On one of the first weeks of the Create the impossible-course the theme was Be creative. Michael Neill spoke in the daily audio on creativity, giving different assignments, one of which was to create something from nothing. Overall, the entire week centered around creativity.

And you cannot imagine the magnificent examples of creativity that my fellow classmates birthed and shared with the rest of us. There were songs, blog posts, paintings, elaborate meals, and also a lot of headway of the various create-the-impossible-projects of people in the group. The energy was mostly light, bright, bouncy and joyful, with a lot of play and openness as to what wanted to be created. 

Then a few weeks later, the weekly theme was Take action. Michaels daily audio gave instructions to take action, even to take massive action, to just-do-it, and really get down to work, so to speak. 

And the difference, also in me, was amazing to witness. Some people jumped right in and took action, being totally fine with it. But myself, and a lot of the others on the course, got up in our thinking. I had thoughts such as

Is it really appropriate to force myself into action? 

What if I don’t feel like taking action? 

Should I really force myself into it? 

Will I take the correct actions if I force myself, or will that mean I’ll be working against my intuition? 

Well, you can probably hear my inner dialogue spinning around and around on this, with a lot of judgement thrown in, ideas about right and wrong, and a fear of going down the wrong path. 

Then something happened. Michael spoke about the theme of the Take action-week during the weekly phone-in-session, and I was reduced to hysteric giggles at how silly I’d been. Because what Michael so aptly pointed out, is that being creative and taking action, are really jusy two different ways of talking about the same thing. 

Doh!!! 

I had a huge Homer-Simpson-moment when that hit home. 

Because he’s right. It is. Being creative is about taking action. It’s about just doing something, making something come to life. Whether it be a song, a meal for the family, a painting, a website, a blog post or an email asking someone for assistance. Taking action is about being creative, it’s about taking steps towards a goal, or just taking a step forward anyway, because it feels appropriate to take a step forward. 

It’s just different words. And it became painfully obvious to me, that I place totally different meaning upon these two words. Which is actually a great piece of information! If I’m paralysed by the Be creative-bit, well then, don’t go there. Use the Take action-vocabulary instead, by all means. And vice versa. If Taking action feels very serious, strict and rather makes your imagination and creative playful side shut down, inhibiting you from actually taking action, well, then use words like Be creative instead. Simple right?

Because neither is more right or wrong than the other. It’s just two different ways of getting things done. Of making stuff happen. And trust me on this my friend, making things happen is a key factor for progress, for movement, for learning, for expanding. So whatever you do, make stuff happen! And perhaps play with these two concepts to find out which gets your juices flowing?