How Your Lifestyle Can Affect Your Inspiration
Inspiration in life can be drawn from different things. It could be something that you have seen, heard or even an experience that took place in your life. What inspiration does is that it wraps your brain around something and stimulates you to do something creative. Aside from what we can see, hear, or experience, our lifestyle too can affect your inspiration. How so? Let’s consider.
Here's How Your Lifestyle Can Affect Your Inspiration
Neuroplasticity
To get to know how our lifestyle and daily activities affect inspiration, we need to discuss neuroplasticity. The term neuroplasticity should not scare you off. It simply denotes the ability of your brain to reorganize itself through the formation of new neural connections throughout your life. This reorganization happens in both physical and functional senses. It is influenced by your thinking, emotions, behavior, and environment.
Neuroplasticity emerged and replaced the previously held belief that the brain of an adult is hard wired and cannot undergo any further development like it did during the childhood years. The new understanding is that development takes place all through your life even though most of it happens during your young formative years.
For example, when you learn to speak a new language, neuroplasticity is greatly involved. When you learn to play a musical instrument, it is the key process that aids you. Thus, we can safely conclude that it is the key factor in permanent learning.
Armed with this knowledge, we can emphatically state that as long as our brains can form new connections, we can have new experiences in life. We can stimulate our brains to perceive more things. We can improve our brainpower by focusing on specific things. Some of the activities which can boost our brain power are basic things that we may do every day, such as:
- Reading
- Meditation
- Exercise
- Gaming
- Socializing
- Networking
- Parenting
All the above activities have been found to encourage neuroplasticity. They all stimulate your brain in one way or another and this stimulation creates new pathways and connections. We can liken it to physical exercise and muscle build up. When you want big muscles, you have to exercise regularly. If you want bigger muscles in the shortest period, then you will increase the intensity and frequency of workouts, coupled with the right diet. Within no time, you’ll be ripped and beefed up like no one’s business. Same applies to your brain, where all inspiration happens. It’s not easy and fatigue is inevitable. But that is the path that you will inevitably have to follow. Each path has its own perks and setbacks, but the end result is the motivating factor.
What Is the Correlation Between Your Lifestyle and Inspiration?
Well, as Tim Gunn pointed out in his works, "there is no shortage of material to pull from." In essence, there is no shortage of things to inspire you in life. Our habits, tastes, and preferences that form our lifestyle can stimulate us to be inspired.
For example, if you’re a reader, reading can be your source of inspiration. Reading for starters exposes you to new ideals, philosophies, and perspectives. You can read a book on problem-solving today and find a totally new way of looking at problems, which your mind had never perceived. You can apply it your life and in your dealings with others. As a result, it might better your relationship with them.
"There is no shortage of material to pull from." - Tim Gunn
On the personal level, it will act as an impetus for self-improvement. Reading helps an individual to improve their understanding capacity and comprehension levels. Simply put, the more you read on a subject matter, the more you understand it in an in-depth manner.
To illustrate, if you read about dogs, you will be exposed to many facts about them. For example, their mannerisms, nature, habits, and breeds. You will know what irritates them and what they love. It is better for you to gather facts through reading rather than through real life ordeals. It may not end up in a pleasant way for you if you approach a dog that does not like strangers to find out if it indeed doesn’t like strangers. But you can try if you can outrun the dog!
If reading is part of your lifestyle, you will consequentially improve your brainpower and get inspiration from the content that you read.
Another activity that is part of the lifestyle of people is writing. Writing basically involves gathering of the information, making a draft, revising, and publishing a conclusive piece that has information relating to a subject matter. It is the expression of one’s self in written words without any inhibition. You can even write as a hobby. Many great writers started out by just writing journals. For you to write, you need to have inspiration. Therefore, the more inspiration you have, the more you write. If writing is a part of your lifestyle, you will have many things that you can look up to for inspiration.
At times, people lack inspiration in different degrees. Others might just be lacking minute amounts of inspiration whereas others may be lacking it completely. If this is your predicament, you can put yourself in a position in which you easily get inspired.
How Do You Position Yourself for Inspiration?
First, explore what you need to. Have as many thoughts flow through your mind as possible. Do not be picky. Gather as much information from all sources as you can. It doesn’t have to follow a specific line of thought or any process. What matters is that your brain is engaged fully.
Second, identify an area of interest. Take a look at similar ideas. Brush through what other people have done. Embrace different ideas of people who have attempted the same work or activity so as to get a rough idea about the whole process.
Third, make a point of noting down any ideas as they come. You don’t want to exclude any idea, however controversial or astronomical it may seem. Perhaps you can remember the case when early scientists were being regarded as fools when they stated that the earth is spherical in shape and not flat as many people thought? Well, who’s laughing now? This goes further to show that there’s no bad idea that the mind can perceive. All you have to do is have a record of all these ideas. It may be even a good idea for writing a dissertation.
Fourth, give yourself room to reflect. You cannot underestimate the power of a reflective mind. This is the home of creativity and inspiration. Do not overly exert yourself. Cut yourself some slack and lay back a little from the daily hustles of an active lifestyle. Over exertion is detrimental to your quest to find inspiration. Let your mind wander.
Last, get a second or third opinion. It’s normally said that iron sharpens iron. As much as you would like to maintain individuality of thought, having a few opinions from others may not hurt. It may even provide an impetus to greater ideas. Even if a second opinion may not be relevant at the moment, it can contribute to the overall clarity of issues. It may strengthen or point out the weakness of a certain ideal.
Conclusion
The above are some ways in which you can position yourself for inspiration. Coupled with the underlying science that accompanies inspiration and our ever developing mind, we can always devise new ideas. The only thing we have to do is set our mind to it and it will be achieved. It has never been clearer as it is now that what the mind perceives it can achieve. Strive to adjust your lifestyle to positively impact on your inspiration.
