012: Inspiration Reach

Inspiration can be hard to come by some days. You might have to step out of your routine, out of the norm and out of what you normally create. Like one of my favorite author’s Julia Cameron suggests in her book, The Artist’s Way, sometimes you have to take yourself on an artist date.

There are a lot of places you can go to when pulling inspiration to create and in this episode that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about. I’ll be talking about why you might want to consider expanding your usual creative activity and trying something completely new. I also discuss some of the ebbs and flows we go through as creators.

I want to encourage you to try your own inspiration reach. Try something new, something different or maybe even something you used to enjoy but no longer do. Set your ambiance by playing music that fills you up, light a delicious smelling candle or even try changing the location that you’re creating from. The possibilities are endless!

What you’ll find in this episode:

A spotlight of a creator that’s been inspiring me
The default places people search for inspiration
The differences between ideas and the motivation to create
How inspiration ebbs and flows
Why you should reach out of your niche for rejuvenation
How you can expand the work you consume and create

Read the transcript of the episode below:

Have you ever started to feel creatively uninspired, and weren't quite sure how to get your mojo back? Let's talk about it. This is episode 12: Inspiration Reach.
Welcome to the Committed to Create Podcast. I'm Lisa Funk, and I am so excited to hang out with you here as we talk about the power of creating with our hands and our minds. I like to keep it real, remind you that you are not alone, and share specific ways that creativity and mindfulness can help us live even more meaningful and joyful lives. I am so glad that you're here.
Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. This is Lisa. I am so glad that you're here. I love coming and talking with you about creativity and mindfulness and life and just keeping it real. You know what I mean? I'm just glad that we're here doing this together. So before we get started with today's topic all about inspiration, I wanted to start out with a segment called creator spotlight.
So every once in a while I wanted to use one of these segments to spotlight a different creator that I am inspired by that I love and today's creator spotlight is Morgan Harper Nichols also known as M H N on Instagram. Often when she signs her name, she will just sign her initials. So a lot of people know her by MHN.
You probably already know her. You probably already follow her, but if you don't let this be your invitation to check her out. You can find her on Instagram at Morgan Harper Nichols, I'll link to her in the show notes. She is a beautiful artist and a beautiful soul. She has the most beautiful way with words and I love what she says. I feel like what she writes is always just what I need to hear. It's gentle and kind and loving and just really nourishing. And I really appreciate that from her. 
I wanted to share a special post that she did just recently. And it says, even though July is lined with many questions, I hope you find it has also lined with boundless grace. And love her words so much.
I love the beautiful reminders that she gives, and she also just creates the most beautiful backdrops for her words. You'll find beautiful colors and textures and artwork. And so if you aren't already following her, I would definitely check her out for just the encouragement and kindness and beautiful writing and beautiful art.
Again, that's from Morgan Harper Nichols for our creators spotlight today.
Okay for today's topic. This is episode 12. We were talking about inspiration. This is something I've gotten a lot of questions about a lot of people asking me where and how to find artistic inspiration. And I think that the go-to answer or the default for a lot of people is to just follow a ton of artists who are doing similar things as you are just to follow them all, follow all of the people online who are doing the thing that you are trying to do, or that you want to learn how to do, or that you are already doing, or to do a search on Pinterest in your related category. 
For example, if you're a photographer doing searches for the type of photography that you're doing, or oil painters doing a search for oil paintings, maybe if you're into landscapes or whatever, it might be doing searches for those exact things, trying to find inspiration.
I kind of want to do that in air quotes inspiration. Now I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with this. If this works for you, then that's great. If this is working for you, you might not be listening to this episode because you might already have all the inspiration that you need. 
What I have found is that there is a little bit of a difference between ideas and the inspiration or the motivation and interest to create from a really rejuvenated, fulfilled wholehearted place.
So when I'm doing a search, okay, first of all, you all know that I'm a lettering artist. So I'm going to use lettering as my example. So if I were to do a search on Pinterest for lettering, and it comes up with all these different things, okay. I might get some ideas, but to me getting those ideas is different than true inspiration.
And the reason is that when I'm getting those ideas, I'm not necessarily getting really excited and I'm not necessarily creating work that I'm super thrilled about. And the reason for that is that a lot of times when I'm just looking at other lettering examples, I may find myself intentionally or unintentionally finding a little too much inspiration from other artists, meaning possibly even copying.
I know I'm going to say it. Now copying is a topic all, all of its own. I believe that when you're learning, it's helpful to follow tutorials. When I teach my lettering courses and my chalk art courses, I have you follow along step-by-step as I do things, and that is copying in a certain way. I don't think that that's wrong.
So I'm not trying to say that copying is wrong. If it's, you know, you're learning from a teacher that's teaching you and things like that. But when you're trying to be inspired, you probably aren't just trying to find something to copy. You want to be inspired to create something of your own with your own unique style and flair and your own way of doing it.
