Share and Collaborate: Start Small and Slowly Extend Your Reach

If it’s ultimately about sharing and collaborating, you might be wondering how to begin. What do you share first and with whom do you share it? How do you find people with whom you can collaborate?

A Mild Start

It’s easy, really. You can begin in the exact same way I’ve asked you to begin everything: in small, slow steps.

If you’ve been afraid up until now to make your talents and passions known, you may first want to share them with a trusted friend. You can, for example, let them read your writing, see your painting, hear your playing, or simply listen to your hopes and dreams and ideas.

In turn, you can do the same for them. That’s what sharing is. It’s a give and take, a back and forth, an exchange of gifts between two friends.

By doing this, you’ll also be collaborating. Their things will inspire your things, your things will inspire theirs, and don’t be surprised if one day you find yourselves playing a game of creative ping pong, lobbing ideas to and fro across the net of your collective imagination.

That’s collaboration in a nutshell, the sharing of two or more imaginations, sets of experiences, skills, ideas, and things remembered. It can be as complex as an entire team of people working to complete a huge creative undertaking or as simple as a lively conversation between two people sharing their ideas. The latter is a marvelous place for you to begin.

Into the MIld We Grow

In time, your party of two will naturally expand. You’ll meet someone, someone fascinating, and think about your friend. “Hey,” you’ll say, “I know someone you really ought to meet.” Somewhere across town or in another state or on another continent, your friend will have a similar experience and your phone will ring.

In time, you can branch out. You can do the things you do for groups of friends or your family members. If you play music, you can play a song or set of songs for some friends at a dinner party. If you write, you can craft stories and poems to share with your loved ones. If you’re an artist, your early works might simply be pieces you create as gifts, and it’s helpful to remember that anything you make can be seen as a gift, something you’re making to share with the world, even if your world seems rather small at first.

From there, you can find the courage to reach out to strangers. You can take an acting class; join a writers group or an artists guild; participate in public readings, open mic nights, and amateur art shows; and even enter your work in contests. Where you go from there is completely up to you.

Some Things Bear Repeating

All along the way, keep two things in mind.

1. Small works.

Yes, I’m repeating myself. You don’t have to go big to begin.

For instance, you don’t have to land a role in a Broadway play or Hollywood movie to start sharing your love for acting. You can start by picking up a little collection of monologues, selecting one, practicing it in your bathroom mirror, and performing it for that trusted friend I previously mentioned.

2. Slow works too.

Once you’ve begun, your focus, I believe, should be on slowly extending your reach.

You’re stretching, growing, and centimeter by centimeter you’re expanding your circle of influence, increasing day by day the number of people you can entertain, inspire, uplift, teach, heal, impact, and serve. And all that really is is love.

It’s All About Love

Yeah, I know. People don’t always like to hear it, but love really is the answer. It’s a shame there’s not more of it flowing around. It’s a shame so many of us have been trained to hide and devalue our gifts. It’s a shame we weren’t always encouraged to develop and share them.

But you can help change that in slow and steady steps, and that, as I’ve said before, is what it’s all about.

In fact, that’s what being mildly creative is all about. That’s what it means to lead a life of quiet inspiration.

I didn’t understand that before I first ventured out. I still don’t completely understand it, but I’m willing to keep learning and that’s all I can really do. It’s all anyone, including you, can do, but it’s enough.

Keep learning. Stay curious. Collect your thoughts. Do something daily. Feed your muse. Live your life. Make things. Share and collaborate.

Do so and I think you’ll discover that both your creative soul and the universe in which it exists are even larger and more wondrous than you first imagined.

So, go ahead. Let yourself go mild.

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