I woke up in an amazing mood this morning and the moment my eyes opened I noticed I had this overwhelming feeling of being inspired to write something about inspiration.
I immediately jumped out of bed and RAN to my computer to begin writing this post because I didn’t want that feeling to subside.
In my years of working with clients, I’ve identified two patterns of thought people called inspiration:
- Inspired and Focused
- Inspired and Unfocused
Inspired and focused
Ever had one of those days that whatever you touched turned to gold? Everything is flowing and going your way, nothing you face seems like a big deal because compared with how focused and on task you feel nothing seems like a chore. Everything in your mind is lines up, you know exactly what to do and how to do it. You are in control and feel empowered because today is a good day!You are inspired and focused - (In spirit) the spirit of focused inspiration. If don’t have enough of those days, maybe you should read the (Inspired Focus) article.
Today however I’d like to talk about another type of inspiration.
Inspired and Unfocused
That’s when you have so many great thoughts and ideas that you don’t know where to begin, where to end, which end is up which end is down. Those are the days that you have so much (Inspirational Noise) in your mind you don’t know if you feel good or feel bad. Thoughts Like:
- You have a great idea for a book.
- You feel like writing in your journal
- You’re million dollar invention of the wearable TV.
- Your feeling that today is a great day to start your workouts.
- Your finally feeling like it’s time clean that room that looks like a bomb went off in it.
- Your desk looks unbelievably messy today, and it’s driving you nuts so you want to clean it.
- You want to spend time with your significant other, but if you do you might miss completing your ideas….
Or just maybe you feel like writing and 20 different topics come up that all are great, and you don’t know which one to start with…..
Inspirational Thought Noise
The average human being has 6384 thoughts in any one day. If there is no pattern, or consistency to what you are thinking, that means if out of the 6384 thoughts the majority are unique. Some people might even call this ADD. I don’t believe in ADD, give me anyone with ADD, and I’ll show you an extremely intelligent person that just doesn’t know how to control the “Flow of his/her inspirational thought noise”.
If you think you have ADD, or if you just feel out of control one day, try the following exercise.
If you allow your mind to run wild without taming the beast, you’ll quickly burn yourself out and end up feeling depressed and your brain needs an outlet for the inspirational noise….
It’s almost a mental paradox you feel good but overwhelmed at the same time. You have this feeling in your solo plexus that says to you that you are feeling urgent, these ideas are soooo great you must do something with them or they will be lost forever.
Here are the steps I had to go through today to get back control of my inspired state of mind.
Step 1: Capture the thoughts until you empty your brain.
Imagine that every thought is a beautiful butterfly that you want to catch with your net.
My first step is to get everything out of my brain without editing - No logical order, just get it the heck out my brain. If a butterfly popped up, Id pull out my trusty net (computer notepad) and capture it.
I jumped on my computer and just started writing all the wayward thoughts and ideas that where coming hard-and-fast to me. Here is an example of the torrent of thoughts:
Example of (Inspired and Unfocused)
“Today’s inspired mood is “Inspired and unfocused”. So what does that mean?
I have so many thoughts Business, personal, financial, health, coming at me from that I feel that my hands can’t type as fast as I can think.
This is amazing and frustrating at the same time. It’s almost as if I’m watching TV in the recesses of my brain and switching from channel to channel and each station has an amazing movie that I want to talk about, share, think about and fully involve myself in.
So which one do I choose? The answer is NOT ONE. When you are inspired and focused you must capture all your thoughts. So if your computer savvy, open notepad and start writing, DON’T STOP just write and write and write and here I am writing, writing and writing.
As the ideas come to just write them down and keep doing it until you are empty. That means you’ve exhausted recording all your thoughts. This blog post was not written in any logical format. As a matter of fact, since I was inspired and unfocused sitting down and writing this article took 10 X longer than it normally would take me to write an article.
As I write, wayward thoughts enter my active mind, thoughts that have nothing to do with what I’m currently writing about pop in and interrupt my flow… So I just accept it, and starting expressing everything I thought in one long paragraph.
Only when I was done recording all my thoughts and feelings did I stop, organize, and edit. It doesn’t matter that there is no coherent flow of ideas, what matters is that I record everything as quickly as I can. Then edit it after when I’m empty.
In the past twenty minutes I’ve come up twenty new concepts, fourteen new article topics, and two new ways of organizing information. Does that mean I’m ADD? Maybe… Or perhaps my DTE(Dominant Thought Experience) of the past three weeks is finally incubated, and it’s time to express.
What you’ll find, is that when you finish, the mind begins to slow down, your thoughts become more focused and directed, you become more relaxed and then the flow of information becomes more methodical.
I know for a fact that 3/4 of the information that I typed out today will not make it past the editor, but it doesn’t matter, what matters is to capture the state. After your mind begins to clear because you captured everything, you will probably end with an inspirational expression that has nothing to do with what you first intended. That’s ok… Because in the editing process you will have captured your initial expression and maybe express it in some other way another day. Just make sure you record it.
When I get into theses moods I could sit here and write a book, regardless of the topic. So the first step is to “RECORD EVERYTHING” and time it, because you might have to take a break especially if you are in Inspired and Unfocused mode!”"
Step 2: Organize the information
My second step was to “ORGANIZE THE INFORMATION” by getting clear about what my purpose is.
- Is it to teach a new skill?
- Is it to inspire?
- Is it to create more business?
- Is it to create synergy between you and another human being?
What’s the purpose? In this case is to teach you how to capture and inspirational state of mind. After I captured all my thoughts on paper that’s what it turned out to be. When I started, I wanted to talk about how to deconstruct and state of mind to be able to re-create it. Right now this post is about making use of your inspirational moments.
Step 3: Fulfill the purpose you chose in step 2
Now I got a bunch of stuff on paper or on my computer.
Now it’s time to fulfill my purpose that I CHOSE in step 2. So based on my desired purpose in step 2, it’s time to:
- Answer the question
- Provide the solution
- Teach the skill
- Fulfill your purpose
(THAT STILL DOESN”T MEAN EDIT) Organize the information by asking yourself;
Go through the entire expression process and decide on what information is:
- Frivolous: Then delete it.
- A Good idea but doesn’t fulfill my purpose:
- A Good idea relates to my purpose but is too verbose:
- Information that I want to keep that gets to the point of the purpose in step 2:
When you marry your purpose with clear and concise information you are done!
My purpose of this post is twofold:
1: How to slow down your brain when you’re in over -inspiration mode.
2: How to use the over inspiration mode to your advantage
Now I’m off to write the 14 other articles that my brain expressed for me today…
Talk to you tomorrow if you will decide you want to come back…
Thanks for reading
Stephan
