How do you set up a garden for growing flowers and fruit trees?
Do you just plant the seeds and water them right away? After a
while, the flowering plants and fruit trees will develop, no
doubt, but in that soil, the seeds of weeds also grow. Weeds are
ruthless creatures and can eventually strangle the most beautiful
and inspiring flowers.
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The thought of Inspirational Speakers immediately conjures up a
swift thousand dollar attendance fee and pompous lecturers who go
on and on blowing their own trumpet!
But who says that you have to shell out a lot of money and catch up
with the latest gems of wisdom spouted by an obscenely wealthy
‘life performance coach’? A cover-all speaker may not always help
your specific field of creativity. The Internet is the New Seminar Hall
for the world today. Trawl your favorite search engine and you will
get up to ten-minute long videos on You Tube, which cover every field
on earth (and probably the moon too)!
If you are a writer, listen to Ray Bradbury, Stephen King or the scores of
successful authors who share their inspirational stories with viewers in
cyberspace. If you are an actor or singer or poet, there are thousands of
clips and interviews that you can benefit from. Make sure you keep a
writing pad handy to make notes and grab that one idea that strikes you
real hard. Listen to the audio or video clip with as rapt attention as you
would pay if you were in a five star conference hall having paid a thousand
dollars for exclusive attendance! Just because it’s free does not devalue
the advice in any way.
Many adults of today grew up reading Dale Carnegie’s ‘How to Win Friends
and Influence People’ and ‘How to Stop Worrying and Start Living’. Stephen
Covey’s bestseller ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ is a
modern classic self-help book. But numerous self-help books standing on
your shelves should not lull you into a false sense of security. Absorb and
practice what you read. Else all that you ingest will be merely excreted
without enriching your soul.
Some worthy names stand in the modern hall of motivational fame: Wayne
Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, Anthony Robbins and Mark
Victor Hansen (Chicken soup for the Soul). Do not forget that the oldest
wisdom is the soundest wisdom. Holy books and tomes of philosophy may
be difficult to wade through, but if you take the trouble to get to the gist of
their messages, you will be richly rewarded.
There are time when you may feel completed deflated, like a
punctured tire. How would you fix the tire? Find where the hole
is located and plug it. And then inflate it. How do you
re-inflate the tire of your soul? Try these exercises on
yourself:
1. Be kind to yourself. First you have to heal the hole in your
soul. Treat yourself to a good movie and a good meal and the
company of someone you love. Stop expecting perfection of
yourself. Even waves flow through crests and troughs. The hills
swoop down into valleys. Like the old cliché goes, Ups and downs
are a part of life.
2. Listen to people. When the noise in your head is too loud, you
know you have had too much of your own company. Walk in a park
and listen to children talk.
3. Step into a church or a mosque or a temple. Or even a museum.
There is something about the awe and tranquility of these exalted
halls that automatically sweeps you higher. Meditate and converse
with your innermost soul. Chat with your Creator, tell him your
troubles and ask him for a hand.
4. Go for a swim. Or just work out on the lawn. Feel good
endorphins will surge through your brain and inspire you like no
nasty drug can. Getting addicted to exercise is a jolly good
thing!
5. Dance. Holding a loved one and dancing close to soft music is
great medicine for a tired soul. Jiving up and rocking the place
is equally great. Sort out your music for your moods. And
surprise yourself sometimes, listen to opera for a change!
6. Read an autobiography of a great man or woman. Walk in their
shoes and learn how they did it. Read Khalil Gibran, listen to
Zig Ziglar, watch black and white classic films. Just keep
filling your spiritual well.
And voila! You are charged up and ready to go. Don’t forget to
take your dear ones and your colleagues along on some of the
recharge sessions. They will appreciate it and always be there
for you. After all cars and buses and bikes need more than one
tire to run!
That is a very interesting piece of observation. Yet it is
a profound fact of the creative life. If you are empty, ideas
will not occur. No idea, no work. Creative artists sometimes
struggle for months and years, even in the middle of their
fame, walking in a mental wilderness without inspiration.
How can a writer or a poet or any creative artist be inspired
again? Here are a few tips from artists who have been
through it all!
1. ‘Read, read, read. Read everything, trash, classics, good
and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who
works as an apprentice and studies the most. Read! You’ll
absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not,
throw it out the window.’ William Faulkner.
2. ‘Art is not a handicraft. It is the transmission of a feeling
which the artist has experienced.’ Leo Tolstoy. If you have
not experienced feeling and emotion yourself, how will you
write and sing about it? Will those moving insights come to
you as you sit at a writing desk year after year?
3. ‘Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing
about you.’ Marsha Norman. Your dreams can be a fertile
bank of ideas to write on. Keep a notebook by your bedside
and jot those dreams down before they fade away like
gossamer.
4. ‘Free writing. One of the best ways to get unstuck
if you’re uninspired. Just start writing. Anything. It doesn’t
matter. Don’t edit, don’t pause, don’t think. Just write and
let it flow.’ Leo Babauta. Before you know it, a story will
take shape before your eyes. It was there all along in your
mind waiting for your hand to rise.
5. ‘Serendipity is the art of making an unsought finding’.
Pek Van Andel. Do not be afraid to tread the unbeaten path,
the road less taken. A branching off from your main idea may
lead you to greater things and unsought gold. Just follow
your instinct. Art is not an ironclad discipline. It is a lithe
fairy that dances after the light.
You now know what it takes to find inspiration and how to
become an inspiration to others as well.
