Here’s a new habit to groom for 2011, our year of better habits:
Make space for inspiration, and not in your refrigerator.
Add it to your language of intention.
It’s become my way to remember something I originally heard from Jason Fried of 37signals, when I heard him say in a podcast that “inspiration is perishable.”
You can’t bottle up inspiration. You can’t put it in a ziplock, toss it in the freezer, and fish it out later. It’s instantly perishable if you don’t eat it while it’s fresh.
~ Jason Fried
So true!
Inspiration is fragile and fleeting, and so you have to capitalize on it, and optimize it when you can whenever you have that chance. To simply capture it, say in a written note on a scrap of paper, or in a voice memo on your phone, usually isn’t enough for it to survive as true, earth shaking inspiration. You’ve let the moment pass, missing that window of opportunity where there was something more. You edited something which should have been allowed to run rampant for a while longer. Rampant, wild and free.
You can’t refrigerate a blue flame without smothering it.
The best possible time for inspiration to hit you, is when you have space in your life — in the day to day living of your life — to stop everything if you have to, so you can focus on that inspiration and nothing else. If it’s an idea, you can milk it for all it’s worth while your inspired thinking about it is shiny and new, fresh and still untapped of its greatest potential — however you usually get that full blown release to happen.
Some people need to talk it out, which is great, for it becomes this twofer where another person can get inspired too. Me? I have to be able to write it out, writing through a complete mindsweep until I feel mentally exhausted, but never spent, for those are the times I’m most energized and feeling like I’m on fire, and burning as hot and bright as I’ll ever burn — it’s the blue flame stuff: In most fire (because it can depend on the fuel too), the blue flame is the hottest, with the potential to tip into dazzling white fire, and it burns most efficiently.
So ask yourself this: When inspiration strikes, what do you do? Can you always do it? What must you change, from however your work atmosphere now exists, to make space in your day for your inspiration to run rampant, and for however long you need it to?
The part about making space in your day is important: KÄ“ia lā — it’s “about today, the here and now.” You can’t instruct your inspiration to only come around on weekends, or be satisfied with it only showing up once a month or so. Daily inspiration is what’s ‘Imi ola, and living your best possible life.
And have you tried to track it somehow, so you know when you’re likely to be inspired? It’s habit learning you have to incorporate into your trusted system or Strong Week Plan; you simply must. Books for example, always do it for me, somewhere within their once, twice, or third time coming.
It feels so delicious, to indulge in your inspiration!
I genuinely wish you blue flames, run rampant space, and no refrigerators.
The most unexpected triggers can inspire you.
It was this Beverly Hills.ish looking car for me a few days ago.
Sweet, sweet ride.
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