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Here’s the plain truth – you ARE creative.

Don’t believe me? Let’s go on a journey.

Think of your dream holiday destination.

Now picture yourself there.

If you’re a beach person, can you feel that sea breeze cutting through the heat of the sun? Can you smell the sun cream? Can you hear the waves breaking?

If you’re a mountain person, can you smell the fresh air, feel it cool against your skin, see for miles? That sense of accomplishment, having hiked to the viewpoint?

Or maybe neither of those fill your cup and you’re more of a city break person. Can you hear the sound echoing through the cathedral as you walk around? Smell the pizza cooking as you wander the streets of Florence? Hear the creak of the drawbridge closing as the castle braces for attack?

Now, where do you think those feelings came from? They didn’t come from those far off places and times. They can’t have. You’re still sat there, reading this.

So where did they come from?

You created them. You brought those feelings to life using the creative power of thought.

You are a creator.

The thing is, we’ve been conditioned to think of creativity in a narrow way. An artist, a musician, an architect, an inventor. But here’s the thing – they’re no more or less creative than you are. So what’s stopping you tapping into that same force? Could it be your own thinking? Could it be that you’ve put the shutters up on your own creativity by spinning a yarn that you’re not creative?

Listen, we’re not all artists, or musicians, or architects, or engineers. If we were, society couldn’t function as it does. We need people of all talents. So if we cast aside the notion that creativity only belongs to those worlds, if we let ourselves see that we’re all creative, what becomes possible?

The examples above were all about things we enjoy. But the same is true of the things that make us freeze in panic, break into a cold sweat, lie, clam up in the face of a challenge. Those are the work of our creative powers too. It’s unlikely you’ll come face to face with a ravenous lion these days. And yet we conjure images that cause the same dread. Most people live in an almost constant state of psychological stress. But because we’re such powerfully creative creatures, these dangers feel so real we could almost touch them.

Sit with that for a while. Picture things that bring you joy, and notice – those feelings are only there because of the power of thought. On the other side of that are the feelings that cause you pain. Same source. Sit with it long enough and you start to see it. And once you see it, it starts to lose its grip.

Don’t believe me? Give it a go. Keep at it. Eventually you’ll see it. And when you do, your life can change in that instant.

None of this is to say I don’t fall into the trap myself. I do. More often than I’d like to admit. The difference these days is I come round to seeing I’ve been hoodwinked a bit quicker than I used to.

I woke from a dream this morning and realised something. Not for the first time, but this time I saw it more clearly than I had before.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll remember being a kid in the garden, or the park, somewhere outdoors with your friends. A friendly game of football, maybe. And you’d bags being your favourite player. Straight away the game changed. You weren’t just kicking a ball about any more – you could hear the roar of the crowd, smell the grass at your team’s home ground, you were somewhere else entirely.

It felt real. While you were playing, you believed you were that person, you had their skill, their physical prowess, all of it. I remember it well. Sometimes I was Stefan Edberg, playing out some imagined tennis final. Other times I was Ayrton Senna, racing my BMX down the track – yes, a completely different sport, different speeds, different stakes, but I was reaching for that same single-minded focus he was known for, trying to find it in myself to go faster.

So where did all that come from? That realer-than-real sense that you actually were that person?

The answer – so simple that we often don’t even realise it’s happening – is that your thinking was creating the whole experience. And it was so good at it that you just fell into the feeling. You weren’t pretending to believe it – you believed it.

Which gets me thinking about today. How did you feel? Energised, or drained? Maybe there was a meeting you were dreading and you felt off before you’d even stepped into the room. Or you thought about a row you’d had recently and immediately broke out in a sweat at just the thought of it. Or maybe you booked your dream holiday, or got the keys to a new car. How did that feel?

I’d bet you went through all sorts today – things that haven’t happened yet, or things that already have – and at no point could you really tell whether what you were feeling was “real” or not. Here’s the thing, though. None of it was any more real than pretending to be Kenny Dalglish in the back garden. It was made up the exact same way.

What I’ve noticed, more and more, is that once you recognise where a feeling has actually come from, it gets easier to let it pass through rather than grab hold of it. Easier not to get hoodwinked into thinking something real is happening to you right there in the moment, when actually it’s just thinking, doing what it’s very good at doing.

I don’t think it’s something you can switch off. You’ll always be feeling something. But maybe, and I’m still working this out, there’s a difference between being swept along by whatever turns up, and getting some kind of say in when you feel what.

Last year around this time I wrote about getting back into my fitness. Well, the past year didn’t quite go to plan.

I’d written about taking it easier, recognising I’m getting older, that recovery takes a bit longer, that I needed to ease myself in rather than launch back in at full tilt. Then life took over. My routine became one that didn’t support any of that and gradually, without any single dramatic moment, I stumbled. No big fall. Just a slow drift away from something I’d intended to do.

Recently though I decided to go again. I’ve made another start at running. The aspirations will need adjusting. I’ve let things dwindle over the last couple of years and I need to be honest with myself about that. It’s not just the fitness either – it’s the mental clarity that comes with it, that particular feeling of having done something good for yourself before the day has properly started.

It’s going to take time to get back to where I want to be. Whether that’ll ever be where I was at my finest, I don’t know. Time will tell. But will I give up? No way.

I’ve had a few realisations on these last couple of runs that I’ll come to in a moment.

First though, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself on the homeward stretch yesterday when an old Queen song came on. Not one of their well-known ones, but one I like: Was All It Worth It? Some of the lyrics jumped out at me — “yes it was a worthwhile experience” — and I couldn’t help but relate them to the run itself. Was it all worth it? It felt like it. I was tired, but I was energised too. Happy that I’d gone out, full of a kind of quiet focus. So yeah, it was a worthwhile experience.