And so even though searching in your own genre will help you to possibly get a bunch of ideas to try. I don't know that it's going to end up with you feeling truly inspired. And that's what I want for you. And I think that's what you're searching for and why you're probably listening to this episode. 
I also want to just put a side note in there that I think it's a misnomer that we should feel inspired all the time. And if you have been creating art for any number of months or years, you are well aware of the fact that it is not a state of constant inspiration. It just isn't, it ebbs and flows. And I think that that is normal. I think that that is how it's meant to be. I don't think that there's any artist in the universe or person who feels inspired a hundred percent of the time. I just don't think that that's how it works. 
So, first of all, if you don't feel inspired all the time, you're human. Welcome to being human with all of us. None of us feel inspired all the time. So know that you're normal and that that's totally fine. And today we are going to talk about some ways to find inspiration in ways that feel good and that leave us really feeling full and whole and happy with the work that we are in the process of and involved with as well as the outcome a lot of the time too. 
So this is where the concept of inspiration reach comes in and the concept of this isn't new, I just came up with this name, inspiration reach to have a way to refer to it by because when we're staying in the same place, when we're staying within our same genre, only looking for inspiration within it, we can sometimes get stuck. And so we want to reach beyond that. 
We want to reach outside of our genre or our niche. We want to reach outside of our norm. 
So I want to take the example of sitting for too long in the same position. Now I've had this happen. I'm sure all of us have where maybe you're working or creating something or you're on a long car trip, and you're sitting in the same position for too long and you start feeling tight and sore and uncomfortable and kind of stuck. And it's not that there's anything wrong with that sitting position, but when you don't move out of it much for very long, your body can really started to feel it. And I think that that is like our creativity.
So when I say inspiration reach. I don't want you to think of, you know, oh, she's reaching, you know, that's no, I want you to think of a reach, like a stretch that feels really amazing. Like after you've been sitting in the car for a really long road trip and you finally get to get out into the fresh air and you stretch your legs and you stretch your arms and your shoulders, and you twist your body from side to side.
And you, you know, reach your arms high up above your head to each side and your neck and your whole body. You just get to really reach and stretch outside of the position that you had been in for so long. 
That is what I want you to think of when you think of inspiration reach. It's not something that you shouldn't be doing. It's not something that, you know, you aren't allowed to do. It's something that just feels really good. That's just a reach outside of your general norm of your niche or your genre. 
So this is just like our creativity while we love what we normally do. Sometimes when we're in it for a while, we get a little stiff, a little stuck, and the answer isn't that there's anything wrong with us or the position that we're sitting in.
Sometimes when we start feeling uninspired with our creativity, we think that there's something wrong with us, but there isn't anything wrong. And sometimes we think that we should give up on what we're doing because we stopped feeling inspired. And I don't necessarily think that that is the answer most of the time.
I think most of the time we can do an inspiration reach and find some more inspiration for our creativity. So that just means taking a break to stretch and reach outside of our normal comfort zone. And I really think that that will help. We want to reach outside of our niche in a way that rejuvenates us.
So there was a time early on in my lettering journey when I thought that it would be really smart to follow approximately 1 million lettering accounts on Instagram. I sort of discovered like, whoa, there are people on Instagram that are posting about lettering. And I just thought I should follow every single one I could find.
Now when I started out there weren't as many as there are now. Now there really would be like a trillion. I thought I should follow all of them. This will be great for inspiration and ideas. And I have to be honest with you, it had the opposite effect. I did not feel inspired in the way that I thought I would.
Instead, I found myself comparing a ton and questioning my own lettering work and my own direction with my lettering work. It was not giving me ideas in the way that I wanted it to. It was making me second guess everything that I was doing. 
Now, this sort of goes back to the last episode that we did, episode 10, not last, a couple of episodes ago, episode 10 about comparison stacking, where I talk a ton about comparison and how to kind of work through it and think about it. But I was just finding myself comparing instead of feeling inspired. 
So, I'm not saying that if you're following a bunch of accounts that are the same as your own genre or your own focus or interest, what you like doing that you should go unfollow them.
Like if you love cake decorating and you're following a hundred cake accounts on Instagram, I'm not saying you need to go and unfollow all of them. But I would invite you to really evaluate how they are making you feel. Are you feeling inspired when you look at them truly, or are you comparing yourself and thinking I'm not good enough, or I wish I could do this as well as they did, and I just can't. 
Think about how you're feeling and the thoughts that you're thinking when you see those other accounts and really consider if you necessarily want to be following all of them. 
For me, it was very helpful to just stop. I know it sounds extreme, but for awhile, I really didn't follow hardly any. I really paid attention to how they made me feel. If I was comparing myself too much and believe me, this had nothing to do with the person behind the account or with how good their art was or anything it had to do with the thoughts I was having. So it really was a it's me not you situation. 
