You’ve caught me, Saturday night, should be out on the town dancing, instead I’m sitting at my desk working. Yep. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. Why not? Have stuff to do, want to get it done. So make the most of this time, which I keep … If you want to work, work. If you don’t, do it and stop listening to people. Which brings me to the topic of tonight’s conversation. You’re in that muse because you wanted to see my emery board. I heard this in a book I read recently and I actually haven’t heard the phrase before, or if I’d heard it before, it hadn’t tweaked, but it actually kind of hit me and I was like, oh, I like that.
So we know in society, people have had muses forever, artists, designers, and musicians, writers. Even these days, you look at some of the huge fashion houses and they’ll say, “Oh, my muse is so-and-so at the moment.” And that’s the person that brings that inspiration in you. You might look at them and get inspired to think of something. They might say something and it inspires you to be creative. They might have a business that inspires you to be creative. But what looking at your inner muse does is the stop looking at the outside for that inspiration, because we’ve actually all got it in us. If you can see something and be inspired … I love that I do that and you actually can’t see what my hands doing. Again, if you see something out in the world and it inspires you, that inspiration is actually already in you, we just have to get it out.
So how can we, instead of being Pinterest addicts, which don’t get me wrong, I love Pinterest, or always having to flip through magazines, or look at what someone’s wearing, or in a business perspective, look at what other people are doing on their websites and getting on all their lists. And hopefully, someone’s going to send you that one magical email that you’re going to put in your swipe file and it’s just going to inspire you to do incredible things. No, no, no, no, no, no. We actually need to turn all of that noise off in order to be inspired. I know that seems counterintuitive. But when they’re talking in the traditional sense of a muse, where it’s Karl Lagerfeld and his design studio, and there’s one person that he kind of has conversations with and looks at and they work on things together, that kind of muse, that’s different to what I’m talking about. I’m talking about now when we’re trying to surround ourselves with hundreds if not thousands of muses all around the world because we just haven’t quite been able to pop the cork on our own creativity.
So how do we do it? Well, stick with me and I’ll tell you. So one of the things you need to do firstly is quiet the noise. Quiet the noise. So that means unsubscribing from lists, unfollowing people. It means not buying whatever it is every month you buy to digest in the hopes that you’re going to be flicking through that home magazine and you’re going to get that massive of inspiration. I want you to stop all that. Because like music, there’s only so many notes. You’ve heard, you’ve seen so many things to inspire you. So quiet the noise, absolutely, point number one.
Point number two, you got to make sure you’re taking time to think. Now, that may seem silly. I actually am now scheduling thinking time in my calendar. Yes, it’s pretty colored in my calendar to make sure I actually take time to do nothing but think. How do we do that? Well, my places for thinking are walking or water, pretty much. They’re my two. When I’m meditating, I tend to not think creatively. I tend to actually … I don’t know if this is normal or not if you’re a meditator, let me know. I tend to get a little more analytical sometimes when I’m meditating or a bit of big picture thinking of my life, not so much creative stuff if you know what I mean. But for me, absolutely a walk in nature without, none of these, no, no, no, no, no, leave them at home or sitting by water or in water, creative heaven for me. So a bath for me after walking, it’s like a double dose of creativity.
So while you’ve got that thinking space to help you get creative, that’s about coming to step number three, pen and paper people, pen and paper, pen and paper. So even if you’re … If you’re a writer and you’re looking for inspiration, if you’re a singer, a musician, if you’re a speaker, a coach, if you’re a designer, if you’re a painter, it doesn’t matter what the form your creativity takes, it doesn’t matter what kind of muse you’re trying to get out of you, pen and paper rule in this regard. There’s something, it’s scientifically proven, it’s not just coming out of my mouth, that when this and this connect more happens. We retain more information. We get more out. It’s more fluid when we’re getting it out, rather than sitting tot, tot, tot, tot, tot, tot, tot, type. It doesn’t have that same connection for us.
So write it out, write it out, write it out. Whether it’s on a blank piece of paper, it can be a visual thing where you’re drawing little pictures and sticking them up somewhere. But got to get whatever that time for the creative flow has enabled you to bring up, you’ve got to commit to paper and get it out. Otherwise, it will disappear. It will disappear.
And then the last thing I wanted to say about bringing out your inner muse is, your inner muse is your voice. It’s you. So once you’ve turned off the noise, got the space, gotten it out on paper, you have to respect that it’s your voice, your muse. And this is an important thing. So really hesitate and if at all possible avoid, unless you need constructive criticism or some tweaking or some advice, specific advice on something, really protect your muse. And don’t be picking up the phone and saying to your bestie, “Oh, I’ve just had this great idea … I’m going to do this and this and this. It looks amazing. And the stress has got these little twirly things on it.” Because what takes is one person that you shared that creative moment with to say, “Oh, I think I saw someone that had done something similar,” and bang, you then stop trusting your muse and letting that creativity out. And it’s a crime. We’ve all got it.
Creativity is not something that’s just for performers, and artists, and writers. I promise you, it’s not. Everybody is creative, everybody. It just takes different forms. Your creative form might be the most amazingly organized pantry in the whole entire universe. Totally. But if you’ve had that space to think about it and your muse has come up and said this what I want to do with the pantry, and you say to somebody you’re going to spend $300 on fancy containers or whatever because you’ve got this idea and the picture and the colors are going to be this. And they say, “Oh, you can just get something cheaper at Ikea,” you never do it and you’ll never trust your voice again. So really, really, really protects that creativity.
So there are my four tips for embracing your inner muse. I can’t believe I’ve never heard the term before. I’m like taking that and running with it. Thought it was absolutely brilliant. It’s my take, so I haven’t studied it. That’s just my take on how we’re going to make it work. That’s my take on what works for me. When I’m trying to get creative, and now I have a name for that stuff that comes up. It’s my inner muse. Maybe I’ll give her a pseudonym. What should we call her? If you’ve got an idea for a name for my inner muse, I want to know what it is. I think that’s a really cool idea. I think we should all have names for our inner muses. Is it a muses? What do you call a group of muses? Can someone Google that and let me know.
Happy Saturday night. I hope you’ve jumped online tonight to see some of the amazing live acts that have been out there. Oh, go to my Facebook feed, like Stonewall Live, Penny, Vanessa. There’s so many great things going on and share them. If people are doing shows, please share it, people. Have a great night and I’ll see you all tomorrow.