Two other things caught my attention out there.
The first was a couple I passed, walking briskly. I may be wrong about the details, maybe I was reading it all wrong, but their whole demeanour said stressed, rushing, looking for something. Everything about them was wound tight. Their heads were down, their pace was urgent, and there was a kind of frantic quality to how they were scanning the ground around them.

And it struck me that being in that state is probably the worst way to find anything. When we get caught up in our thinking like that, the breathing quickens, the focus narrows and something closes off. We become acutely tuned in but to the wrong thing. We stop being able to see, really see. The very urgency that feels like it should help ends up working against us. What tends to help, in my experience anyway, not that I’ve perfected this, is to slow right down, take a few slow deep breaths, and actively try to relax the body. It takes the sting out of it somehow. Lets things open back up. The thing you were looking for has a better chance of appearing when you’re not gripping quite so hard for it.

The second thing happened as I turned at the halfway point. I was greeted by a bright blue sky with a few wispy clouds moving through it. Behind me, on the other side of the horizon, darker skies were building. The contrast was striking – this clean open blue in one direction and these heavy, brooding clouds in the other.

And I was reminded, standing there catching my breath, how much life is like that. There will always be cloudy times, stormy times. Patches where things feel heavy and the light seems to have gone somewhere you can’t quite locate. But like the clouds in the sky, they pass. They always pass. And what’s always there, even when we can’t see it, is that open blue.

I didn’t set out on that run expecting to think about any of this. I just needed to get out, get moving, and do the thing I’d been putting off. But that’s often how it goes. You show up for one reason and come back with something else entirely.

So was it all worth it?
Yes, it was a worthwhile experience.

My coach Greg put up a post the other day about an episode of his Coach2Coach podcast where he’d interviewed another coach, Julie Brown. At one point he asked her what her one message to listeners would be.

She said: “Every obstacle is an opportunity.”

The timing could not been better – that was exactly what I needed to hear that day.

We’d just got back from picking up a new car to replace our old one with something more suitable for our daughter to learn to drive in. It’s a lovely little car, but on the way home it started playing up.

Warning light on the dashboard.

Just f’ing great.

And almost instantly all the old familiar stuff bubbled up. The internal catastrophising. Weekend plans suddenly hanging in the balance. Thoughts speeding up. Breathing changing. That “get out of my way” feeling.

It felt like one more thing.

Another thing to deal with in a line of things that afternoon. We’d just spent a sizeable amount of money on it and hadn’t even made it home before something went wrong.

It’s not supposed to be like this, is it?

I felt really disheartened. Deflated. Despondent.

Come on, Patrick… where’s the opportunity in this?

I almost felt like I needed to find one just to pull myself out of whatever mood I’d fallen into. But I’m slowly noticing that doing more isn’t always the thing that helps.

I could feel myself getting caught up in familiar thinking. The old conditioned stuff that shows up when things don’t go to plan. Thoughts that seem incredibly real in the moment, even though they’re often painting a picture that’s far bigger and darker than what’s actually sitting in front of me.

I’m still figuring this out, but I’m noticing that sometimes the thing that helps most isn’t forcing a better thought or solving the problem immediately.

Sometimes it’s just letting things settle.

Doing something else.

Slowing down.

Breathing.

Then eventually the rushed, clouded thinking starts to clear on its own and what comes next seems easier to see.

In my case it was just looking into what the issue with the car might actually be. Thinking about what the next move was, and when. Maybe it was something to park over the long weekend and pick up again on Tuesday.A pity, but that’s life.

But Julie’s words really were the tonic I needed that day. Not because they magically changed anything about the car, but because they nudged me in a different direction.

I’m getting a little better at spotting these moments where I slip into familiar reactions. That space between something happening and everything that follows afterwards.

I’m noticing it more.

And maybe sometimes that’s enough.

So my daughter and a group of friends decided to take a quick trip to Barcelona.

The slow – although somehow still very quick – unfurling of the wings. Testing how far they can take her.

It’s been both testing and reassuring in equal measure. I’ve grown used to being right there when needed. Close by. Available. And now life seems to be doing what life does – we nurture, guide, support from close range for a while, and then, slowly, they begin to discover their own wings.

Or maybe trust their own wings.

And we have to learn to trust them too. Trust them, and trust whatever it is we’ve tried to pass on in those short early years that somehow felt long at the time.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about it these past few days.

She’s still so young.

Will they be OK? It’s a different country. What happens if she needs help? What if something goes wrong?

Then another thought comes in.

She’ll be fine. She’s with good friends. All the mums are in a group chat with them, which provides just enough reassurance without completely pretending we’re not all quietly checking our phones every five minutes.

Then her flight lands.

First message:

“Dad, my data isn’t working.”

My reaction?

Straight to self-judgement.

“You idiot. You were meant to sort this out before she left.”

Then the immediate justification arrives right behind it.

“Well, it was all hectic and rushed.”

And then, of course, dad mode.

“Right. Let’s fix this.”

Everyone else get out of my way, I’m on the case. Looking things up. Thinking through options. Heart rate slightly higher than necessary.

Breathe.

And again.

Wait.

How is she even sending me WhatsApps?

Hotspot off a friend.

Of course.

That’s my girl. Young, fresh thinking. Faced with a problem and immediately finding a solution without turning it into a drama.

And then, a little later, we realised the issue itself was nothing major anyway. Years ago we’d put a roaming block on her phone and simply forgotten it was there.

One small setting quietly sitting in the background.

I just couldn’t see it in the moment.

And suddenly I’m sat there wondering what exactly it was I was so worried about in the first place.

Anyway, I know there’ll be more days like this.

Breathe.

They’ve got this… and so do we!