Friends:

I’m thinking a lot these days on our purpose and essential nature as human beings. We are in these bodies, on this planet for a brief moment in universal time. It strikes me that, while we are here, we have a unique ability to turn our thoughts and inspirations into things.

In other words, we are creators.

We create companies, cultures, books and music. We create families and relationships and tangible, physical things, products. We also create experiences and lives, sometimes intentionally and other times, accidentally. We create joy and connection.

And sometimes we create fear and drama, disconnection, for ourselves and for others.

I’m playing a game right now where I try to see every interaction with someone as an opportunity to create a deeper connection than was there before. It has caused me to insert many a pause before I speak and be very deliberate about how what I say to my son, my mother, my business partners and my sweetheart, even in seemingly mundane, everyday conversations.

This is related to the First Agreement of don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements. (I see these Agreements as responsible for a big chunk of the freedom and energy with which I live my life.) The First is to be impeccable with your word, which means to understand the profound power of our words to bless or curse and to commit to use your word in favor of love and life.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: we can create life with our words. Have you ever seen how your child or employee or even friend or a person on the street unfurls to life when you connect eye to eye, and speak even 3 words of life on them?

I was walking in New York the other day, and a gentleman with a cardboard sign, dirty face and tattered clothes was screaming vitriol at the flood of humanity that was coming out of the subway station. His rage was so pure it was almost visible. And he was just flooding it, washing it over every person who passed by.

I sort of steeled myself to walk past him. But a few paces before I reached him, I met his gaze and silently shot him a blessing.

IT WAS LIKE HE HEARD ME. He pointed at me, and screamed YOOOOOOOU!

I raised an eyebrow. I cocked my head a bit.

And—I kid you not—his next words came out calmly, clearly and in his indoor voice. They were: “have great energy.”

“YOOOOOOU have great energy,” this man said to me. I closed my eyes, smiled and nodded and walked on. He went back to his regularly scheduled program.

We create. We create connections and things and ideas and life. And we do this, first, with our minds and souls. Then we put our souls on deck, in the form of the things and relationships and businesses and communities we create.

I spend a lot of my time working with leaders and entrepreneurs and creators, helping them get unstuck. What I see many times in people who are stuck on a project or in an area of their life is this: they want to be or do or have or create one thing, but they are at a spiritual standstill because their actions, beliefs, words and energy are in total opposition to what they want, for various reasons.

We can talk about why this happens later, but for now, let’s understand the energy of creation and the other energies that are in opposition, in the interest of releasing any spiritual standstills.

Creating is about bringing to life. It’s about transformation. It’s about receiving inspiration, which is always trying to flow to and through us, and then marrying inspiration with action, immediately.

Creating is not just proactive, yang, domination, force energy. It is also about stillness, receptivity and trust that everything is always working out for you, which allows you to make bold moves and steps toward your creation without fear, which closes off, corrodes and shrinks the inspiration pipeline.

Creating is not about passive consumption. You cannot create while you are reacting. This is why outrage is so distracting, why the headlines and Facebook and Twitter pull so many people off their life’s course. That’s why it’s worthwhile to cultivate the ability to stay calm while everyone else around you loses their head (e.g., when the stock market does what it’s doing right now).

Click to watch on Instagram: What creators do when the stock market dives

And you cannot create while you are judging. This is true whether your judgment is being leveled at politicians, the system, the folks who voted for somebody, rich people, poor people, your mother or even yourself.

See, creating is what you do when you love someone or something enough to collaborate toward the end of their well-being, growth and expansion.

Creating is an energy of love. Judgment is an energy of disdain, of dislike, or worse: hate. Judgment creates turbulence in your system, regardless of who you are judging. It interrupts your ability to receive inspiration and turn it into inspired action. Creation and judgment do not coexist. They just can’t.

You are a creator. Not a consumer. Not a reactor. And not a judge.

Head up + heart out,