Inspiration is like making eye contact with a woman in a crowd, so stunningly beautiful that you have to physically pick up your jaw and look away to try to recover yourself. By the time you turn back to try and stammer a few embarrassing words to essentially thank her for existing in this world, she’s… gone. Disappeared into the sea of other people. You missed the opportunity, and now your heart is all achey-breaky.
If you are a creative by trade—or if you’ve ever had to use your creative muscles, for anything, at any point ever—then you’ll totally resonate with this. A surge of inspiration will hit you like a ton of bricks when you’re not looking for it, but the second you need to conjure some up, it’s nowhere to be found. Losing inspo can feel annoying, disassociating or even threatening if your career depends on it.
I personally think this is an ironic hoax, because we are literally walking star residue, living on this massive spinning rock in the middle of outer space. There’s always shit to be inspired by. It’s everywhere, all the time. Just floating around in the cosmos. But when the ego—protective and effective by nature—gets in the way of the curiosity that seeks inspiration, it can feel like being in a little bubble, completely separated from the magic that exists all around. From this separation comes the concentration on “the lack of inspiration,” and actually pushes any inspiration we might have had away.
So. To rectify the situation, there are three steps:
1. Allow yourself to open up to be able to receive
2. Awaken your curiosity
3. Hold on to the inspiration you find
The first step would be to do some mindset work so that the self-sabotage stops. To focus on the lack of something is to bring it into your life with greater magnitude. Instead, try telling yourself “inspiration is all around me, and comes to me without effort,” every day. Take the pressure of having to search for it out of the equation. It’s everywhere, remember? You don’t have to exhaust yourself trying to hunt down your own little slice.
Next, awakening curiosity can be done by whatever lights you up: spending time in nature, learning a new skill, spending time with connected people, listening to a podcast, redecorating your house, booking a trip, reading a book, taking a drive. If the mindset is right, this is the easiest part.
Finally, once you find a wisp of inspiration, hang tf on to it. If you sit around waiting for it to do the work for you, it will float right past you. You are the one who will write the books, make the paintings, come up with a great new marketing strategy. So you are the one who needs to act when it strikes you. A good way to keep yourself available to inspiration is to write notes (in a notebook, on a voice memo, scribbled on the back of your hand, whatever) so that you’ll have the skeleton of your idea to work off of once you’re ready.
A quote I love from Pablo Picasso goes, “inspiration exists, but it must find you working.” To stay inspired is to continue to work on yourself. Staying curious, learning, and constantly improving your consciousness will expand you to be able receive so much more. There will never be a shortage of inspiration so long as you are moving and growing.
Xx,
Anna