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Everything we create comes from something. Even the most fanciful story of purple worlds with flying orphans and unicorn barristers is reassembled from the disparate parts of the world in which we live. The idea for a new business is sparked when someone went looking for a service or product and couldn’t find it, or saw a possibility for an established business that hadn’t been realized. Though we cannot watch an idea approach from a distance, though they appear in our minds like ghosts from the shadows, they are always fruit born from the tree of our desires, desires which exist long before an idea arrives to meet them.

In my lowest moments, I always feel as though I have nothing. I am aware of those things I would like, but I do not see them in my life and have no notion of how they will arrive. Creation seems impossible, a pleasant myth told to explain the good luck of others. I have no luck. There are no unseen leprechauns working for me. I am alone, and have always been so. You get only what you can hammer out with your two hands.

Such despair is always a consequence of looking for something where it isn’t. When I was still working in a restaurant and had begun to become interested in the relationship with between the imagination and our daily lives, a fellow waiter began turning to me for advice for his new business. I did not know at that time I wanted to coach and inspire people, but I knew I enjoyed talking to him when he was doubting himself, when he worried about the future. He was, you could say, my first client. And when we would finish one of our conversations, I would think, “That was fun. I would like to do more of that.”

There is no more creative, useful thought to think than, “I like that and I would like more of it.” The thing I want always exists in my life in some form. Unwritten stories, new businesses, even new relationships exist first in our imaginations and our desires. It is never true that I simply want something. I always want more of something. I must always look for where that which I want exists in my life already, find it where it is, and then keep my attention on it so that I might watch it grow.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com