I don’t know about you, but the education I received from public schools didn’t exactly teach me the finer parts of the English language. If it were not for spell check (love that Firefox has it built in so I appear literate when filling in web forms) and the “define” operator on Google I would most certainly be incapable of constructing complete sentences. It is bad enough at times that writing without spell check causes a mild anxiety attack… but I digress.

I have a passion for the define operator on Google. If you have not used it I suggest you start today as it will most certainly change your life for the better. For this post I entered “define: inspiration” and here is how the magic black box we know as Google answered.

Inspiration According to Google:

• Arousal of the mind to special unusual activity or creativity
• A product of your creative thinking and work; “he had little respect for the inspirations of other artists”; “after years of work his brainchild was a tangible reality”
• A sudden intuition as part of solving a problem
• Divine guidance: (theology) a special influence of a divinity on the minds of human beings; “they believe that the books of Scripture were written under divine guidance”
• Arousing to a particular emotion or action

I must say that I like definition #2, “a product of my creative thinking and work”. I like this concept as this implies that inspiration is NOT what I seek, rather, inspiration is what I receive after I have done the work. Too often I think we have the wrong approach; we are looking for inspiration to get started on the work, or the inspiration to do the work. I know I am guilty of this from time to time, you may hear me say “Wow, I am just not feeling it today.” But I guess what this really means is that I am having a temporary moment where I am afraid by the work ahead of me and that if I only had some inspiration, the task would magically become easier.

The short version of how this story ends: inspiration comes from doing. Results produce inspiration, and inspiration produces results!