Jennifer Louden is known as “The Comfort Queen” and featured on many globally recognised TV shows, including Oprah, with over 800,000 copies of her first book sold internationally. She is the world's leading authority on carving out the time and desire to look after your own well being and hence achieve more with less stress despite having a very busy life.
How often do we sit waiting for inspiration? We sit and stew and ponder and pout. We think it's all about the mind and how it tie ideas to inspiration, yet, the experience of inspiration is first physical. What is your calling card of inspiration? Goose bumps? Chills? A burst of energy? The urge to dance? Suddenly feeling rather randy?
What if, rather than believing inspiration only causes these reactions, maybe you could consider that your physical body can provide the glow. Research has shown the more you smile, the happier you feel and if you wait for something to make you smile, then you are less likely to feel happy. So why not do the same for inspiration--get into the body of inspired and then see what follows?
Try this: stand up, close your eyes and sway gently. Allow your arms to be heavy and your neck to be long and relaxed. Feel your feet connected to the earth yet ready for anything. Conjure a tropical breeze to caress your skin or the spray from a warm waterfall or whatever would feel good on your skin right now. Raise your hand to your mouth and pretend you just bit into something so delicious, your sense of smell and of taste is shocked into delight...now ask yourself, "How does inspiration want to move me?" See if your body has a response in movement, in shivers, in memories, in opening to the life force of the universe!
Inspiration adores being courted, being wooed. She has seen the human struggle for eons and like all divine help, she cannot roll up her sleeves for us until we ask, until we are willing to surrender to her song. It also helps to remember inspiration is rarely literal. If you are inspired to write a song, but you are not a writer or a musician, it could be a call to change the tune of your life or play inspiring music while you design your computer programs or to sign up for a class in guitar.
Finally, when you feel flat as stale pita bread, go do something for someone else. Snap out of the self-centered over-analyzing mode and realize we rarely see our power to inspire others. I talked to a guy in India last week when calling to change my plane reservations and we inspired each other just be being friendly to each other. Shockingly supportive (my inner critic had to chime in) comments on my blog recently showed I can be inspiring when all I'm seeing is my warts.
Evoke the body, surrender to inspiration's spell, reach out in any way that feels good and I find that inspiration will undoubtedly come to call with energy to spare.