How to Find Inspiration Without Forcing It

Photo by Chris Smith on Unsplash

A while back, two specific weeks turned out to be more hectic than I usually prefer. Most of my scheduled calls were coaching sessions though, so it never even crossed my mind to reschedule. After all, those conversations always leave me feeling energised.

But in the middle of it all, I couldn’t find enough time for other things that needed attention. One of them was writing my posts. The weekend before last, I had so much I wanted to say, but when I sat down to write, the words just wouldn’t flow. The ideas were there in my mind, but they refused to land on paper.

I did keep time aside to rest and even planned to sit down with the post on Sunday. But it still didn’t happen. Eventually, I chose to be kind to myself. I often say this is a “weekly-ish” blogpost for moments like these — when I know forcing myself will only lead to something half-hearted. I tried to show up, and that mattered more than pushing through. So I let it be.

As this past weekend approached, though, I felt the pressure mounting: I have to get the post out this time. Otherwise, I worried it would mean I was slipping into inertia or creative block — or worse, that I was fooling myself into thinking I was trying hard enough. I even told myself: no relaxing this weekend until I finish the post.

And that’s when I stumbled upon these wise words on LinkedIn from a letter Rabindranath Tagore wrote to his friend C. F. Andrews in 1914 (hat tip: Rohit Lamba):

“We must have no particular plans for our holidays. Let us agree to waste them utterly, until laziness proves to be a burden to us. Just for a month or so we can afford to be no longer useful members of society. The cultivation of usefulness produces an enormous amount of failure, simply because in our avidity we sow seeds too closely.” (emphasis mine)

Reading this, I realised what I had done wrong the weekend before. Even if my body wasn’t working, my mind still was — sowing seeds too close. With a calendar already showing a hectic week behind me, I decided I didn’t want to repeat the same mistake.

Many of you have told me you appreciate the genuineness of my sharing — and that’s because it truly is genuine. If I start forcing it, I’ll lose that. So I gave myself permission not to. I let myself be lazy and useless this weekend.

And here I am now, writing this at 9 a.m., full of inspiration and eager to send it out. Turns out, you don’t always need a whole month of being lazy or “useless.” Sometimes just a day or two is enough.

And if you feel you can’t afford even that right now, here’s my invitation: start planning your year-end holidays in a way that gives you enough space to do nothing, be bored, and let the inspiration find you.

PS: Next post will be Part II of this series.

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