What Inspires You? (Bonus)

So I use that term inspiration and that was going to be the heart of what I talk about today.

I don't know if you've heard or listened to or seen the Elizabeth Gilbert TED talk on genius.

I can't remember what the actual title of it is, but if you Google that, you will get it.

I'm absolutely sure it was genius.

fascinating study of where does inspiration come from where does this concept of the genius as in you know the person the creator the the often we use the term the master who you know sort of holds this this huge well of creativity within themselves and And what she shares in the TED talk is that actually way back in the day in sort of Greco-Roman times, the concept of genius was much more that we had a muse concept.

that was something other than us, not another human, but something other.

So what we now might call source or spirit or universe or divine inspiration, whatever language resonates with us.

And that, you know, the font, the source of the creativity was, came from this something other.

It didn't come from within the human form that ended up being the kind of the vessel to manifest it and to put it out into the world.

And then I think it was sort of around the time of the Enlightenment, we came to an understanding that actually the genius was within the human, was the human.

The human was the genius.

Rather than recognising the experience that so many of us have, which is that we get our inspiration from something outside of us.

And Elizabeth Gilbert shares a couple of really fantastic stories.

One, which I think it's Leonard Cohen.

If you've seen the TED Talk, please correct me if I'm wrong, where he's driving along in the car and, you know, a song just lands within him.

It's like it just drops down from the sky into him.

And he ends up kind of shouting up into the ether saying, you know, can't you see I'm driving? Like, you know, he didn't have a pen and paper and wasn't able to capture the, you know, the inspiration that was there.

And then another story, beautiful story about a poet who shared that when she was a young girl working in the cotton fields, she could feel a poem rolling across the fields like rolling across from the horizon towards her and she had to run run run home in order to to get there before the poem landed in and through her so that she was able to capture the words and the inspiration that was there I love this idea.

And it's something, you know, I wonder, does that resonate with you? There have been times where you've created something or maybe written some words in your journal or had an idea for how to solve a problem.

Or suddenly found yourself knowing the words to say and then on reflection thinking, gosh, where did that come from? You know, for me, writing the books that I share, and in fact, actually even doing this podcast, like so often I feel as though it's not really me.

And I'm very aware that that sounds a bit odd.

Or it could sound like a, you know, like a dreadful affectation as well.

Like, oh, I'm so special.

I've got divine inspiration.

But my feeling is that we all have this.