Most creative types – whether they’re artists, business people, or just creative thinkers – rely upon something outside of themselves to generate their art. This force is often known as “inspiration.”
And it’s a heady feeling indeed when inspiration is flowing and creative expression seems effortless.
But when inspiration is absent and creative expression stagnates, the world isn’t so rosy…
… unfinished manuscripts gather dust on the floor
… videos, articles and blog posts languish in cyber-purgatory, awaiting the final edits that never come
… sales letters, video campaigns and email sequences that seemed inspired during an initial creative flurry never see the light of day (or get seen by a potential customer)
What if you could actively command inspiration to strike?
What if you didn’t have to wait around for inspiration to grace you with her presence? What if instead you could snap your fingers and receive inspiration? Imagine …
- … how much better would your business be
- … how many more customers would you have
- … how much faster could you test and tweak new ideas into success
- … how much happier would you be!!
The process of inspiration doesn’t have to be mere happenstance. Rather, it can be a calculated, structured element of your business model.
This article explains exactly how.
What does it mean to “trust the story?”
Whatever art you’re creating – whether it’s a story, a new idea or a sales pitch – it already exists out there in the Universe; and your task as an artist/creator is to uncover it.
A bit like Michaelangelo’s assertion that the statue already exists within the stone; and his job as a sculptor is to just remove the chunks of stone that don’t belong.
This process of uncovering is called “trusting the story.” It’s called that because you’re allowing the story – or your idea, sales pitch, or new product – to lead you wherever it wants to go.
The opposite would be a more “logical” approach, in which you, the writer, write the story the way you want it written. You know the beginning, middle and end of your story from the outset; and use logical progression to connect the dots and move the story along.
Examples of “trusting the story” throughout time
“Trusting the story,” as an approach to creative expression, is a phenomenon that has been experienced by untold thousands of creative people throughout the centuries. Not just for writing stories, but for creative pursuits of all kinds – artistic, intellectual, etc. And explanations for it range from the scientific to the mystical.
… Einstein wrote and spoke prolifically about his own creative thought process, and how it was far more intuitive than logical. In fact, for him logic was only a secondary translation process – putting ideas down in a form others could understand, only after he already knew intuitively those ideas were true.
… Mozart had a similar process to Einstein’s, in which the actual creation was intuitive, and the mechanical part of writing it down was only an afterthought so the world could access it. In a letter to his father, he told him about a piece of music he was working on: “I’ve got to write at breakneck speed—everything’s composed—but not written yet.”
… Maxwell Maltz called the phenomenon “tapping the collective unconscious” in his groundbreaking work, Psycho-Cybernetics. He argued that if you have a problem to solve, your first task is to visualize the desired end result. You then let unseen forces (which he asserts is the collective unconscious) go to work on the problem, ultimately delivering your answer to you on a silver platter.
… I myself experience this kind of intuitive flow all the time; and I know it as “receiving guidance from my angels.” I close my eyes and breathe; and words start flowing out of me – into a microphone, the keyboard, whatever. I particularly rely upon Archangel Raphael to guide me, as he governs creative expression.
In all of these cases, the artist (Einstein, Mozart, Maltz and me) understands that their creation exists somewhere outside the realm of their own conscious mind. The artist thus “trusts the story” to reveal itself, rather than forcing the story into existence by sheer will.
This results in a story (or any creative work) which is far superior to anything that could have been created within the limited framework of the artist’s conscious brain.
How can you “trust the story” in your business?
Everything we do as entrepreneurs relies on our innate creativity – we’re literally creating all the time. The blog posts, podcasts and YouTube videos we use to attract new customers; the marketing campaigns that take new customers through our buying funnel; even our very business itself didn’t exist until we thought it up out of thin air.
Once we accept that entrepreneurship IS creativity, how can we enhance our creative process as entrepreneurs with the practice of “trusting the story?”
There are two distinct methods: the inspirational muse and the disciplined process.
Artists have long understood the concept of the muse – a source of inspiration for creative work. Often, a muse is thought of as a person: the beautiful woman who’s the subject of a painting, for instance.
But a muse doesn’t have to be a person, it can be anything – a song, a geographic
location, even an emotional experience like a heartbreak.
Whatever your muse is, you rely upon it to inspire you by its beauty, its sorrow, its tenderness.
