What does it mean to create beauty?

Beautiful Artistic Flowers

I recently joined an entrepreneurial group dedicated to amplifying member businesses. One of the first exercises we were given invited us to go beyond strategy and into imagination. We were asked to write a letter from our future selves to our present selves -from the place where the business is built, the life is lived, and the vision has already come to fruition.

In my letter, I stated that I create and share beauty in all forms. Not truly understanding what it meant, I didn’t analyze or define it. The words simply felt important—so I included them and trusted the meaning would reveal itself later. Later, of course, came the questions. What does it actually mean to create beauty?

I know many artists who are driven by this desire. Painters, designers, potters—people whose work visibly transforms raw materials into something undeniably beautiful. Their talent feels obvious. Mine feels less so. I write. I speak. My creativity lives in language and presence. How, then, was I meant to “create beauty”?

Rather than dismiss the idea, I decided to challenge myself. I loosened the grip on my assumptions about what beauty should look like and allowed the definition to widen. I asked myself to consider beauty not as tangible, but as an essence.

Beauty, I realized, is multifaceted. Maya Angelou captures this truth powerfully in her poem Phenomenal Woman:

Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can’t touch

My inner mystery.

As Angelou shares, beauty is not confined to physical appearance. It radiates outward from inner qualities—confidence, presence, authenticity, spirit. It lives in the mental, emotional, spiritual. It exists in both the animate and the inanimate. It is the essence of a thing.

Beauty is subjective, fluid, and deeply personal. It lives in imperfection and can be found in stillness or movement, strength or softness, in grief as much as in joy. It isn’t something to be proven or earned; it simply is. And often, it reveals itself only when we are willing to look without judgment. With that understanding, my statement began to make sense.

In this new year, I am choosing to challenge my understanding of beauty and consciously rewrite what it means to me. I am removing the narrow parameters I once lived by to create more space - space to see more clearly, to soften my certainty, and to let things be what they are. I am practicing the discipline of curiosity instead of critique. When faced with something unfamiliar or uncomfortable, I want to ask: Where is the beauty here?

I won’t pretend this will be easy. I know myself well enough to expect resistance, old habits resurfacing, and the temptation to fall back into familiar judgments. But change takes time. Progress isn’t made through perfection; it’s made through repetition. All I have to do is keep choosing differently. Eventually, what now feels deliberate will soon feel natural. I won’t have to think about it - I’ll simply live it.

The most important realization of all is this: beauty isn’t only something I create. It is also something I choose to see.

Once seen, it asks to be shared—through words, through presence, through the way I listen, lead, and engage with the world around me. That choice—to create, to notice, to share—gently reshapes how I move through my days. It expands what feels possible.

My future self isn’t offering a rigid plan or a checklist for success. She’s offering a way of being. Through that lens, my dreams don’t feel distant or unreachable—they feel inevitable.

My future self has provided wisdom that I have now shared. The invitation has been made. The only question now is will you join me and accept it?