second piece Brooks talks about as part of happiness is, or a happy life, is satisfaction. He defines satisfaction as the joy that comes through effort and making progress towards something that matters to you There's a difference between watching somebody else launch something and actually doing the work to launch your own.
Watching somebody else can be inspiring and, I love learning from people. You know, I, just spent a day at the Welcome Conference doing exactly that. But eventually I have to do something with what I've heard, and doing it is going to involve struggle. There will be decisions I don't know how to make yet.
I'll have to ask somebody for help. Uh, something will take longer than I want it to, and it's scary, and it requires me to be brave. But if I treat every difficult part as evidence that I shouldn't be doing it, I'll stop before I get to experience the satisfaction of making it happen. What if we started thinking about the struggle of creation a little bit differently?
There may be satisfaction available in the process of building it even before it becomes whatever you hope it will become. And again, this is a requirement for happiness. So here, what I'm doing here and what has begun to kind of take place in my mind, not only when we stop and think about creating something does it help us build our business and put something out there, but it creates a space for enjoyment for us and others.
It creates a place of satisfaction for overcoming the hard things. And ultimately, being creative with this mindset helps us have a happier life. Now, there is a third piece to the whole form happiness formula, and that is meaning. And really that's answering the questions: Why are we alive and what are we doing this for?
And connecting the work to the answers of those questions. And that question gets personal pretty quickly. You can have a business that makes money and still struggle to explain why you wanna spend your life doing it. You can get very good at the work and still lose track of what made you care in the first place.
For me, creating something for other people gives that question of, why does this matter, it, it gives it somewhere to go. I can think about an actual person who might benefit, somebody who needs a, a conversation that they're not getting somewhere else, somebody who has an idea that needs help getting it out into the world.
And I also think about how something that people will buy from me that I put out there will help support my family, put my daughter through college, let us travel and experience the world. Now that, that doesn't answer every question about the meaning of my life when it talks about work, but it gives me a reason to do the work that's in front of me.
And this is where I see the connection between Brooks' work and creating. When we make something other people can participate in, there is an opportunity for shared enjoyment. We get to work towards something, and we can connect that work to people we care about serving. And th- now, now h- this is, this is me making that connection.
I'm not saying Brooks' formula, uh, th- that is like, basically says if you launch a product or a business, you automatically become happy. Because if that were true, um, entrepreneurs would be the most relaxed, blissful people in the world, and I do not find that to be true. But I do think there is something worth paying attention to here, that if we actually understand that when we put things out there in the world and lean into the creative process, it actually, when we're done with the m- right mindset, can bring us and other people happiness But why still aren't we creative?
Why Entrepreneurs Don't Think They're Creative
Well, there was another speaker that really challenged me at the conference as well. His name was Duncan Wardle, and he's the former head of innovation and creativity at Disney, and he started his whole talk by asking his pe- everybody in the audience to raise their hands if they were creative. He said, wh- uh, "Whoever's creative, raise their hands."
And you looked around that auditorium, and most of the hands stayed down, including my own, I'll be honest, because you're like, "Oh, I don't wanna own that." And then he said, "Well, what's going on? What's happening here? Why..." He said, "You're all entrepreneurs. You're all people who run businesses. You create amazing experiences for people.
Why do you not think you're creative?" So he had us do this exercise where he had us pair up with somebody next to us, and one of us had to imagine putting on a Star Wars-themed birthday party, and we just had to come up with ideas just on the spot right there. Now, the same people, including myself, who had just decided that we weren't creative and were not raising our hands, started coming up with incredible ideas.
He gave us something to imagine and permission to have fun with it, and we could do it. I, I think a lot of adults hear the word creative and immediately think of somebody who can paint or write music, and they put themselves outside of that category before they've considered all the things that they've already made possible.
If you built a business, you've made decisions about something that didn't exist yet. You imagined how it could work and brought pieces of it together. That took creativity. Now, you may need some more practice. You may need some help, but there is probably more imagination available to you than you're willing to give yourself credit for.
Wardle talks about a river of thinking, uh, the familiar route, this river that we take because of our experience, and our experience is useful. In fact, like, you know, if I'm on a plane, I want my pilot to have some experience, right? Experience is useful, but sometimes knowing how things usually, quote, unquote, work makes us quick to dismiss a different possibility 'cause we have a very well-developed explanation for why, you know, that won't work here or that won't work here.
The Power of Asking "What If?"
So one of the tools that he uses is just asking a simple question: What if? And how you do this is you identify a rule or an assumption and imagine what could happen if you changed it. So he, he described asking, like, "What if there were no lines at Disney?" Then exploring changes to the whole guest experience, right?