And just as an artist can be inspired by her muse to paint or dance, an entrepreneur’s muse can be the inspiration for the next sales letter, the next product, or even the next employee training seminar.
Do you have a go-to source of creative inspiration? A song list you know will always get your creative juices going; or a favorite hiking spot that never fails to inspire your next great idea?
A totally different way to tap your creativity is with a disciplined process. Rather than going somewhere or looking at something – and waiting for inspiration to hit – a disciplined process requires you to engage in a series of distinct behaviors that you know produces a result.
Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art asserts that inspiration as a source of creativity is a myth. Rather, he believes creativity results from discipline.
His disciplined process is to spend 4 hours every single workday with only one task before him, and that is to write. He even says it doesn’t matter if what he writes is any good – the only thing that matters is that he wrote.
He feels that it’s the discipline itself which eventually leads to creativity.
In The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp gives similar advice. She says that one of the most important things she does to activate her creativity is she gets up every morning at 5am and goes to the gym. As a dancer and choreographer, she needs to have a body that’s strong and supple in order to express her art. So her trek to the gym every morning is the process she knows she must go through if she expects a new dance to flow out of her sometime later in the day.
I take a more metaphysical approach, and it’s a combination of inspiration and process. My primary mode of creative expression is to write. My writing sometimes stays in written form, like when I’m working on a book or writing a blog post. But often my writing becomes a sales presentation, or the script for a video or audio. Below, I detail the steps of my process, and how you can try something similar for yourself.
Steps for activating your creative process
To activate my creative process, the first thing I do is sit down at my computer. Then I close my eyes, and I invoke the presence of my Team – the Archangels and my personal spirit guides, as well as my mom, grandma, twin sister and aunt – all of whom now reside in the Spirit world. I do that by just asking them to join me.
Most often, I feel tears welling up in my eyes when I do this – a different kind of tears than the ones I get when I’m sad – and that’s how I know my Team has joined me.
Then I talk to them out loud about what my intentions are for this particular writing session. Sometimes I talk for 30 seconds, sometimes our conversations last 15 minutes or more. But at some point in the conversation, inspiration hits. I know what I want to say. So I stop mid-sentence – mid-syllable even – and start to write.
You can see from this description that part of what I do relies upon process, or a distinct sequence of behaviors:
I sit in front of my computer.
I touch the keys of my keyboard.
I close my eyes.
I take a deep, relaxing breath.
I invite my archangels, spirit guides and deceased family members to join me.
I use my conscious mind to speak out loud what I intend to create.
I stop talking and start writing the moment I sense even the faintest whiff of inspiration start to hit.
Whereas part of what I do relies upon inspiration:
My words are given to me by my divine guides; they are not created by my conscious mind.
I allow myself to engage in my process whenever the inspiration to do so hits. Unlike Pressfield and Tharp, who both have a set time each day that they unfailingly engage in their process.
You may love the idea of invoking Divine guidance as part of your creative process – if so, great! Feel free to follow the steps as I’ve outlined them above, and see if they don’t work for you.
But if the idea of Angels and Spirit Guides kinda makes you roll your eyes, there’s still value for you in the steps – as you’ll see in the final section of this article, below. You just need to find a stand-in you do feel comfortable relying upon.
Do you take a disciplined approach to your creative process? What are your steps?
Why “trusting the story” works: TRUST
Perhaps the most important part of any creative expression is trust. My creativity flows out of me because I know that it does. Like Sheldon’s explanation on The Big Bang Theory that reasoning can be circular – he’s moving out because he’s moving out (did you catch that episode?)- I am inspired because I am inspired. In other words, total trust that the process is at works is part of why it works. Let me explain.
We all have bad days – days when we think we’ve got nothing original to say, that no one wants to hear from us, that we have nothing unique or valuable to contribute to the world at large.
On days when you’re feeling that way, it’s pretty hard to get up, go out and make something happen in your business. It’s tough to make sales calls, it’s tough to handle customer service problems with finesse, it’s certainly tough to create anything new.
But because I’ve learned to make “trusting the story” an integral part of how I do everything in my business, I’m never down for the count. I trust a force outside of myself – a force greater than myself, a force which is the true source of anything good I’ve ever done or been – to have my back.
So even on days when I feel like I’ve got nothing to contribute – perhaps especially on those days – I am able to write and sell and grow my business.
Pretty good way to see the world, don’t you think?
Tell me in the comments about your own creative process. Can’t wait to hear from you!