Inspiration is a beautiful, mysterious gift. It’s an unpredictable, illuminating and altogether tingly experience that sneaks up on you in interesting ways. While inspiration catches your eye and motivates your heart in the moment, what happens to that insight beyond the moment?
Some ideas catch on fire right away and have a mind of their own.
Other ideas stall, become frustrating or soon feel sticky or clunky, along with your creative drive.
It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that in order for an inspiration to be “right”, it needs to immediately have value in a specific way. In reality, the timing simply wasn’t optimal for it to gain momentum, or was just leading you to a lesson, a connection, better idea or is serving as a reminder of how inspiration is received not forced to behave in a certain way.
So how do you value old inspirations? What do you feel drawn to do with them?
Older Ideas Can Have Big Value in New Conditions and Expand
If digging in deep to create something new feels too big to tackle at the moment, or your heart isn’t up for it, why not take a look older projects that have stalled out? Why not revisit old notes, journals, art pieces, business plans or manifestos to give older inspirations a new chance at the light?
There are many reasons why inspiration fizzles or ideas go no where. Maybe something personal happened and you were forced to put an inspired idea aside. Or, another project became a bigger priority and your focus snapped to a solid project with a plan, setting aside a budding idea.
The actual reasons don’t matter much, but your new intentions do.
Take a Trip Back in Time to Re-Set Intentions and Inspiration
I was recently looking through old journals after moving into my new home. Paging through the scribbly notes and observations was not only really fun to see, but enlightening.
Wandering back over poems, journal entries, artwork and old business content reminded me that while I sometimes feel my progress is slow, I’m focused and on track – making small little efforts towards a big vision. I’m able to see the dots connecting, and how my current expression pulls together all the little trails of my life to form a powerful path where I get to express all of who I am, not just a small part.
So if you feel up to it, revisit some older, “kinda finished” creative work, business ideas, intentions or collaborative projects.
Spend 15, 20 minutes (sufficient for review without wallowing) and feel the triumph of what you have finished, overcome, created or started to grow so you can take the inspiration you feel and move it to the next level of what you want to create now.
Then write an intention that will offer fresh focus and insight.
Take Action to Leave Behind What No Longer Serves You and Open up New Potential
This little review process also serves as an energy field clean up. Once you know which old ideas are not going anywhere, you can release them with love. Other ideas or projects that still have an interesting spark to them you can keep, and transform with new focus, energy, knowledge and connections.
Photo credit: Sansbury, nikifun