You have excellent taste in everyone’s work except your own.

Back yourself again. Your best work is ahead.

This is a short, firey one for women who’ve built before — and are quietly wondering if they still have it in them.

You have excellent taste, I know it.

You know whose essays are worth reading.

You’re always early to support those underground geniuses the masses don’t know about yet.

You know who’s saying something new and who’s reheating a thought from 2017.

You know who’s genuine and trustworthy, and who’s a total cowboy.

Your discernment is excellent. Your taste in other people’s work? Chef’s kiss. No notes.

But when it comes to your own idea?

“It’s too obvious. Surely people know this already.”

Meanwhile, you’ve just spent 40 minutes reading someone explain something you’ve known for a decade. Ouchy mama.

There it is again. That sting.

They trusted themselves to say it. And you didn’t.

The more clever and self aware you are, the more sophisticated you’ll become in the ways you sabotage yourself.

Sometimes the reasons for your stagnation sound super sensible.

Some are genuine boundaries— you’ve got little kids at home and you don’t have the capacity for all the online stuff in some seasons. This is so fair (been there).

Sometimes though, we do have the capacity. We’re using it to scroll, and to consume more of other people’s ideas…. while sitting on really good ones of our own.

Here’s what I’ve noticed about clever women who’ve built beautiful things before: we don’t stop creating because we lose our capability (although, we may believe that temporarily). We stop because we get very, very good at hiding — and we hide in our best qualities.

We hide behind our integrity. “I just don’t wanna get caught up and forget my priorities”

We hide behind our humility. “I really don’t care if people read my stuff, I just wanna write it.”

We hide behind the fact that ‘well, I don’t need the money’.

I want to remind you that money isn’t the most important part of creation for a woman.

We create because it’s part of our biological territory to do so. We create because we don’t know how not to. We create because we create life so, how do we live a life without creating beauty?

We create because it brings us alive.

We create because we love connecting with others— with detail, and stories like only women do (does your husband ever get 18 minute audios from his friends? no. It’s a woman thing).

Forget all the crap that surrounds the online element of creation and come back to the purity and honesty of your own secret desires to create.

You miss the excitement of an idea in motion — solving a real problem, finishing something, the quiet jolt of being paid for work that came from your own head.

You are allowed to love your life and still be a bit bored.

You are allowed to admit that you’re a bit of a turbo.

You’re allowed to want a thriving creative life again.

Who told you otherwise? Someone in your life? Someone on the internet? Or someone in your own head?

I want to remind you that backing yourself doesn’t mean dragging yourself back into work you no longer want. It doesn’t mean ‘getting caught up’ or an ungodly screen time. It can simply mean a more invigorated, focussed creative life….

One that makes you more alive and maybe even more present for the people you love…. because you’re acting on your ideas and not ruminating on them, second guessing them, and worrying about whether someone else will get their first.

Now the part I really want you to hear.

You’ve built before. You’ve had the idea and you’ve followed through (so stop telling yourself the lie that you’ve got no follow through). You’ve made beautiful things.

Then maybe you took a step back to be present at home. Or you changed direction and you haven’t re-entered yet.

Maybe now you second-guess every jolt of clarity because everyone seems to be zooming past you with their AI agents (and you’re still suss about AI and if you’re honest, intimidated by it), their super clear niche’s and their seemingly growing delusional confidence.

Maybe you’ve lost yours. Maybe you feel less confident.

But I want you to know something….

You haven’t lost your creativity. You’ve outgrown your old work. You’re unwilling to go back to how it was before.

What was familiar may not be what is right for this next phase.

Don’t let that keep you in tiresome stagnancy.

You’re still that girl, okay?

Being capable of building something doesn’t mean you want to build the same thing again. Life is different now. You’re no longer willing to charge towards goals that mean nothing to you, or turn your life into material for an audience. You still want to express yourself. You just don’t want everything that used to come with it.

So feel free to drop the old model or the old message or maybe even the persona that was a little more “perfect” than you are in real life.

You don’t have to churn out content while you work out what you really want to say. Don’t rush.

Let yourself entertain entirely new models and ideas — online, in person, long form, behind the scenes, fully seen, making, investing.

Like I always ask— do you really wanna make an online course or do you wanna open a cafe? Let yourself enter exciting new territory.

This next season gets to be life-giving ok?

It gets to be joyfully ambitious, without taking over your life or making you impatient for the people you love.

You get to be even more honest now, without any remaining dribbles of performance.

Let that excite you.

A decade ago, I used to ask this question from a stage in front of 14,000 people.

If you didn’t know how it should be done, how would you do it?

Start there— forget what use to work. Forget about what everyone else is doing.

Back yourself again.

Lotsa love, PK XX

NOTE: I am in the process of making new things, but if you want three hours of straight PK pep talk on this topic so you can be free and on fire again, go here. If you want something more low key but still able to jolt you into new creativity, go here.