There's no such thing as creative people and non-creative people.

There's just people who use their creativity and people who don't.

And not using it doesn't go without penalty.

As it turns out, unused creativity is not benign. It's dangerous. That quote is from my dear friend

Brunei Brown. I want to dive into a little story here. And it's a story about my experience,

my early experience as someone who identified as a creator.

And it starts out with everything looking great on paper, right?

I had the appropriate ambitions.

I had a clear plan for achieving my dream.

I knew what I was going to do with my life and I had confidence that I could actually succeed at doing it.

But the reality was that inside I was lost. I was unsettled. I was emotionally absent stuck. I couldn't really

put my finger on it, but something felt off. I was struggling and I couldn't take another step forward.

How was I going to follow this plan? It wasn't until I

experienced the loss of someone very near to me that I realized something. I realized that the plan I had,

it actually sucked. Every action made sense by itself, but the destination that those actions

were pointing to left me cold, left me empty.

The year before, I'd quit the opportunity to continue pursuing professional soccer.

Now I was off to med school, plunging into another life that I had no desire to live.

What was I doing?

How would this happen to me? I mean, I thought I was aware of this and yet something had steered me awry. I realized then that all my life I'd been

seeking the approval of others and to achieve at any cost largely on the back of what I would get from

the approval of others. And becoming a doctor seemed to me like the obvious choice, maybe even

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