My Muse Visited Tonight. Her Name is Flow.

It’s 3:23 AM. I’ve been writing for nearly six hours. I don’t have insomnia. If I went to bed right now I would be asleep before my face could tell whether the pillowcase felt cool or warm. Why then, am I awake?

I am in a state of flow.

Throughout history, artists have described a common experience when producing their best work. They describe a sensation of being directed by a muse, or some other divine hand. They talk about being a vehicle through which some external force is acting. I can understand coming to a conclusion like that. How else could such a tremendous amount of effort seem so effortless in the moment? That contradiction feels mysterious and magical, and since humans are not magical it must have come from some other, more magical source.

I don’t believe in this mystical explanation for flow. (I was, however, tempted to believe it after reading Big Magic by Liz Gilbert.) What if the reason the effort feels so effortless is not because someone else is doing the work? What if the reason it feels so effortless is because that’s exactly how it feels when the work we are doing is an expression of who we are inside? The only time I have ever achieved a state of flow is when the work I am doing is aligned with my strengths. That’s when the muse takes over. Except the muse is not a benevolent spirit guide, but an internal spirit. Our purest, most authentic spirit. Our best self.

Thinking about flow like this is useful. Practical. Recognizing the feeling of effortlessness in a moment of great effort turns out to be a good way to discover our strengths. And when we get better at discovering our strengths—those activities we do that give energy back to us when we do them—we can return to those activities again and again. And then we create our best art. We breathe life into it. We give it room to grow and see what it can become. We just create. And refine. And refine. And then create some more.

Inspiration isn’t an angel we must wait for to visit us. Inspiration is in our back yard. It might be obscured by briers. It might be at the bottom of forgotten well. And that well might have an iron lid bolted onto it. And the bolts might be rusted in place. But the inspiration is there. And it’s cool and clean and sparkling and, if you can tap that well, the water will, perhaps after some burps and spits and false starts, eventually gush out, and bring life to everything it touches.

Discovering (and practicing) our strengths is like a cheat code for success. We don’t have to wait for the muse. All we have to do is what comes naturally to us, and we keep doing it because that’s where the well is the deepest. And with every effort, we have another shot on goal to achieve that state of flow, and breathe our spirit into words or paint or dance, and create beauty where beauty did not exist before. We are the divine.