Now you might have an account where you're following them and it is within your niche or genre, but they really inspire you and they don't make you feel bad.
They don't, it doesn't cause you to think thoughts that are harmful or that make you compare yourself too much, or question yourself. And I invite you to keep following them. If you see them as a mentor and someone that helps you and teaches you and inspires you, then by all means. Keep doing that, but question whether or not each and every account that you're following is doing that for you and be really particular with who you allow to be in your feed.
Because what I want to encourage you to do today is to do an inspiration reach, which is to reach outside of your genre and to experience some other things, both in the way that you consume and in what you create. 
So the first way would be other types of art that you don't normally dabble in. So this goes, like I said, for consuming and creating.
So as far as consuming goes, this would mean diversifying who you're following say on social media. So let's say that you are really into home decor and styling, and right now, most of the accounts that you're following do home decor and style. And you want to do an inspiration reach. You want to diversify who you're following and not only follow those accounts or cut back on the number of those accounts that you follow and include people that are doing flower arranging and cookie decorating, gardening or whatever other thing that might be kind of related, but different and interesting because it doesn't just go for what we're doing ourselves, but also what we're consuming, the inspiration can come from so many places, but I also invite you to consider creating in different ways than you're used to doing.
So this is going to be a little reminder for all of us, with that little perfectionistic tendencies, this is going to be a really good time to let go of it being perfect because it's going to be something that you're not used to doing. This is going to be an opportunity to immerse yourself in the process as an invitation to be inspired and to think of things outside of the box.
And for this, you do not need to invest in a bunch of courses or expensive materials. We are not trying to become a different type of expert. We're not trying to leave our current passion or a current niche behind, we're trying to play with something new. 
So this could be grabbing our kids watercolors or sidewalk chalk, or taking a moment to redesign our bookshelf or build a bird house or do some embroidery cook a new meal, make a video of your kids, or grab some flowers from the store to arrange in a new way. This is to get out of our kind of stuck little spot that we were in and stretch and reach into a new area to breathe some new, fresh light into our inspiration and our creativity. 
I am always amazed at how good it feels to kind of break out of my own box with what I normally do and try something new. Even if it's just one time, allow myself to be really bad at it. But maybe I try a little bit of pottery or I do something when someone invites me to experience a different type of creative project, I say yes. And I do that thing, whether it's something simple with my kids or with a friend or by myself. So that would be the first way to reach out of your norm would be to consume other types of art and creativity that you don't normally dabble in. 
The second way to do an inspiration reach outside of your norm would be to explore other types of experiences that inspire you.
And these might not be experiences that you have really regularly. So this is going to be a reach. It's going to be a stretch, something a little bit different, and this might not necessarily be another type of art or creativity, but this also goes for what you consume as well as what you participate in.
So this might not be typical creative or artistic things, but it might be something like, exercise, movement, nature, travel, a bubble bath, bike, ride, dancing, listening to music. So many different things that could help to inspire you by moving our bodies. We change up our physiology. We change up our brain a little bit, and it allows for new ideas.
And to change up our mental state. For me, traveling and being in nature, always, always, always, always inspires me. It is one of my favorite things to do, and it is so inspiring to me. Sometimes finding inspiration means emptying your mind to make room for it. Sometimes it isn't about filling up your mind with new ideas, with other people's ideas with other people's work, it's about emptying your mind. 
This might involve getting into nature, doing some meditation, leaving things behind, doing some exercise, listening to some music, having your bubble bath, getting a massage, whatever it might be. Something that can help to empty your mind might be helpful. Whenever I'm in nature, away from my normal routine, it really helps me to clear my mind, and open it up to new possibilities. 
Like I said before, I also love, love, love traveling and finding new inspiration without necessarily knowing what that inspiration is going to be. Just being open to it. 
A few years ago, my husband and I went on a trip to Scandinavia and it was amazing. I have a lot of my heritage from Scandinavia and I just felt super connected to those places that we went.
I remember going to a couple of incredible museums that really inspired me. One was the design museum in Copenhagen, where they have the Danish chair exhibit. I love Danish architecture and mid century modern architecture. I've always loved the things that my grandma had in her home. And I went to this museum and just loved seeing the different ideas. The design of these chairs. And there were just so many of them and I loved how they just had them on display in these different ways, like works of art, which they totally are to me. 
And I also remember being super inspired at a Swedish folk art exhibit at the Nordic museum in Stockholm and just the colors and the textures and the patterns that were within all of the different tapestries and the different objects that I was looking at, I felt so inspired by them. 
