Prototype Yourself

Using Design Thinking to Close the Gap Between Knowing and Doing

You’ve done the work. You know your values. You’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, maybe even worked with a therapist or two.

So why does the gap between who you know you are and how you’re actually living feel wider than ever?

Here’s my hypothesis: People like us don’t need more self-knowledge. You already know who you are and the life you want to live. The problem is that somewhere between knowing and doing, you get stuck. Maybe it’s the voice telling you what “being creative” is supposed to look like. Maybe it’s perfectionism whispering that if you can’t do it right, you shouldn’t do it at all. Maybe it’s just that you’ve never actually tested whether your ideas about yourself are true in real life.

What if, instead of gathering more insights about who you are, you could run experiments to discover what being yourself actually looks like in practice?

The Science of Closing the Gap

Maybe you’ve heard of design thinking. It isn’t just for product designers and Silicon Valley innovation labs. At its core, it’s a delightfully practical way to solve problems when you don’t yet know what the solution looks like.

The Stanford d.school model breaks it into five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. But here’s what makes it perfect for authentic living: it’s iterative. Non-linear. Built on the understanding that you discover solutions by trying things, not by thinking harder.

Let me show you what this looks like in practice.

Your Personal Lab for Authentic Living

Empathize: What’s Actually Happening?

First, you become a detective in your own life. You observe what’s actually happening in the area where you feel the disconnect. Not just acknowledging the gap, but actively watching your choices, your patterns, your self-talk, your assumptions.

Imagine you’ve always thought of yourself as a creative person. That’s part of your identity. But when you look at your life right now, you haven’t made anything in months, maybe years. The sketchbook sits untouched. The guitar collects dust.

So you start observing. What do you do instead of creating? You notice that every Sunday afternoon, you think about painting, then spend an hour scrolling Instagram looking at art supplies you don’t have yet. You catch yourself saying “I’ll start once I have better brushes.” When you do sit down to draw, you freeze if it doesn’t look good immediately and close the sketchbook within five minutes.

But here’s where it gets interesting. You also start noticing where creativity IS showing up, just not in the places you’ve been looking. You reorganized your entire living room last weekend on a whim, moving furniture until it felt right. You’ve been making up elaborate bedtime stories for your kid every night. The way you approach problems at work involves a lot of experimental thinking and “what if we tried this?” energy.

This is the empathy phase. You’re gathering data about both what’s blocking you AND what’s already present that you haven’t been counting. You’re observing your actual behavior, not just your feelings and assumptions about it.

Define: Name What You’re Actually Working With

Now you synthesize what you observed into a clear problem statement. This isn’t “I’m not creative anymore” (too vague, too all-or-nothing). And it’s not just listing your failures. It’s naming what you discovered through observation.

Your problem statement might be: “I think of myself as creative, but I feel like I haven’t done it in a long time because I’m only counting painting and drawing as ‘real’ creativity..”

Or maybe: “I value creativity, but I freeze anytime I get started because I think I need to produce something Instagram-worthy or else I shouldn’t bother.”

The problem statement names what’s in the way (the assumption, the perfectionism, the equipment excuse). From here, you can start imagining other possibilities.

Ideate: What Could This Look Like?

Here’s where it gets interesting. Now that you can see both what’s blocking you and where creativity is already showing up, you get to brainstorm what “being creative” could actually mean for you.

This isn’t about forcing yourself to finally do the thing you think you should do (start that big painting project, commit to daily practice). It’s about expanding your definition based on what you’ve discovered.

You already noticed creativity showing up when you rearranged your living room, made up stories, approached work problems experimentally. What if those count? What if creativity could also be:

• Doodling during phone calls (no Instagram required)

• Cooking a meal without a recipe

• Taking photos on your commute with no plan to post them

• Writing terrible poetry in your notes app

• Rearranging your bookshelf by color just to see what happens

The goal isn’t to pick the “right” answer. It’s to generate possibilities that expand beyond the narrow version that’s been keeping you stuck. This is where you challenge the assumptions you uncovered: “Who says creativity has to be Instagram-worthy? Who says it only counts if it’s painting? Who says I need to do it every day to be legit?”

You’re not just brainstorming activities. You’re reimagining what the “being a creative person” itself means for you in practice.

Prototype: Try It

Now you test your ideas in real life with tiny, low-stakes experiments.

Pick one idea from your brainstorm. Maybe it’s doodling during phone calls. You don’t have to commit to becoming a sketch artist. You just try it once. Then maybe again. You notice what happens. Does it feel like you’re being creative? Does it scratch that itch? Does it create energy or drain it?

You’re building scaled-down versions of “being creative” to see what actually works for you. Some experiments will flop. That’s not failure, that’s data. “Oh, interesting. Doodling during calls just makes me distracted. But doodling while I listen to podcasts feels amazing.”

The prototype phase is where you give yourself permission to be messy, to not know, to try things that might not work. You’re testing both your assumptions (”I need big chunks of time to be creative”) and your possibilities (”maybe creativity for me is actually about play, not product”).

Test: What Did You Learn?

After you’ve tried an experiment, you reflect with curiosity.

What felt aligned? What felt forced? When did you feel most like yourself? What revealed an old story that might not be true anymore, and what new stories emerged?

Maybe you discovered that “being creative” for you isn’t about making things at all; it’s about approaching ordinary moments with curiosity and play. Maybe you learned that you’ve been avoiding creativity because you attached it to being “good enough” instead of just expressing yourself. Maybe you found out that five minutes of doodling gives you more of that creative feeling than hours of scrolling Pinterest for the perfect project.

Then you take what you learned and design the next experiment. Each iteration brings you closer to understanding what being yourself actually looks like in practice, not just in theory.

Your Turn in the Lab

The beauty of this approach is that you’re not trying to force yourself to be someone you already know you are. You’re experimenting with what that actually means in the context of your real, ordinary life.

You’re testing assumptions. Trying possibilities. Building evidence that there are many ways to be yourself, not just the narrow version you’ve been trying to squeeze into.

And here’s what makes it work: there’s no failing. Only finding out. Each experiment teaches you something. Each prototype reveals what’s been in the way. Each iteration brings you closer to living aligned with who you already know you are.

Where in your life are you feeling the gap? What quality or value do you know matters to you, but you’re not living it the way you want to?

If you want to explore how to use design thinking to close that gap, I’d love to talk with you. Book a free chat and let’s figure out your first experiment together.