Are You Showing Up and Suiting Up?

This week I watched one of those videos that gets passed around on FaceBook because of its emotional impact.

It’s about a young man with autism who loved basketball and attended a high school in upstate New York. He joined his high school basketball team, not as a player, but as a coach’s assistant. He made sure the players had water and towels. He helped run the team through practice drills. And at the games, he cheered them on and kept their spirits up. Every game, he showed up.

Finally, in the last game of his senior year, the coach had him suit up. And then, somewhere near the end of the game, the coach sent this young man out onto the court to play with his teammates.

Finally, the ball was passed to him. He took a shot…and missed. Minutes later, undeterred, he took another shot, from the 3-point area…and scored! Then he did it again…and again…and again.

Needless to say, the team won the game and this young man was carried off the court on the shoulders of his friends and teammates. Because he made a commitment and then showed up…and suited up.

The common myth is that creativity happens when, at some divine moment, the Muse arrives in all her glory, touches us and suddenly, the idea for a book or poem or painting or business is illuminated in all its completeness and beauty.

Okay…yes, sometimes that happens.

But, if you are a professional in your creative expression, then you know that you can’t sit around waiting for that to happen. Otherwise, you could be waiting a long time. You might wait forever.

Instead, you know that you have to show up. You have to suit up.

That means, once you’ve made a commitment to be a writer or a painter or pianist or coach—whatever your creative passion or expression—you have to show up to write, paint, play or coach, on a regular basis for the Muse to even come visiting.

After all, would YOU go a long distance to visit and share gifts with someone you weren’t sure was going to be there when you arrived?

So you have to show up. But the young man of the story could not have gone out on the basketball court to shoot his impressive 3-point shots if he had not practiced all those drills with his teammates over the seasons, and if he had not been suited up, wearing his jersey and his sneakers. He was suited up inside and out, ready to play.

Showing up at your desk, or easel or piano or computer on a regular basis is important. In fact, it’s necessary if you are serious about your creativity, but you also have to be ready to play. Come with your tools and your skills and your willingness to fail—and your willingness to win. Always come ready to win.

When I sat down to write this article, as has happened many times in the last 4 years, I didn’t know what I was going to write, but because I made a commitment to you—and my Muse—4 years ago, I showed up. And I brought my skills and my willingness to try, and even to fail. And in the showing up and the suiting up…

The Muse arrived. And we all win.

Are you ready to show up and suit up for your creativity?

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