Last year I ran a successful year-long program called Powered by Hope. The intent of the program is to help you follow your creative dreams by powering your spirit with hope! I am glad the program was so well received. This year, in addition to new posts, I will also be sharing a few of the best posts from the program. From now until the end of 2015, you will receive a minimum of two posts a month focused on hope. I hope you will enjoy them and that they will inspire you to follow your dreams!

GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE

My mother used to teach little kids. One year she taught them how to write a story about an object or an experience. If I remember correctly, the kids must have been in first grade, and the story consisted of five lines or so. The example she used was a story about a cow: “There was a cow in the meadow. The cow had four legs and a tail. The cow loved to eat the grass…”

A few weeks later, Mom gave her class a test: “Your family took you on a picnic. Write a story about the picnic.” I used to help her grade the tests and now that the statute of limitations has passed, I can tell you I used to change some grades to make sure the borderline kids all passed.

Anyway, as I was reading the essays, it struck me that nine out of ten kids wrote: “My parents took me on a picnic. There we saw a cow. The cow was in the meadow. The cow had four legs and a tail. The cow loved to eat the grass…”

I will never forget that. It taught me so many lessons and one in particular that I want to discuss today: creativity is about going out of your comfort zone. So many of us are comfortable with whatever our strength is—writing about preserves, or spices, or charcuterie—that we refuse to even tackle a new things thinking it will be to hard. We could never do it.

So the first aspect of creativity is: take the cow out of your picnic and try new things.

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