There was an assumption there's always lines, but what if there were no lines? You know, for your business, the assumption might be something smaller, like you've always delivered something one way, so you keep delivering it that way. But what if people could experience it differently? You know, like, uh, maybe you're a consultant who assumes the only way to help clients is to work with them one-on-one.
Well, you could ask, "What if I brought a small group of people with the same kind of challenges into one room?" That question might lead you to create a workshop where they can learn from you and from each other, like we did with Become the Obvious Choice. Or maybe you own a bakery and assume people come in only to buy something and leave.
You could ask, "What if this is a place where people might wanna linger?" That might lead you to host y- a monthly pie night where neighbors try new recipes and get to know each other. The question, "What if?" helps you imagine a different kind of experience your business could create. And you, you don't have to know how to make it work at the moment you ask.
Your Brain Needs Room to Wander
What you're doing is you're giving yourself a little space to imagine first I, I also appreciated what he said about where our good ideas tend to show up, walking, in the shower, talking with a friend, those moments when we have a little bit of room. And there's research that helps explain why a break can be useful.
Uh, Benjamin Baird and his colleagues gave people creative tasks, then had them spend a break doing different kinds of activities. The people who did an undemanding activity that allowed their minds to wander a little bit improved more on creative problems they'd already encountered than the comparison group.
Meaning that if you kept working hard at something, it became harder to solve hard problems, but if you gave yourself space, it allowed for your brain to be creative in ways you never understood. And that's a specific finding. It doesn't mean every minute of boredom produces a brilliant idea, but it does suggest that staying occupied every second of the day isn't always the best way to think through something.
You can begin working on an idea and then give it some room. Go for a walk without putting something in your ears. Let yourself stand in line without opening an app. See what happens when there isn't somebody else's voice filling every available moment, uh, which is a little ironic coming from me that, you know, I'm a podcast host telling you to, you know, occasionally stop listening to podcasts.
I would appreciate you finish this one, but I want you to have enough room to hear your own ideas, especially if you've been consuming advice about the thing you wanna create for so long that you've lost track of what you wanted it to be You know, I, I mentioned last week we finally put on Become the Obvious Choice.
Uh, Julie and Sonia and I brought together for a day, uh, some people to work on their businesses, and it was a, a very s- a small group intentionally. We sold out in the first week. And they were kind and driven entrepreneurs who came together to help each other solve their problems. And if I'm honest, it was fantastic.
We all had an incredible time, and I believe everyone walked away with a lot of value. But it almost didn't happen. I had hesitated. I had wondered who I was to do this, and my friends came around me and helped me move forward. And that part matters to me as well because I, I don't wanna tell this story as if I suddenly became fearless and made everything happen by myself.
I had people alongside me, and we did it together. It, it really was an amazing day. We started the day at charity:water, which is a nonprofit that is working to solve the clean water crisis around the world. And, and we started there because we're gonna be working on our businesses all day, but I wanted us to remember that the world is bigger than our business.
And yes, we were at the event to work on real business problems, but I wanted us connected to a why while we did it. Then we came back and got into a room together, and we worked all day, and nobody was on their phones. We were all there in it with each other. People brought things they were wrestling with, and other people helped them think through these problems.
And there was something so meaningful about getting to do that together. And, and for me, it, it was also satisfying to see something I had kept putting off become a real experience people could participate in I wanted that kind of room. And with Julie and Sonia, I helped make it, and I invited people into my imagination.
Then, uh, the next day, the very next day, w- I had the Sounds and Tastes of Fall event, and the purpose of that event was really connection. You know, people came and shared a story, a song, or food, and hardly anybody knew each other. And there's a couple reasons I wanted to do this. I, I had recently read an article by Derek Thompson about how hosting has declined.
He compared kind of older surveys with new surveys and reported that Americans hosting friends or family at least monthly had fallen from 42% in 1975 to 12% in 2026. B- Roughly a 70% decline in my lifetime. I was born in 1975. And, you know, the surveys were conducted differently, so that number is an estimate of the trend, but it made me think about how often connection requires somebody to actually make an invitation.
And we know from research on social connection that loneliness and isolation are associated with poorer mental health, higher anxiety, and a gathering doesn't fix everything, but somebody has to create opportunities for people to come together And so I did. And I, I, I wanna say it, it was a sacred evening.
