If You Don't Make Something Now, You Never Will

First published on May 20, 2020

Amongst all the challenges of the coronavirus world, there are opportunities. I was interviewed on a podcast last week, and one of the questions I was asked was, 'If you could send an email to everyone in the world in the midst of the pandemic (and they would open and read it) what would you say?' I gave an answer, a universal answer about the societies and systems we live in. In some ways it was the perfect answer: one of the opportunities available to us is to remake our world. But I also regret it. Because for some of us, the biggest opportunity of the pandemic is much more personal, and has the potential to change our lives forever.

We have the opportunity to make something.

So many people have a hidden dream: a business they will one day start, a book they will one day write, painting, changing career, learning a language or a musical instrument, teaching their child that thing. For some people, they don't even keep it hidden: a journalist I heard on a panel recently joked 'At least after this the people who always go on about how they are going to write a book will have to shut up. If you didn't write it in lockdown, you aren't going to.'

Now of course there are big parts of the population - from doctors to supermarket staff - whose lives are even more pressured than ever right now. This article isn't for them.

This article is for everyone else. It's for everyone who is now working from home: you have more freedom to control your time than before. Remember: this article was written in 12 minutes, proof-read once and then posted online. So before your excuses start coming in about how you're home-schooling your children now, or how your business is even busier than normal, consider: could you create 12 minutes in a day to work on that hidden (or not hidden) dream?

I'll give you a clue. The only answer is: yes, you could. The next question is: will you choose to? And if you don't, perhaps it isn't something you really want after all. And perhaps it would be better to acknowledge that, developing your compass for truth, than pretending that you do want it when your behaviour tells us all something quite different.

The situation is even more stark for those who have been furloughed. From friends and people I have coached, I know how difficult and disruptive this can be. And, if there was ever an opportunity to change yourself and change your life, this is it: you are being paid and you are not allowed to work. If you don't take this opportunity to get moving on your ideas, if even then you can't manage to put aside - let's say - 12 minutes to plan your new business or do an online spanish class, then let's just accept that this is not something you really want. If you can't bring yourself to let go of this dream - to accept that it isn't something you really want - then the only option is to start taking action. It's time to start living in integrity.

Here's why this is important: most of your excuses for not doing things have always just been excuses. They've been Resistance. And for many people in the world right now, swathes of those excuses have been removed. You wouldn't have wished them to be removed, but they have been and space and freedom has been created. Now is the time to develop the new habits and practices, to be couragous so you can develop confidence.

And it's important for your happiness, fulfillment and future self: when we start, we let inspiration in. We become someone who starts, someone who makes things, someone who can create change.

The lesson of this series of articles written in 12 minutes - started as a way for me to bust through my Resistance to sharing things online, and still going three and a half years later - is that if you start a practice and keep to your commitment, then in the end, you will have something you will be proud of. 160-odd articles later, my ability to write, think and speak is transformed. I have a body of work which thousands of people have read. It is the content for a book about winning your creative battles, and it is so much more.

The lesson, then, is to start. And when in your adult life has there been more opportunity for you to start than now? Remember: can you create 12 minutes in a week to work on that hidden dream?

The only, only, only possible answer is 'yes'. So get on with it and make something cool.