How do you find inspiration when your creative spirit seems to have abandoned you? It’s a familiar, often disheartening place: ideas feel stale, momentum wanes, and the urge to simply walk away grows stronger. But this isn’t a sign to quit; it’s an invitation to a different kind of journey—one that calls you back to your essential self and the fundamental elements that ignite you. Through gentle, intentional practices, not through force, we can attune ourselves to that faint whisper of passion, allowing it to become a roar that welcomes inspiration back into our lives.
We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute.
We read and write poetry because we are members of the
human race. And the human race is filled with passion.
And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits
and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love,
these are what we stay alive for.…What will your verse be?
—John Keating (Robin Williams), Dead Poets Society
From Stuck to Inspired
Some mornings arrive with a heaviness we can’t quite name.
We open our notebooks, but the words seem to belong to another life, another self.
Our ideas hover at the edges, unwilling to come closer, and we can’t tell whether they are abandoning us or waiting for us to slow down enough to hear them. We cannot find inspiration—it feels as though it’s left for good.
We tell ourselves we should be further along by now. That real creators never hesitate. That ambition is a straight line.
But within us there is a softer voice that keeps trying to be heard, especially when we finally stop bracing against the world.
It speaks of the things that first awakened us to the idea that our lives could hold more than mere survival. Not grand achievements. Not tidy goals. But the intimate experiences that once cracked something open in us.
The unexpected beauty. The sudden rush of feeling. The way a single moment made us see our own lives with new eyes.
Those moments were invitations to pay attention and to live with passion again.
We may have forgotten them, buried them under calendars and commitments, but they have not forgotten us. They were the early signals that our existence was never meant to be only a sequence of tasks.
Something within us has always been reaching for depth, for connection, for a way of living that feels fully awake, filled with vitality.
This longing is vital information. It is the inner compass of people who refuse to move through the world untouched.
When we feel stuck, it is often because we have drifted too far from what stirs us.
Not what impresses others. Not what promises the quickest win. What stirs us.
The idea that warms our chest. The story that keeps tapping at the door. The vision that scares us a little because it matters that much. This is how we find inspiration.
Return to that.
How to Find Inspiration Again
Sit with that idea, that passion, as though it were a fragile creature, skittish but full of possibility. Let it breathe. Let it speak.
You do not have to force anything. You only have to allow space for the part of you that is still alive, still curious, still capable of wonder.
Our work will find its shape and we will find inspiration again when we do.
If doubt has crept back in, and/or you feel yourself shrinking, take out your journal and write your response to the following question without lifting your pen from the page:
What is it about the thing I most want to create right now that still has a spark in it, and how might it grow if I gave it just ten minutes of attention?
Next, ask yourself:
What are the things that bring me back home to myself?
Maybe it’s music, listening to your favorite poet read their work aloud, touching the rough bark of the stately oak at the corner of the trail, preparing your garden for winter, arranging three colorful pieces of paper into a simple collage, or rubbing the velvety ear of your sweetest pup.
And so we return to the essentials, the elements that awaken us, steady us, and remind us that our lives are more than the sum of our obligations. Staring at the sky through a stand of tall pines. Listening to music with our full attention. Noticing the small details of a work of art that stir something deep within us.
These are practices of aliveness, of a life of delight.
When we immerse ourselves in The 5Ms (Morning Pages, Movement, Meditation, Moments of Inspired Learning, and Making Something), we reconnect with the parts of ourselves that ambition and drive can never reach.
We rediscover the spark that first invited us into our creative lives, the quiet sense that doing so is what matters most.
Do the things that bring you alive. Tend to what still glows, however faintly.
This is how we find our way back, by returning to what is vital, what is honest, and what reveals our souls. This is how we find inspiration, even when it feels lost.
In the end, our verse will not be defined by how efficiently we moved through our days, but by the days and hours we chose to inhabit fully.
It will be shaped by the passion that fuels our fullest expression, our steady devotion to the dreams that matter, and the creation of the work that only we can bring into the world.
