When I graduated college, I moved about a mile south of campus to work at a rainbow building down the street. Inside the rainbow building was one of the most successful advertising agencies in Dallas. The fact it was my first full-time job made me want to do cartwheels and run a race (keyword: want. My 5’ 9” body does not cartwheel or run).

The agency had a reputation of excellence and iconic creating campaigns like the Chick-fil-A cows, Motel 6’s “Leave the Light On”, and Home Depot’s “Doers Get More Done.” I was fresh out of college and surrounded by some of the sharpest, most wickedly creative, and strategic minds in the industry. No pressure. 

One afternoon, I met my boss, Julia, in a dimly lit conference room on the 16th floor. Each floor of the building was painted a different color, and sitting on 16, deep red desks surrounded us.

Julia and I were reviewing some name and headline options for a new project. The client wanted us to rename a vital branch of their business and asked us to jump in head first. It was a tricky assignment, which I can clearly see now, but at the time, it seemed like maybe I wasn’t cut out for that work. I didn’t have a clear answer yet, which worried me. It was one of my first projects and responsibilities at the agency, and it was also one of the first times Julia was seeing what kind of writer/employee/thinker I was. Julia is now the Chief Brand Officer for Southwest Airlines. Needless to say, I didn’t want to come up short. 

I remember sitting with her, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the ask, timidly scrolling through the Word doc in front of us. 

“I don’t have it quite figured out yet,” I apologized, tears brewing behind my brown eyes. I had spent hours trying to crack the code and write a life-changing, breakthrough headline that would knock both Julia + the clients’ socks off. 

I’ll never forget Julia’s response to my confession that I didn’t have the project nailed on the first try. She sat back in her chair, almost surprised by my comment, clearly seeing my not-so-subtle distress. With confident, assuring eyes, she told me, “None of us have the answer yet. We’ll figure this out together.” 

Cue a wave of instant relief. 

I didn’t have to have all the answers or a perfect, tidy, neatly wrapped solution with a frilly bow on top. That was never the expectation, never the ask. Rather, Julia and our team just wanted me to try my best. To take a first pass at solving this problem. To bring my insights, ideas, and perspective to the table. 

So often I put all the pressure on myself to solve the world’s problems in every meeting. I can start to believe that if I haven’t completely figured out the solution or built out an entire award-winning campaign before presenting my work I’ve failed. 

Almost four years later now, I think back to that doe-eyed girl in the 16th-floor conference room and just want to give her a hug. It was okay that she didn’t know the answer yet. All anyone asked was that she try her best.

I think this is true for a lot of us in our varieties of creative work. We may not be able to control how others will receive our work or if we’ll have the words/result/thing people are looking for, but we can try our best. We can put our noses to the grindstone and work hard. We can follow our hunches, do the research, and try a bit of this and that. How hard we work is in our power; that much we can control. But that’s it. The rest is often out of our hands. 

Many times (okay, almost every time), we are our own worst critics. Let’s take a deep breath and shake off the need to perform and “dance monkey.”

Creativity is a messy process. Building a campaign or an essay or a painting or a recipe isn’t always clear-cut. It rarely is. If it were, it’d be easy, and we’d miss the fruit of birthing shiny (albeit messy) new ideas into the world. 

Here’s your invitation to take your foot off the pressure pedal and start believing in yourself. In your work. In your creativity. By simply giving your A+ effort, you’re doing it—whatever “it” is for you. That’s all anyone can ask, and that’s all we need to ask from ourselves, too.