Pages

Monday, April 4, 2016

Motivation & Inspiration

What are these things that constantly elude us writers, or creative people in general? 

It seems that just as we are about to pounce on them and catch them by surprise, they vanish without leaving even a glimmer of the magic they promised just moments before. It turns out the words motivation and inspiration are just as complex and intricate as the act of becoming motivated or inspired. Motivation is the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way, or our general desire or willingness to do something, anythingInspiration on the other hand is the process of being mentally stimulated to do something, especially something creative. 

Which comes first; the chicken or the egg? 

They both work hand in hand, and you can't have one without the other, at least not and be successful. It's my belief that you can't become inspired without being motivated, and I feel it's a lot easier to become motivated than it is to be inspired. I can tell you a million reasons I have for wanting to write. Any writer or artist can tell you why they love what they do, or why they put themselves through the torture of trying to do it (let's be honest, nine times out of ten being creative is torture). I write because I enjoy it, when my creativity and imagination cooperate. I write because I want to spread knowledge, because I want to inspire others. But ask me how many times I have been truly and deeply inspired, and I can probably count on my hands and feet. I can be motivated to write, but I find it difficult to be inspired to write. 

How many people can agree with me? 

I often wonder why this is such a hard thing to become! Upon exploring the definition of inspiration, I realized it's very fitting to always be lacking in the inspiration department. 

Motivation is very simple and straight forward, but there are three words that stand out in the definition of inspiration; process, stimulated and creative. I can tell you what I think these words mean, but we can do that all day. I'm far more interested, (and I hope you are, too) in what they actually mean. 

process is a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular endseries meaning a number of things of a similar kind or related nature coming one after another, usually several. The process of becoming inspired requires several steps. Fair enough. Stimulated means to encourage development or increased activity in a process. Now we are getting somewhere. 

Even the definition of a word can be misleading or unsatisfying if left unexplored. Inspiration has started to take on a new meaning with each word that is defined. Inspiration now means several steps taken in order to increase activity while being creative, which means relating to or involving the imagination. 

We can go on like this for days. I can go on like this for days. I would actually enjoy, and do enjoy, doing this all the time. 

I spend a lot of time, or at least a significant amount of time exploring the definitions of words. I say exploring because defining words, scouring through the dictionary truly is an adventure if you enjoy words as much as I do. After exploring the definition of these words, I actually became inspired, if you'd believe it. I came up from this with three other ideas for my next blog postings. All I had to do was ask myself how I was feeling. 

I was feeling uninspired and unmotivated. I asked myself what it meant to be inspired and motivated and now we are here. Take a second. Explore the definition of a word. Send me an email about it. Comment below. Tweet at @TresaWriter. I guarantee you'll have your own revelation. I guarantee you'll become inspired! 

Happy reading and writing my friends! 

No comments:

Post a Comment