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In another very pleasant evening over a meal and bottle of wine – in Llandudno this time – Derek and I found ourselves talking about Inspiration and how it comes about.

How often do you find yourself ploughing through a particular piece of work, which seems to take ages, which you find mind numbingly boring, or which discounts your magnificence or talents. The deadline looms and you have little to show for your efforts – except increased scores on your computer card games. What is lacking here is the vital ingredient of Inspiration.

This is not to be confused with motivation, which merely generates an expected result effectively and possibly efficiently. Inspiration, when present, opens up the possibility of much more than that.

For us, Inspiration is similar to the Flow State often talked about in sport, where the tennis player hits every ball, the goalkeeper saves every shot and the footballer effortlessly covers the pitch passes with total precision. It is also like the Demon State, that Grinder talks about, where the rest of the world disappears and the individual is totally focussed on the task in hand. The story of the mother who found the strength to lift her car up to save her baby underneath, come to mind.

I had two fairly recent examples of experiencing the Inspiration State. One was as a result of reading James Prochaska’s book Change for Good. As a consequence of this, I spent just over a day absolutely absorbed in devising an extensive workbook based on his thinking. It’s work I am really pleased about. Unfortunately, like Coleridge I became distracted and 18 months later I’ve not yet returned to complete the second half of the project. Another example was when I produced the manual for our Trainer’s Training programme. I was able to come up with a comprehensive high quality series of handouts, incorporating a significant range of thinking, to match 12 days of training, all within 2 days – layout, illustrations the lot! It was much admired by its recipients I may add.

In true modeller fashion, we were interested to find out what both these examples had in common, and tapped into others that were arising in our thinking. Praise be to filters! No doubt you will have examples of your own. So we would be really interested to know if our thinking matches with your experience.

The characteristics of Inspiration are a combination of focus - total immersion with absolutely no distractions - producing a result that is higher than your normal everyday performance, with seemingly minimum levels of effort and energy requirement. This last part is significant. A unique feature of Inspiration is how much is gained in the least amount of time.

But it seems that inspiration isn’t a question of turning on a tap and letting the muses flow. Would that it was. It is dependent on key factors coming together, which in turn leads to the state, which then leads to the results.

For me certainly the following features are present.

• Mission: This Mission may only be in the short term – next five years for example – or it may be part of your life’s purpose. Whichever, it is a clear goal, the direction that you already know about which actively determines your filters and your energies. This awareness generates a level of passion in your subject that goes way beyond mere interest.
• Stimulation: This external stimulation may come in many forms - an article, a conversation, a book, a request, or an programme on TV or the radio. It may have come from casual surfing on the web. It will be something that is outside of your current map, and has the potential to take you well into the unknown, leading to new connections and thinking at a higher level. This catalyst or trigger has the potential to generate sustained excitement.
• Skills/Knowledge: This is about drawing on your development so far and using your talents. It’s also about knowing that you have some to contribute and that your learning has purpose. Tapping into these resources releases more energy to bring to the melting pot.
• Permission: When these other factors are in place, you are probably shimmering with pent up energy and a need to work with the ideas that are tumbling forward. Yet you need to know that it is OK to absent yourself from what else is going on around you. You need to be happy to lose yourself safely in the task ahead, blocking out totally any possible distractions or infringements on your concentration. All your energy needs to be focussed on achieving the emergent end result. So scanning your environment, from multiple perspectives, is essential. This way you can confirm that your impending contribution will be to the ultimate good of those around you, as well as yourself.

How does this sound for you? Can you think of similar situations which meet the criteria for Inspiration? Did you also have the same of similar contributing factors? Can you think of times when you weren’t inspired, and which of these factors were missing?

I’ve come up with a very untested exercise to see if this can raise levels of innate inspiration, to help us work smarter and not harder. I would be interested to hear of your experiences, generally and specifically with this material.

Have an inspiring time testing it out!

Fran Burgess
February 2006