Issue 020 | You Don't Need Another Idea. You Need to Know Where You're Going.

September Theme: Architect What You Carry

I tend to get very good at the things I decide to do.

And I don't say that in a braggadocious way.

I say it because I have lived long enough to know something about myself:

When something interests me enough, I study it.

I learn it.

I want to understand how it works.

And once I understand it, I usually begin seeing all the different things I could do with it.

That has been both a gift and, at times, one of my greatest challenges.

Because the ideas don't stop.

I mean that literally.

I can be eating dinner.

Watching television.

Driving down the street.

Talking to somebody about something completely unrelated.

And suddenly—

there it is.

An idea.

A connection.

Something I could build.

Something I could improve.

Something I could create differently.

I cannot really turn that part of my brain off.

For years, whenever something interested me enough, I would go learn more about it.

And that has led me into a lot of different things over the course of my life.

I've catered.

I've planned and decorated events.

I've done interior design inside people's homes.

I've done graphic design.

I've built organizations, programs, businesses and experiences.

And looking back, I am grateful for all of it because very little of it was wasted.

Pieces of those experiences show up in how I work today.

I can walk into a business and think about the strategy while also seeing the experience.

I can understand the structure while thinking about how it should look.

I can see the big vision and still notice the thing nobody has figured out how to make work yet.

All of those experiences developed something in me.

But there was another side to it.

I was always splitting.

My attention.

My energy.

My ideas.

My businesses.

Myself.

Because when you can do many things well, it is very easy to keep building around all of them.

And that's where being multi-gifted can start working against you.

Someone Said Something to Me at Pure Raw Worship

After my session at Pure Raw Worship, a woman came up to talk to me.

She told me how glad she was that she had heard what I shared because she felt like she was in the same place I had been describing.

She was creative.

She could do a lot of things.

And because she could do so many things, she found herself constantly moving in different directions.

She was having a hard time getting focused and stabilized.

I understood exactly what she meant.

Because that has been my story too.

And I think this is something we don't talk about enough when we talk to creative people, experts and visionaries.

We spend a lot of time telling people to discover their gifts.

Use everything God gave you.

Don't bury what you carry.

And I believe that.

But eventually, there is another question.

What is all of it pointing toward?

Because having a multitude of abilities does not automatically create direction.

Sometimes it creates more choices.

And more choices can create more movement without necessarily creating more progress.

That woman didn't need another idea.

Neither did I.

I didn't need fewer ideas. I needed somewhere for all of my ideas to point.

I Wasn't Missing Possibility

When I look back at the different things I've built over the years, very few of them came from a lack of ideas.

The ideas were everywhere.

And many of them were good.

Some made money.

Some developed skills I use today.

Some introduced me to experiences I needed later.

So I don't look back and call those years wasted.

But I can see now that I spent a lot of time juggling.

And when you've gotten good at juggling, you don't always notice how much energy it takes to keep everything in the air.

You just keep throwing the next thing up before the last thing comes down.

Eventually, something gets dropped.

Or you get tired.

Or you realize that while you've been keeping all the plates spinning, you still haven't decided which table you're trying to set.

At this stage of my life, I don't need proof that I can create.

I know I can.

What I need is clarity about where all of that ability is supposed to be concentrated.

What am I unshakably good at?

And how do I allow everything else I've learned to strengthen that instead of competing with it?

That's different.

They Were Pieces

This has probably been one of the biggest shifts for me.

At one time, every ability felt like it needed its own outlet.

If I could do it well, maybe there was a business there.

Maybe another direction.

But I don't think that way anymore.

Now I can look at catering, event production, design, strategy, writing, development and operations and recognize something I couldn't always see while I was living it:

They did not each need their own destination.

Some were teaching me how people experience things.

Some taught me how to organize what felt scattered.

Some taught me how to take an idea out of somebody's head and turn it into something another person could actually walk into, understand or use.

They were not necessarily competing careers.

They were pieces.

And it took me a long time to see what they were pieces of.

That's why I have become increasingly convinced that clarity isn't always about discovering something new.

Sometimes it is about learning how to concentrate what is already there.

Focus Doesn't Mean Throwing Away What You Carry

I think creative people can resist focus because focus can feel like loss.

If I choose this, what happens to everything else I'm good at?

If I concentrate here, am I wasting the other gifts?

I used to think about it that way too.

I don't anymore.

Focus doesn't necessarily mean throwing the other things away.

Sometimes it means giving them a job.

My eye for design can serve the work.

My ability to produce an experience can serve the work.

My operational thinking can serve the work.

My writing can serve the work.

They don't all have to become separate businesses.

They can become part of the architecture of one.

And that has been freeing for me.

Because I don't have to deny the multitude of things I carry.

I just have to know what they are helping me build.

An Idea Is Not a Destination

This is where my thinking about vision has been changing.

An idea tells me what could exist.

Vision gives those possibilities somewhere to go.

And when you don't know where you're going, every new idea can feel important.

That's how you end up juggling things simply because you can.

But once the destination becomes clearer, ideas begin sorting themselves.

Some fit.

Some support something else.

Some belong later.

And some are simply good ideas that don't belong to you anymore.

That's a very different kind of clarity.

These days, I am less interested in asking:

What else could I build?

I've answered that question enough.

I'm much more interested in:

What am I actually trying to build—and how can everything I carry help me get there?

That is where the noise begins to become direction.

The Architect's Question

So this week, I want you to think about this:

Are all of your ideas pointing somewhere—or are you simply trying to keep all of them alive?

Because maybe you don't have an idea problem either.

Maybe you have plenty.

The question is not whether those things have value.

They probably do.

The question is:

Where are they supposed to lead?

If everything you are carrying could be concentrated instead of scattered, what would you want it to build?

What is the thing you are unshakably good at that everything else could strengthen instead of compete with?

And if everything worked—

what would actually exist that doesn't exist today?

I don't think you need another idea.

Maybe you need to give the ideas you already have a destination.

Because once you know where you're going, you stop asking every possibility to become its own thing.

You begin deciding what belongs.

What supports.

What waits.

And what can finally be released.

That is when all of those ideas stop pulling you in different directions.

They start working together.

And sometimes, that is what vision does.

It doesn't give you more.

It finally tells everything you already carry where to go.

Grace and peace,

— Angela

P.S. If you're new here—or this is your first time reading Visionary Architect—and something in this conversation made you want to stay close, I want to personally invite you into The Visionary Architect Room.

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