Are you one of those guys who as a little child won all the painting, singing, dancing, sports, poetry or drama contests? Perhaps you even won more than one price in more than one category, yet today, so many years later, you wonder why you are so handicapped at those things you were so brilliant as a child.

Let me give you an example. When I was 7, I loved drawing landscapes: mountains, the sun rising with its happy face in the middle of the mountains, the clouds smiling in the sky, a big lake full of ducks, an apple tree, a house with a chimney and a garden with tulips. Most importantly, there had to be colour, so each cloud was a different shade of blue, each ray from the sun was a different yellow while the flowers of the garden were my real chance to experiment with colour. My paintings always won many prices. I did not feel that I was born to be a painter; I just enjoyed painting, using colour and being me.

Until one day, I had to draw a baby taking a shower. What ridiculous assignment required that I draw a baby taking a shower? I don’t recall it at all, but what I do remember is my teacher calling me a few days later during recess. “Maria Carolina, what’s this? It looks like a little monster! Let me show you how to do it.” She then painted the cutest baby, happily showering while still wearing his dippers. Not only she painted a perfect baby, she erased my painting, and then she painted her own on top of my erased “little monster”. Yes, I admit my painting did not look like Baby Gerber, but it was not a little monster. It was just that I was good at painting landscapes and not necessarily at portraits.

The landscapes became less and less common. I stopped wining contests. The boys and girls who could draw human beings instead of mountains and trees became the more favourite. It never bothered me. It handicapped me, however, without notice, until I physically struggled to draw anything that was not a mountain and a lake. I even failed drawing at School and even at University, I was the worst of my class in Technical Drawing (nothing to do with painting apple trees and clouds, but still I should have at least been able to hold the pencil properly!)  

Last Christmas, I read a book about ideas. The author writes that we can all accomplish whatever we set up to do. He uses the example of drawing. He asks you to take any object and examine it carefully. Observe it in detail. Look at its shape, colour, dimensions and material. Look at it from many different angles; observe the way that its components relate to one another. Pay attention to it; somehow become the object. Then draw it. You will be amazed at the results.

I am a writer and I invest a big deal of time and money finding and hiring the illustrators for my books. I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to be my own illustrator and be able to draw whatever is on my mind and put it on paper just as I imagined it during my writing?

I then took one of my teddy bears, Aurora. I looked at her, I placed her on a table in many different angles, I took time to observe her. Then, I took a big sketch album and did something for the first time in more than 25 years. I actually painted her. When I was finished, she looked in the paper like my real Aurora; she did not look extraterrestrial or like an elephant. She looked like my real teddy bear and not only was I able to paint her, just as she is, but also to colour my paper with all the ideas that I wanted to express. I could have not asked an illustrator to do this better because what I drew came from my heart.

We all have similar stories. The sports champion at School, who is now overweight and incapable of running 100 yards. The greatest ballet dancer who wishes she could now dance some hip-hop, but she is too embarrassed and inflexible to try. The guitar player who secretly believes that hadn’t he stopped training, he would have been even better than Richie Sambora.

Cindy Lauper had a great word on one of her songs: Insecurious.

Right now, when you become conscious of the nature of your boundaries that made you insecure, you can replace the feeling of insecurity with the feeling of curiosity, the curiosity of what would it be like to cross the boundaries.  

Allow yourself to be insecurious. You will be surprised as to how much talent is dormant within you. Wake up the real you and just do whatever it is you want to do. Your inner child knows the way.