The Courage to Make the Third Pancake

It takes a lot of courage to make the third pancake.

When we make pancakes, the first one is almost always terrible.

The second one is bad.

But the third one is often perfect.

Jen Waldman, one of the top creativity coaches on Broadway, believes that courage and creativity are inextricably linked. Put another way, most adults think they’re not creative (“I can’t draw, sing, paint, write, dance, or play an instrument…blah, blah, blah…). But what may actually be the truth is that we lack the courage to put out bad work first. Creativity is more about courage - putting your thoughts and ideas out there - than it is almost anything else.

People often believe we can serve up the third pancake first - but we can’t. We have to steel ourselves and, at times, feel like we are going through the motions of making the first and second pancake in order to get to the third one.

What truly creative people (in the broadest definition of creativity) learn to do is to have the courage to make awful first and the second pancakes. To get to the third pancake we have to have the courage to made bad pancakes first. (If you want to hear Simon Sinek talk about this you can listen to the last four minutes of his podcast episode with Adam Grant and Brene Brown.)

Be courageous.

Get to the third pancake