On inspiration, work and doing what you love
Ever been through times when you feel really depressed even if nothing seems to be wrong with your life? Of course you did, we all have times like that, it’s only human. If you haven’t been through that then you must be either some creature from outer space or a robot - and you should go home to your planet or see your engineer.
Seriously now, let’s take a look at the the things that trigger that feeling.
Uninspiration
To understand uninspiration, we must first understand what inspiration is.
The word “inspiration” has its first origins in the Greek word θεοπνευστος, which reads theopneustos and translates into “God-breathed.” In artistic composition inspiration refers to an unconscious and irrational burst of creativity. In both cases - spiritual and artistic - inspiration has something to do with the supernatural, it has a connection with the divine, it is a state of being in-spirit with something higher than ourselves.
Inspiration appears when your actions (work) are aligned with your life’s purpose. How do you know when that happens? When you love your work so much that you would do it for free, just because you enjoy the process of working.
Uninspiration doesn’t exist as such, it is only the lack of inspiration that we perceive as uninspiration. This feeling of helplessness appears because we humans have a tendency to lie to ourselves. Let’s have a quick example. It is a known fact that there are many beginner bloggers out there. Many of them force themselves to believe that they love writing and blogging, they force themselves to write new stuff every day, they force themselves to believe they love doing it. Some enjoy the process for a short while, but then, because they didn’t really love doing it, it starts to turn into a chore - because of the lack of inspiration. That happens because they started doing it only for the potential money earnings and not because they loved the work.
This is why it is important to always do what you love. Doing what you love will inspire you, it will help you get through the eventual hard times of life, it will constantly keep you motivated and it will bring you a success that is way beyond your expectations.
Work
People devote enormous amounts of their lives to work. Surveys indicate that the majority of people feel dissatisfied with their working lives. But why is it that most of the population seems to get so little enjoyment and satisfaction from their work? It may be the result of too little reward, too little free time, or maybe a boring work.
The fact that so many people feel dissatisfied with their work made me wonder, what is the meaning of work then? Some might say that work is necessary to make enough money to support you and maybe a family. But this answer is too superficial and without solid foundations, because the utilitarian purpose of work (getting money to sustain life) wouldn’t require enormous amounts of time. One or two hours per day would do that job really well.
Work without passion is able to create only more work without passion. “Keep doing what you do and you will continue to get what it is that you get.” This work for the sake of work is a vicious circle that can be broken only by making the courageous decision to start doing what you really love.
Work is supposed to be more than a stepping stone to leisure and retirement. Work is a practice run for what we might do after we die. Heaven is not a place where you just hang out and play harps. Heaven is the place where we will be given the opportunity to continue expanding the skills and abilities we started to develop here on Earth. Our life here isn’t much more than a testing ground to see what we can handle.
The most important question to ask yourself when starting something isn’t “how much I will earn?”, it is “what will I become by doing this?”. Who you become is the most important thing, money and the other rewards are secondary.
From a psychological point of view, I believe that work fills the need within us to conform to the now social cloud of the pack. A need is developed greatly by the school system.
Doing what you love
Do what you love! Regarding the work aspect of life, this is the most important thing to do. However, doing what you love isn’t as simple as it looks on paper.
The very idea of doing what you love is foreign to what most of us learn as children. During my childhood I had this idea that work and fun are totally opposed things (work = pain). When I entered the school system that idea gained amplitude, because I didn’t necessarily love school and my parents told me that it is necessary as a preparation for grownup work. Also, I noticed that the teachers all believed that work was not fun. Not a surprising thing considering the fact that work was not fun for most of them.
But enough about me. Did you ever notice how all the successful people say they love their work? And they aren’t just making that up like the most of us, they really do love their work! What does it mean to love your work? It means that you have to love that activity more than any unproductive pleasure, the concept of “spare time” should seem mistaken to you. Many of my friends are asking me when will I take a vacation, a break… But this concept seems flawed to me, because my work is offering me more pleasure than a vacation! I’m not saying that you should spend your whole time working, because you can do only so much work before starting to screw up, but doing what you love should fill up most of your time.
Doing what you love will earn you money in almost every situation. We’re all unique, but our hobbies aren’t. There is a very good chance that your hobbies and passions are enjoyed by thousands of other people!
In the search of doing what you love stay away from the magnificent temptation of prestige.
Prestige is social honor, or honor that receives from others.
Prestige is just fossilized inspiration, it is the opinion of the rest of the world. If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious weren’t that at first (Jazz for example). In the example with the bloggers that start blogging without loving it, prestige also plays an important role; they’re doing it because some people are doing it and they get money and respect in return.
Donald Hall said young would-be poets were mistaken to be so obsessed with being published. But you can imagine what it would do for a 24 year old to get a poem published in The New Yorker. Now to people he meets at parties he’s a real poet. Actually he’s no better or worse than he was before, but to a clueless audience like that, the approval of an official authority makes all the difference. The reason the young care so much about prestige is that the people they want to impress are not very discerning.
Back to basics
Doing what you love a sort of guarantee that you will never run out of inspiration. A very powerful example in that direction is Jay Leno, the famous host of “The Late Night Show.” I haven’t seen a single show with him about which I could say that “it was uninspired.”
Here’s a one hour interview with Jay, hosted by Charlie Rose. It contains some really important advices so I suggest you listen carefully to it.
Find a work that you love and keep on it!
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