The Journaling Stan

Understanding & Leveraging Inspiration Through Journaling

What if you could learn to extract and leverage inspiration to fuel your creativity and productivity?

Here’s the thoughts I ponder as I write. You can use them as prompts if you choose.

Why? What’s the benefit of this?

It’s simple. The more you understand inspiration and how it works or you, the more you can create opportunities to become inspired. The more you become inspired, the more you can use that inspiration to take action.

What would you do with more inspiration? 🤔

Maybe you can related to me,

I am difficult to motivate and my willpower is very limited. To-do lists, fake deadlines, calendars, reminders, rewards… Nothing gets me moving like inspiration does.

I need a genuine, internally generated energy in order to get moving and to be invested in what I do.

What does inspiration feel like?

It’s a beautiful question right?

Describe the sensations that come along with inspiration.

Describe how inspiration feels so the next it comes along, you notice it quickly and with appreciation.

Inspiration is a feeling that comes and goes. But what if you really study the feeling? 🤔

The more you get to know what inspiraiton feels like, the more you’ll catch it when it comes along, even if it’s just a glimmer.

Inspiraiton feels warm, exciting. There’s an urge to move, and everything seems brighter. It’s energizing and pretty much impossible to be indifferent toward. I cannot sit still. Something has to be done with that evergy.

When do I feel inspired?

What places, events, or activities induce inspiration?
If you understand when you feel inspried, you can put yourself in situaitons that tend to bring it up. Does that mean you can conjure inpiration at will?

Maybe not with a Thanos snap, but you are giving yourself an opprotunity for it to come.

“I feel inpsired when I got for a walk and look at flowers, trees, the sun as it rises, or the colors of the sky as it sets. Nature inspires me to paint. It makes me feel the same feelings I get when I’m with people I love. It gives me the urge to create or have a good coversation with someone I care about. When I write in my journal feel the impact of introspection, I get inspired to come to my blog or podcast to talk about it. When I think about what I want my life to mean, o what I want my legacy to be, I feel inspired. It brings a sense of duty. I become anchored to the awareness that I do have a purpose, many of them. Inspiration is what seeps out of passion”

What have I done with my inspiration?

When have I intentionally induced inspiration? What did I do with it?

It’s important to reflect on this so you can evaluate your past choices, see how it’s helped (or hurt) and make adustments for the future.

Are my efforts as effective as I think it is? How is it actually serving me? Am I making an effort? How does it show? What are the results?

I induce inspiration all the time, mostly without even realizing it. I’m always in search of something stimulationg and I have thirst for expanding what I know about topics that intrest me. When it comes to my blog and podcast, I induce inspiration by planning episodes and I speak out loud as if I am teaching. This helps me express myself in simpler, more concise terms and it puts my mind in a postion to imagine what my ‘students’ may want to know . With my inspiration, I dive into work. Usually writing or recording a draft…. The tough part is, editing and getting ready for publishing. I haven’t cracked the code to doing that with ease quite yet but production is half the battle, and it’s one I easily win. With my inspiration, I interact with others about topics that intrest me in hopes of satisfying that curiosity. Curiousity, though, is what I love to live in. It’s as satisifying as it is disappointing to have a curiousity satisfied. “

What prevents me from becoming inspired? What hinders it?

When do you feel the least inspired? When are times that inpiration has a hard time coming?

It’s imporant to figure out where the inspo-repellant in your life is. You can’t avoid everything, but you can use this information to be mindful of how you navigate.

“I feel uninspired when there is too much routine and structure in my life. The unknown is blank canvas. A blank canvas is much more inspiring than an already outlined piece of work. It’s similar to the difference between coloring and drawing something new on your own. When I have the negative space to create as I go without any bounds or instruction, my creative mind, my center for feeling inspired, has space to do its job. I need to make it a point to keep my life a place for exploration rather than expectation. That can mean going out of my way for new music, and new food, learning about new concepts, and freely playing in curiosity as often as possible. I feel uninspired when I don’t have space to reinvent my own wheel. I need space for flexibility in order to become inspired. What’s fun about the answers being given to me? It’s the journey that I need. My inspiration is killed when something that should be led by passion or creativity is approached as a task.”

Now, Go journal and do it with the excitement of knowing you’re only helping yourself to be inspired more often. You’ll love what you do with it. ❤️