Some years back, I was in a meeting with Magic Johnson to discuss a book he wanted to write about business. He told me he’d had two ambitions in his life ever since he was young. Basketball and business. He had accomplished the first one and become a champion. Now he was accomplishing the second one: Being a successful businessman and inspiring the younger generation.

“You knew what you wanted to do since you were young,” I said. “What advice would you give people who don’t know what they want to do?”

He didn’t hesitate. “They should try everything until they find something they like. When they do, they should give it their all.”

I was fortunate to know what I wanted to do from a very young age. When I was six, my mother showed me a photograph of prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn. She was standing on the tips of her toes in a sparking tutu, her ankles swathed in satin ribbons, her arms
making a graceful arc above her head, her jeweled tiara placed just so on her head. That was when my training began. I pranced around our dining room table, I practiced my pirouettes, and when I opened the refrigerator door, I threw a leg out behind me and clobbered whomever had the bad luck of standing there.

Since I retired from the ballet, I’ve flexed my creative muscles by knitting beautiful sweaters, studying healing in the Philippines and I write every day. With each of these endeavors, I wasn’t good at first. When I started dancing, I had no turnout and I couldn’t do the splits. When I learned to knit, the first sweater I made was too big for my father. When I began studying healing, I read everything I could find on the topic and over a decade I took ten trips to the Philippines to research the faith healers. When I started writing, I wrote terrible poetry and bad prose. But whatever I was doing, I didn’t think about what I couldn’t do. I focused on what I wanted to do, I practiced every day and I kept my attention on my goals.

I’m not one of those people who was a natural dancer, a fashion designer, a healer or a great writer. I wasn’t one of those writers who flew up the bestseller list with my first book. It took me years of practice to get where I am today and I’m still learning. When someone asked gold medal champions gymnast Simone Biles and swimmer Michael Phelps how they rose to the top of their sport, they said the same thing. “I wasn’t necessarily better than anyone else. I just practiced more.”

When I started writing my blog, I didn’t think I had much to say. But each week, I put all of my attention on what I was doing. Eventually, ideas came to me more easily and this is blog number 388. I’m not trying to tout what I’ve accomplished. I simply want to inspire my readers to do what they love or to try something new. If you’re not
sure what you want to do, remember what Magic Johnson said. Try it all and when you find something that gets your attention, put everything you have into it. It doesn’t matter how good you are. It’s not your job to critique your work. All that matters is that it’s your personal expression and there is nothing like itvin the entire world.

During this unprecedented time of angst and disappointment, I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have my writing to dive into. Of course, it feels great to get a publishing deal but that isn’t my end game anymore. These days, I write to express my feelings, process my
life and unburden my heart. I’m a huge figure skater enthusiast, and when an announcer says that a particular skater is doing it for herself, those are the performances that rise above the rest.

Creativity takes courage. I know someone in her early sixties who told me she’s bored these days and doesn’t know what she wants to do.

“You’ve told me that you love guitar music,” I said. “Why don’t you learn to play the guitar? 

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to start anything new at my age and be bad at it.”

She was stuck and most likely, she’ll remain that way. I feel sorry for her because being creative seems to be the only way to endure this rough patch we’re in. Albert Einstein said, “Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought. It’s intelligence having fun.”

Creativity offers me the element of surprise. It’s a delight when I set out to write something and something entirely different shows up. My heart and my mind open. I feel encouraged to go into unexplored territory. I let my mind wander with no hard edges or obstacles. I feel the flow of life in my bones and I follow the stream in the direction it’s going. The name, Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of education,
creativity and music, comes from the Sanskrit word “saras” which means “that which is fluid.”

One of the most valuable gifts of creativity it that is never runs dry. You may think it does, but it’s simply waiting for you to catch up. Maya Angelou said, “You can’t use up creativity.
The more you use, the more you have.