WHAT THIS EPISODE IS ABOUT…

Hello and welcome, I’m Shauna Hoffman.

I thought today is a perfect day in all of our lives to believe in the possibilities and dreams in our hearts. We are going to talk about a lot of ations… imagination, creation, inspiration and motivation. and all it takes to believe in yourself to go after something you really want in life. It is the human spirit to create. We all have the ability to envision new things. From the time we were children we could make a train out of stick or snowman out of a snowball. Why? Why is it that as children we had the ability to think outside the box and create with no holds barred?

Because we had not been told yet that it’s not real. We had not been told yet that our thoughts should have boundaries and restrictions. When we were young we could claim what we would be when we grew up and all the adults would just smile and think isn’t that cute. She wants to be a fireman or teacher or President one day. No one gave us that negative list of why it can’t happen. Until one day they did.

As adults we have these weird “shoulds and rules and guidelines and history” of what we think is possible and what isn’t. And now when you dream of something you want to do outside the realm of what others can perceive of you, you get bombarded with all of the reasons why you can’t do it. And not just from other people. But from yourself! And that is what we are going to talk about today! Your dreams and how to let all those negative thoughts go and bring those dreams to life!

Years ago, I did my thesis paper on something called The Idealized System Design. It was based on a theory that you could create an ideal concept and then design it from beginning to end. But the word ideal is what made it so exciting. In an ideal system you have no boundaries that say no it cannot happen.

Think of that concept for a minute. You could create an ideal home…one that is ideal in your imagination. Not what you could afford, or someone else’s pre-built home, or stuck in a city when you want to live on a mountain top. You could create YOUR ideal home. So the concept of ideal meant it could be anything your mind could imagine!

Abert Einstein said, “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

Ha I love that!

I love to use this theory with my clients, my business coaching clients, teens imagining their future, newly divorced women or men who are redesigning and reinventing their lives. Usually their mind set is open to anything. Or even ready for anything!

And then I love to use it to help people who have become sedentary in their lives or thinking and have some dream that they have abandoned or have decided is a just a dream that can never come to be. I want to play with the word imagination! As a child it was believed that our imagination was something like a Disney dream of fairies and dragons, princesses and castles. “Oh she has such a big imagination when she plays”. But the truth is anything that we want to achieve starts with imagination. IMAGINING something that we want in our lives.

So let’s think about what Imagination is. It’s the ability to create mental images of things not perceived through our senses. For instance it is a woodworker who can see a table in a piece of wood. Or an artist that can see the images they want to paint on a blank canvas. It’s the ability to create a new narrative out of something that we can’t see or have never heard before. A musician that creates a new song out of notes that are on a scale. It’s something that can construct new, hypothetical scenarios that don’t exist now but have every possibility of coming to fruition. What I love about imagination is it deletes the word CAN’T!

So imagination is the precursor to creativity. Once you start to imagine something new your next step is to create it. Now creativity goes hand in hand with imagination because as you create you want to continue to allow your imagination to think outside the box. Creativity is the ability to see something with no boundaries.

Now let’s take all of this and make it personal for you. If you could imagine anything different in your life what would it be? It can be anything as small as imagining your home with new colors, or imagining you walking a new puppy down the street, to anything as big as imagining yourself living in a different town or country or imagining a new job. It could be imagining your own creative outlet like writing or painting or singing or podcasting!

Now you have imagined it and you are on the way to creating it! The next “ation” I am going to talk about is inspiration. Inspiration is a force or influence that makes you want to create something!

Let’s think. You have decided to create a new decor for your living room. Your mind has begun to formulate all of these wonderful images and colors and feelings of what it will look like. You pick up a Interior design magazine and you see someone that has created their new space. You get so excited that it inspires you to take your IMAGINATION AND CREATION and bring it to life! You are now not only creating something in your mind, you are inspired to make it happen!

Now I am going to talk about the one ATION that seems to be the thing that stops people in their tracks. MOTIVATION! How many times have you had a wonderfully creative new idea that you have wanted to attempt. You have imagined it in your mind, talked about it to other people, maybe even written it as a goal in your life. But you have never done it? Your excuse, I haven’t found the motivation to start it. They say that motivation is the “process that causes you to take action. It activates behavior”. But here is my personal experience with my clients and what I coach anyone hoping for motivation. Some people can take their inspiration and creativity and it kick starts motivation. But, for many people I don’t believe it just shows up. That one day they wake up motivated.

I read one time that motivation comes from action starting not starting action! In other words when you have an idea or creation that you want to manifest if you just START the process that INSPIRES MOTIVATION! It is the starting of something that becomes the energy that opens up your motivation to continue! It’s watching it come to fruition that keeps you inspired. OK let’s think about this in simple terms. No one is motivated to clean a room. But once you start to clean it all of a sudden the motivation continues! You get excited to see your progress and want more! So many people envision writing a book. They think about it and talk about it. But then they say to me I am just not motivated to start it. I say sit down and write a sentence. Any sentence. See if you become motivated to keep writing. I love the book The Artists Way for just this reason. It gets your mind kickstarted to create.

Now I want to go back to something that I said at the beginning. When children create it is because they have not been told that it CAN’T be real. The biggest reason why people don’t start to create the things that they want in life is because somewhere in their mind is the word can’t.

“You can’t do that, you know nothing about that. You can’t do that no one will like it or buy it. You can’t do that there are professionals that make a living at it. What makes you think you can do that. You can’t do that. It is too expensive, or too lofty, or too unrealistic.”

The minute the word can’t or shouldn’t come into your mind it creates a judgement and fear that stops all creativity and let’s be honest…it stops all dreams from coming true. And the funny thing is it’s not true! Remember the Idealized System Design! You design something with no boundaries, no rules, no saying NO!

Pablo Picasso said, “Everything you can imagine is real”.

He also said, “The chief enemy of creativity is GOOD SENSE.”

I want you to think about your life. I want you to play with the possibility that there is something that you are dreaming of that you want to create. Something that is sitting in your mind or soul or heart that you want to bring to life! It may be a garden in your backyard, or a children’s book you want to write or a podcast you want to create! Or a wall you want to paint! I would love you to think of the words…

Imagination
Creation
Inspiration
Motivation.

Then just start it… make any movement towards your dream and see if it motivates you to bring it to life! Take any action that you can to start it! Remember that every best selling writer was once NOT a writer! There was a day that Picasso didn’t paint. Or Mozart heard the songs in his head but never wrote them down. There was a STARTING point for every person who went after their dreams. The day that they said, I CAN.

I love this quote by Ursula Leguin – “The creative adult is the child who survived.”

I want to leave you with this one… by Bruce Garrabrandt

“Creativity doesn’t wait for the perfect moment. It fashions it’s own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.”

I hope for you wonderfully creative inspirational outbursts in your life! May you hear your child voice again and allow it to help your dreams come true. May you believe in all of your capabilities to create your very own ideal world!

Now go out there and be safe! Drink lots of water, eat nourishing foods, get lots of sleep and surround yourself with people who lift you up and believe in you and your dreams! Then just begin!

Thank you for letting me into your lives this week and I look forward to popping back in again…. next week.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CONTENT DISCUSSED…

• A Journey to Awareness Podcast: All Episodes
• Shauna’s website: https://www.workingonme.com

WHEN DOES IT AIR…
January 30, 2021