You know, that evening I got to watch my kids step up to the microphone. I mean, Knox, our, our son Knox shared the first f- like four paragraphs of a book he's writing, that it's currently called The Untitled Fantasy Project, which I think is perfectly respectable working title, and it's about an evil genius cat who wants to destroy a colony of dogs living in snowy forest.
And Knox got up and let other people into that world. And my friend Greg shared a song he wrote about coming out of the closet. My, my brother Jesse shared a cover song inspired by my dad, who recently passed away, and our daughter Jayden made people cry with her poem about letting go of childhood. Think about what people were offering each other, something they'd made out of their own lives and imagination, something person enough, personal enough that sharing it meant being seen.
And, a- and I couldn't have created any of those things for them. I could create an opportunity for them to share, but they had to show up and share.
A 6-Year-Old's Lesson on Imagination
One of my favorite moments of the night was after a few people had gone, E- Esme, the six-year-old daughter of my friend Bobby w- kind of walked over to me and whispered, "I'd like to share a story about unicorns."
And I instantly said, "Yes," and told her, "You're going next." And then Bobby, her dad, came over and said, "W- what did she just say to you?" And I was like, "Well, she asked if she could tell a unicorn story," and she had not even gone up to him to say anything to him. She just volunteered. She came right over to me.
So Esme got up in her cat ear headband and her fall flower dress and told us about a unicorn and its best friend, a squirrel, and how they ended up needing to be rescued by a nice witch named Glenda. And at one point in the story, she said, "They tried and tried to figure out how to get back, but they couldn't remember because they grew up."
And for me, it may have been the most profound moment of the night. They couldn't remember because they grew up. And honestly, I have no idea what Esme intended with that line. She was telling her story. But I heard it after listening to Duncan Wardle talk about imagination, and after spending time with my own hesitation about creating these events, and I wondered how much of what I call be- being realistic is me forgetting that I'm allowed to imagine something.
Esme wanted to tell a story. She saw a place where people were sharing, and she asked if she could share, too. She brought something nobody else could have brought, and I got to hear it because I put on this event This is part of what you make possible when you create something other people can enter.
They bring things you could never have planned. Y- your imagination gives theirs somewhere to go. And for you listening, I want you to consider that as you think about what's holding you back. What might somebody get to experience because you finally make the thing? What might they contribute once you invite them in?
You still need to understand the people you serve. You, need to listen when they tell you what's helpful, but your experience can give you somewhere to begin. Your imagination can give you somewhere to begin. You know what you've wished for. You know what you've been missing for you. Somebody else may be wishing it, too.
Taking the First Step
So create the world that you want, and invite people into your imagination. I had people asking for what I was trying to offer, and I still hesitated, so I'm, I'm saying this as someone who needs encouragement, too. So here's my challenge for all of us. Pick something you've been wanting to create, and take a step this week that lets another person into it.
If you wanna host something, choose a date. Send an invitation. That's what I did. If you have an offer you keep revising, talk to a person. It could help, and give them a chance to try it. That's what I did. Let somebody see enough of the idea to respond to it. You can learn from that. You can change it. Then you can find people who will come alongside you the way Julie and Sonia came alongside me.
And guess what? Because of how incredible this event went with us and everybody who showed up, we are now doing this again. We are doing a Become the Obvious Choice event again December 4th here in Nashville. And if you're interested in being part of it or launching something new yourself, you can go to becometheobviouschoice.com, which is become-the-obvious-choice.com.
There's a dash in between all the words. Become the obvious choice dot com with a dash in between. And you can be a part of s- this event and launch something for yourself. Make some space before you fill the next hour with more advice. Let yourself be bored long enough to notice what you want to do. I want to spend more time creating than consuming.
I want to launch the thing. I want to put on the event, even when part of me is still wondering who will come. Let's start being okay with being bored and giving ourselves space, and not being okay with boring lives. There are things we could experience together that don't exist yet. I'd like us to give some of them a chance.
So let me leave you with this. May you give yourself room to imagine the thing you've been afraid to begin. May you find someone who will sit with you, ask a good question, and help you take the next step. And when you invite people into what you've created, may they bring something you never could have made on your own, a little courage, a story about unicorns, something that reminds you why you wanted to do this in the first place.
May you remember that you're allowed to make a world you would have wanted to be a part of, and may you leave enough room for somebody else to belong there, too. Because we believe you can be both ambitious and kind, fun and driven, powerful and deeply human. Your leadership can inspire, your success can have soul, and your ambition can make space for everyone.
That's why you're a badass softie. We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening. Follow and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Badasssoftie.com is crafted by Fruitful Design & Strategy.