Catching Inspiration When It Comes

Inspiration can be a shy and wily thing. She used to come to visit all the time when I was little. We were familiar. She was unafraid. She knew how to get my attention and that I would give her my time, my devotion, my excitement.

As I grew older and I was told to stay focused on what’s “important,” it became harder to simply let the ideas and inspiration show up as they please and run away with me. With all of the obligations of life, there has been a lot less space for them to come play.

A couple of weeks ago, my body decided it was time for me to create that space. I started spinning, my sight blurry, waves of vertigo ebbing and flowing. I rode the wave, eyes closed, journeying to different realms, timelines and realities. When I wasn’t frustrated by the nausea or trying to control or fix how I was feeling, my soul flew and my mind simply followed. It took a couple of weeks for me to fully come back to myself, and when I returned, it was with a surge of energy and excitement and so many seeds of ideas.

I imagine you know the feeling of being inundated by inspiration: it’s raw and physical. It feels like my heart will burst and yet I am as solid and anchored as an enormous oak. If you can’t access the feeling, see if you can tune into being young and open again. Insights and excitement and ideas buzz and dance and crackle like fire. As though gazing into a fire I see forms but nothing solid has taken shape. It’s not time to think about solidity or outcomes or HOW. Right now is the time to let the surge of inspiration and ideas flow: get them all written down, play, explore, wonder, dream.

In Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”, he writes about experimentation as a phase when conclusions are stumbled upon rather than found.

“In this phase, we are not looking at which iteration progresses the quickest or furthest, but which holds the most promise. We focus on the flourishing and wait to prune. We generate possibilities instead of eliminating them. Editing prematurely can close off routes that might lead to beautiful vistas previously unseen.”

There have been so many times when I’ve had an idea and immediately shut it down by asking HOW and concluding that it’s not possible. Rather that following the threads of possibility, the infinite paths that could lead to who knows where, I jump to a single outcome, declare it undesirable and then look for what’s practical even if it feels heavy and like a compromise.

I’m getting better at catching myself when I take this route.

Shutting down ideas won’t make the most inspiring art or life-changing products or bring the most innovative solutions to your team. Generating ideas that feel alive and crazy and wonderful, even if they don’t seem practical… that’s how we arrive at greatness. We give those ideas time to germinate, we feed and water them, visit them, love them, and often, with a combination of attention, dedication, curiosity and willingness to push through any resistance that shows up, we arrive at something that is even more wonderful than we could have imagined.

I’m writing this as much for myself as I am for you.

I’m watering the seeds I’ve gathered. I’m watching as they begin to sprout. I’ve become better at accepting that sometimes a seed won’t grow very tall or strong and that’s okay. I might feel sad but there are other seeds that I can give my time and attention to and they will often surprise me with how they grow and what they become. I have no control over how long it takes for the best ideas to grow. That’s also been a great lesson—the one of patience.

Have you been making space for inspiration to visit? Have you been allowing ideas to grow without decided whether or not they’re the right one right away?

My challenge to you this week is to simply let yourself dream and play. As we eke ever closer to the end of 2023, it’s a beautiful time to wonder, to imagine, to dream your life forward...to plant the bulbs and seeds that need time to germinate, that might even take a deep freeze before they’re ready to grow.

I am excited to share more of what’s growing in my creative nursery when the time is right. For now, I’m going to keep swimming and floating and flowing in a tide of inspiration.