Likewise, I have felt inspired by architecture and cities all over the world and nature in all kinds of different things, like different modes of transportation or different colors that are used on buildings or things that are outside of my norm.
It's an inspiration reach. It's a stretch because it's something that I'm probably not used to seeing, but that really makes me think outside of the box. 
So sometimes doing an inspiration reach will help you get inspiration by giving you ideas. You might get ideas for lines or shapes or color scheme. And ideas that help, you know, how you want to create your next art piece. But so much of the time for me, not necessarily ideas, but that I simply find myself inspired to create. I believe that respecting and honoring creativity in all forms inspires us to create ourselves. I really do. I believe that when we are around creative works from other people or from God in nature, I believe that we are inspired to create ourselves.
So I want to invite you to step out of your routine, to step out of your norm, to step out of what you normally create. And to take yourself on an artist date as Julia Cameron would say, if you have read The Artist Way, you will know what I'm talking about, but just the idea of taking yourself on an artist date somewhere where you're open to being inspired by something that's not necessarily within your own genre. 
So maybe that means you're going to read or write some poetry, make an abstract painting, try out lettering, if that's new for you. I will link to our starter bundle, of course, in the show notes. If you want to give it a try. 
I want to invite you to just do a little bit of an inspiration reach, and try something new, something different, something maybe that you used to try, that you used to enjoy when you were younger. Or even just get out and empty your brain and allow for inspiration to fill you up. Maybe that means turning on some music that you used to love that you haven't listened to in a long time.
Maybe that means lighting a delicious smelling candle or doing some creative work in a totally new location, whatever it is. I encourage you to do some creative and inspiration reach in a whole new way than you thought of before. 
I hope that this might've helped you give you some ideas. I would love to know what you think about it.
I, like I said, I love having these conversations, but my favorite is when it really is a conversation. When you message me on Instagram or send me a review from iTunes, that's really the best. I always read all of those. And I love hearing what you have to say about the different episodes and the thoughts there. I love knowing your thoughts and your insights. 
Every week, I read a review on the podcast and if I read yours, you get to send me an email and I will get you a free online course, any of our lettering courses for free. So let me read you the one for this week.
 So this review is a little bit of a conversation or reply from the episode about comparison stacking. That was episode 10. And she says, wow. When I first started listening and you shared about stacking blocks with your kids, I wasn't sure where you were going. And I thought I may not relate to this one because my kids are 15 and 17, our blocks, had been shared with others many times over. As you began to explain how we take a block from each of our gifted friends and add their gifts to our own to-do list as things I need to accomplish, I was relating! I forget that my worth is unaffected by my accomplishments and start stacking the things I quote: need to do. Like I need to eat less carbs or cook more gourmet or be more creative. 
When I have allowed myself the gift of lettering, I could feel my brain shift to my right side. It felt like a relief. I wasn't trying. I was just creating. Thank you for giving me the freedom to try. 
That is from Karrikins 10. Send me an email girl. Okay. I love that. Thank you for sharing. 
Please leave your reviews on the podcast and I would love to continue the conversation there. If you haven't yet gotten our freebie, you can find it at committedtocreate.com.
It's called five creative steps to less stress. It's a great activity to do for yourself, with family and friends, kids. It includes a PDF and also a video to explain it for you and kind of walk you through it. You can also find me on Instagram over at hand lettered design. I am always sharing my thoughts and ideas from the podcast of the week.
And I'd love to have conversation there with you and hear your feedback and ideas too. If you are interested in trying out lettering, we have incredible bundles on our website for beginners. I will link to that in the show notes as well. 
And I hope that you have a great time creating this week. I hope you do an inspiration reach and create in a new way, or do some activities that helped empty your mind and open yourself up to creativity.
I would love to hear what you do this week for an inspiration reach and I'll report back next week with what I do. I love being here with you guys, and I will talk to you again next week.

Links:
Morgan's Instagram
The Artist's Way
Introduction to Hand Lettering & Faux Calligraphy

Ready for a fun activity to feel less stress? Come get our FREE Guide - 5 Creative Steps to Less Stress & More Joy while it's still available!

I hope that my podcast has left you feeling inspired and excited to create the life that you want. If you’ve enjoyed listening to this podcast, I’d love for you to subscribe so you can continue to hear more. Want to get to know me better? Connect with me on my website or on Instagram to keep up with everything that is going on with me and my business.

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Jennifer L. IN LOVE!! What a perfect idea! I am a plant mama too, like Lisa. I also manage a great deal of anxiety. I got into lettering a couple years ago as a creative outlet and discovered a multitude of treasures in the lettering community! This book that Lisa created with her daughter is just perfection! It's all the feels for me! Thank you both!!!
Cinthanie C. EXCELLENT BOOK! I really enjoy taking a minute each day to slow down and apply my hand to something that is not only emotionally supportive but relaxing and fun to do!! The mantras for everyday are very helpful for me. Thank you for your work and bringing such a high quality product into my life!

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012: Inspiration Reach

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