Stop Hoarding Your Best

When I was in high school, I had this idea for a novel.

I forget the details now, but it was something about a section of the Garden of Eden that had somehow been preserved in its prelapsarian state and then discovered.

This idea captured me at a deep level. I thought it could be the seeds of something great.

But I didn’t start writing.

I didn’t dare.

You see, I told myself I should wait until I was a better writer. Wait until I was “ready” to do the idea justice.

Deep down, I felt this was my “big idea.” Perhaps my one shot at writing the next great American novel.

Here’s your one chance, so don’t screw it up!

So I hoarded my best.

…

Creative hoarding is different than other kinds of hoarding. You’re not withholding your treasure from others, you’re withholding it from yourself.

You are denying yourself permission to take the best of what you have, here and now, and make it manifest in the world.

The REALITY is that you have a limitless pipeline of new ideas.

In fact, the faster you execute your best ideas, the faster your flow of bigger and better ideas becomes.

And, ironically, it is precisely through the courageous act of creating that you gain the skill and practice required to “do them justice”–NOT in hoarding them for a “perfect condition” future that, of course, never comes.

So, my challenge to you is this: stop hoarding your best.

Take that one “best idea” you’ve told yourself is off limits for now… that you’ve forbid yourself from executing “until conditions are perfect”… and start bringing it to life NOW.

Will it be your landmark work? Your breakthrough piece? Your magnum opus?

Maybe. Maybe not.

It doesn’t matter.

Because once you’ve brought it to life, a bigger and better “best idea” will come to you, and another after that.

You will have all the world-changing ideas you need, so long as you have the courage to bring to life “the best” that is before you now.

Don’t rob us of the joy, wisdom, or “lumps in the throat” your best work might give us.

Open your hands. Their protective grip around your best has become a stranglehold.

Let your best finally see the light of day.

***

Bryan Ward is the founder of Third Way Man and author of the LIT Black Paper