Creating Doorways: Don’t Beat Yourself Against the Wall, Just Walk Right Through!

By Dan Goodwin

Aside from more obvious creative artworks or projects, it’s often when we use our creativity in more subtle ways that we’re able to bring most significant and powerful change into our lives.

One way we can do this is to create opportunities for ourselves to do the things we want to do, whether purely for our own pleasure or to significantly move ourselves forward in a particular area of our lives.

A good analogy for creating opportunities for ourselves is to use the phrase — "create a doorway."

When you know what you want, but there's apparently a wall (or number of walls) in the way stopping you from reaching it, then the best way through is to simply create a doorway.

This could mean any number of things, but essentially it means creating the opportunities for yourself to move closer to gaining what it is that you want.

For example if you want to design a new website but you have little or no experience, you could create a doorway in a number of ways.

To name just a few, you could — take a course in web design, get some good books on the subject, take inspiration from some of the websites you enjoy visiting, do some work experience with a website designer you respect, or find step-by-step tutorials on the Internet.

Each of these is in itself a doorway to what you want, in this case a doorway to gaining knowledge and experience in designing your new website.

Each time you come to a point where you feel there’s a wall or barrier in front of you, brainstorm all the ways you could create doorways through the other side, to where you wish to be.

But CREATING doorways is not quite ALL there is.

Once you've created the doorways, you've actually got to pick one, open the door, and walk right through. Simply creating the doorway then standing at it gazing through isn't going to get you where you want to be.

It’s the equivalent of sitting in a car with the engine running but the gears in neutral, handbrake on and your feet off the pedals, then wondering why you’re not moving. To actually get anywhere, you’ve got to put the car in gear and pull away!

The same with the doorways. You need to make the commitment to action — to walk through that doorway — and follow through to where it leads.

Once you've done this, you'll be in a stronger place to consider your next options. The view from the other side of that wall often looks very different to how it did from where you were before.

And you can then go on to create more new doorways, all the time traversing the walls obstructing you and getting closer to what you want...

So what doorways can YOU create for yourself today? And when will you commit to walking through..? •

© Copyright 2006 Dan Goodwin.

05/19/06