In this blog series, I’ve gathered six beloved quotes, sayings, and prayers – teachings that have arrived in timely moments, offering solace, comfort, and healing throughout the years. I share the lessons they’ve offered me, along with simple ways you can work with them yourself. My hope is that you find small doses of healing here. Gentle reminders to bring you home. Guideposts for the way back to remembering.
This is the final reflection in the series:
“You are to create, not to compete for what is already created.”
~ Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich
For years, I didn’t recognize this as a teaching on creativity. It lived in me instead as a quiet discomfort — a subtle inner resistance that surfaced whenever I considered a path simply because it seemed like the plan to follow.
In my first year at university, I was playing tennis on an athletic scholarship. My energy lived on the court, not in the classroom, yet I was required to declare a major. Somewhere along the way, someone suggested pharmacy — a good career, solid income, a way to help people. It sounded like a plan, so I declared pharmacy.
Anyone who knows me can already see how mismatched this was.
Within a few semesters, I was overwhelmed and beyond the point of dropping classes. Algebra and chemistry became a constant strain. My mind was exhausted. My body was tense. I was soon on academic probation, facing the possibility of losing the very scholarship that had brought me here.
In chemistry, I failed nearly every section of the course — except one. When we were asked to draw Lewis Dot Structures, I scored a 98 percent while everyone else failed. For the first time all semester, I felt relief. The dots made sense to me: relationships, patterns, and form.
As I looked around the room and realized no one else shared my understanding, it became unmistakably clear: I was in the wrong room. I was an artist in a lab coat. I declared a new major shortly thereafter.
Looking back, I can see that this was one of my earliest lessons in the difference between creating from alignment and moving from comparison or expectation. Wattles’ words offer a quiet invitation inward: to listen for what is authentically mine to share.
Writing in the early 20th century, a pioneer of the New Thought Movement, Wallace D. Wattles, author of The Science of Getting Rich, suggested that we don’t have to fight for our place in a crowded landscape.
He taught that the universe is inherently abundant—that wealth and success are not prizes to be won in a competition, rather expressions to be generated through creative effort. In his view, when we create sincerely, we are not taking a slice of someone else’s pie; we are expanding the whole.
Over time, what I’ve learned is that when my choices arise from comparison – whether to keep up, to differentiate, or to justify my place – they carry a subtle strain. When they arise from true expression, they do something altogether different. They add.
And this is where discernment enters.
There have been many moments in my life when I’ve abandoned ship the instant doubt surfaces, believing I can’t compete or realizing somebody else is doing the very thing I wanted to do. I get a pit in my stomach, my body tightens. The desire evaporates. Relief and resignation blur together.
Then there are other moments — quieter ones — where I notice the same challenge and nothing leaves. This is exactly what happened when I saw a particular course on my curriculum for Traditional Chinese Medical school: Chemistry.
For a moment, the old ghost of failure surfaced. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. Yet the longing stayed. It wasn’t loud or urgent; it was simply anchored. Instead of the frantic contraction I felt years before, there was a stillness.
In my first degree, chemistry was a “constant strain,” a source of academic probation. This time, in the right room and for the right reasons, the material was simply a joy to learn. The internal resistance vanished. I wasn’t fighting the subject; I was fully aligned with purpose.
Over time, I’ve learned to trust this difference.
When an impulse arises from comparison, it carries a jagged urgency. There is a sense that I must justify my presence or outrun someone else just to earn my space. Yet when the impulse arises from true creation, it feels altogether different. There is a quiet permission. A steadiness that doesn’t collapse just because the work is hard or the room is full. It is the difference between holding your breath and finally letting it out.
We are not here to measure our worth against an existing landscape. We are not here to fight for a share of what has already been made. I believe we are here to listen for what continues to ask for expression.
A Practice for Discernment
When you find yourself at a crossroads, pause.
Bring the choice to mind and notice the quiet question that surfaces in your body.
Does the choice ask, “Am I enough?” This is the voice of comparison; it carries a tightening, a strain that reaches into the tension of the body as you try to justify your place.
Or does the choice ask, “Am I being true?” This is the voice of alignment. It fosters a sense of joy—the steady, expansive rhythm of the heart that says you are exactly where you are meant to be.
Alignment, Practiced Over Time
Living this teaching has not always been easy. We are shaped in a culture that rewards comparison – where value is measured, ranked, and constantly negotiated – and I have felt that pressure as much as anyone. Choosing not to compete is a quiet commitment to the self. It is the willingness to pause and resist the urge to contort for the sake of relevance. With time, this practice becomes steadier. Not because the world stops demanding comparison, rather because I’ve merely learned to listen to the internal signals.
One path causes a tightening, a bracing against the world.
The other offers an opening.
Reaction carries urgency and contraction.
Alignment brings a settled seat and space to breathe.
This choice is not about withdrawing from the world, nor about claiming untouched territory. It is about meeting the world without abandoning ourselves. Again and again, the invitation is the same: to offer what is mine to give without needing to prove its value. The same is true for everyone.
Creation does not diminish another’s work. It complements it. Each person’s sincere offering adds warmth and texture to the whole. Not because it is new. Because it is true.
When I create from this place, there is no winner or loser.
There is simply more light in the room.
Blessed be~
Wallace D. Wattles, Image courtesy of Public Domain archives