“I’m not going to do that,” I said to myself. “I have no need. I’m creating like a fiend! Why would I bother to add one more thing to my plate?”
That was the logic inside my head before the start of the very first creative challenge inside the Creative Sandbox Community.
I’d been thinking of offering creative challenges for a long time in the Sandbox — after all, daily prompts for a limited time are a great way to rally a community to get creating and sharing together.
Three wonderful members — my Creative Prompt Committee — volunteered to host the monthly challenges on a rotating basis, and Carla gamely took the first one, aptly called the Half-of-March challenge.
She wrote a beautiful post introducing the challenge, and assigned a single word as the prompt for each day, suggesting that we limit ourselves to just 5 minutes each day (so it doesn’t become onerous!). The point, of course, is to let go of perfectionism and practice vulnerability and courage.
All in beautiful alignment with my vision for the Creative Sandbox Community.
But when my Creative Prompt Committee all agreed that the four of us should model for the rest of the community by sharing our own efforts, I practically groaned.
I’m already creating! I don’t need prompts to get me to create! I don’t have time for one more thing!
Time for a reframe.
What if I look at these creative prompts as an opportunity instead of a “have to”?
My inner rebel does not like “have to’s”, even if it’s for my own benefit! And no, I don’t need prompts to get me to create these days, but in my goal of becoming a better visual communicator and facilitator, I do need to build my visual library.
Voilá! Suddenly I’ve transformed a “have to” into a “want to”! And now doing each day’s creative prompt for the challenge is something I look forward to, instead of something I dread. 🙂
If you’ve got a bit of a rebel in you, can you find a “want to” inside the “have to”? Perhaps you, too, can transform that thing you dread into something you look forward to.
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
