Grow With Soul: Episode 152 - How I Get Ideas
Today’s episode is all about having ideas. I think we really worry about having ideas - we worry when we’re not having them, and we worry whether they’re “right” when we do get them. Being blocked and in an idea rut is a lonely, scary and frustrating place to be, so today I thought I’d talk to you about how I get ideas - about the kind of mindset I’ve cultivated, and the kind of activities and questions that always help me spark something.
What I talk about in this episode:
Remaining open to ideas - and remaining curious
The power of metaphor
Topping yourself up with stimulus
Embracing the counter-intuitive method of idea generation through body movement
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Read the episode transcript:
Today’s episode is all about having ideas. I think we really worry about having ideas - we worry when we’re not having them, and we worry whether they’re “right” when we do get them. Being blocked and in an idea rut is a lonely, scary and frustrating place to be, so today I thought I’d talk to you about how I get ideas - about the kind of mindset I’ve cultivated, and the kind of activities and questions that always help me spark something.
Let’s start with a story. At the start of July I was on a group coaching call, the last one of a six month programme with Madison Morrigan. It was a small group, only the four of us on the call, and we’d gotten to know each other, our foibles and strengths, quite well over the winter, spring and summer. As it was our last call it was a kind of celebration, and we were talking about what we admired in each other, sharing words to buoy up and send off the others in the group.
What was said about me, that had others nodding, was how easily I get ideas. How creative my brain is, how I seem to generate deep and focused ideas with ease, how beautiful my process for doing so is. My first thought was thinking how it hadn’t occurred to me that that was true, and my second thought proved them all right as I thought “I could make an offering about having ideas and a beautiful process”.
That was the spark that Your Beautiful Creative Process came from. It became one of those brain biases where now there was a spark, everything seemed to be another idea to add onto it. It helps that this is a practical course about how we work and what we believe about work, so as I was working I was developing ideas at the same time. And while we’re on the subject, Your Beautiful Creative Process is currently open - early bird pricing ends tomorrow (as this goes out) and the cart closes on 14th October.
This is just one example of how I got an idea. This is not the way I always get ideas, in fact, I can’t think of another instance in which I got an idea from something so explicit, or at least so immediately. I think it’s important to remember that while there are certain “ways” of getting ideas over and over again (which I’ll come onto), what this is really about is remaining open. Being receptive. Looking out of your eyes with possibility. Easy to say, very hard to do
Because it’s not the same as looking for ideas. I remember when I was in my particularly lost and blocked period in the middle of 2021 - not blogging, not posting, not creating anything new - I looked so hard for ideas. I wanted to go out and catch an idea in a net. I went for walks in order to generate ideas, I scoured Instagram accounts of people doing similar work to try and spark something. But this was not openness and possibility but tunnel visioned desperation. I wanted a certain kind of idea in a certain kind of way. Whereas, it hadn’t been on my radar to create a course about process - until a comment on a Zoom call made me think “hmmm, I wonder”.
This feels like a high risk strategy - just wait around in your life remaining open (whatever the hell that means) until an idea bumps into you. It’s a hard thing to describe, because as annoying as the advice “be open to possibility” is, it’s also the truth. Our best route into possibility is curiosity. Play with what if’s, wonder about things, try things on.
There are also ways you may find you can reliably get ideas. The specifics may differ from person to person, but we will all have channels that are particularly fertile for us, and that will be because they stimulate us in a certain way. Here I’m going to talk about the things that work for me, not to say that they will definitely work for you too, but that they might, or they might spark something, or you might try them and that will show you something similar but different that does work for you. No right answers, just experimentation and curiosity.
Metaphors - a phrase or a name
I do like a metaphor. I like to use them to explain things that I can’t really explain, and this means they are often a great way into ideas for me. This comes about as a phrase, or a name for something, that I then pull a metaphor, and then a whole offering, out of, like a string of magician’s handkerchiefs. The Cabin started as a name and expanded into a thematic retreat webspace. Mapping started as a blur of a thing I wanted to do, that when I decided it was going to be Mapping, sprung into technicolour as a metaphor-led course.
Sometimes a phrase will pop into my mind, an errant thought disconnected from anything else, and I will become enamoured with it. I will turn over the things it could possibly mean, things it could possibly be worked into. A lot of the time this doesn’t go anywhere, a lot of the time it sits in a “pending” tray, waiting for other puzzle pieces to pop up to join onto. Sometimes it will be enough for a whole blog post, sometimes it will be a clear Instagram post. But always it is the practice of idea-having.
Stimulus
This is the most obvious one. This is the one that everyone says to do. Whether it’s all those countless authors saying the key to being a writer is to read more, or whether it’s Julia Cameron with her Artist’s Dates, it is accepted that a stimulus begets inspiration, begets ideas.
The trouble with this classic and cliched advice is that it works. It just perhaps doesn’t work in exactly the way we would like. It’s often not a direct bish bash bosh, discernible link from visiting a gallery to having the world’s best idea on the train home. But here’s what I will say. From January to July, I read 28 books and in August and September I read zero and I feel the difference. It’s the difference between going for a walk after a balanced breakfast and going for one with half a cereal bar in your belly - you can still do it, but it’s harder work, not as fun and you get a headache. When I was regularly reading I just felt topped up, I was exposed to more of those metaphors and phrases that sparked things, I was wrapped in creativity which begot more creativity from me. A full tank rather than fumes.
So, this is less about going on your Artist’s Date or plucking a book off the shelf in order to get an idea, and more about exposing yourself to feelings and thoughts which might trigger another feeling or thought that in six weeks time might trigger an idea. It’s about having an emotional and intellectual richness in your life so that the creative soil is fertile.
What’s the story?
This is my question to “get into” an idea or creative problem. When I am planning a launch, the question is “what’s the story of this launch?”; when I am thinking of a blog post (perhaps based on a metaphor) I ask “what’s the story here?”. I find this helps because the question poses a sideways entry to a problem. Because what I’m really asking is “what should I do?”; “what should I do to launch this offering, what should I write about?”. But that is a kind of dead question, it’s not generative, not enticing. “What’s the story here?” - that sparks something in me.
And it sparks something because it’s something I want to endeavour towards. I am a writer, I am always searching for stories because stories are just big metaphors. It is a question that makes me elevate my mind and creativity above the humdrum of day to day “what do I create today?” and into the place where my truest self wants to be operating. So think about who you really want to be, who your truest self is, and what is going to entice and spark them - what question do they need to be asked?
Body movement
For me as an able-bodied person, movement is a great unclogger. It’s sometimes laughable; there have been times where I couldn’t find my way into a blog post idea and went out for a walk defeated, only to completely crack it less than ten minutes down the road. I have been for a swim and figured out a section of Your Beautiful Creative Process. It’s as if the movement of muscle and blood flosses out the creativity, moving the blockages to reveal what was already there, just out of view.
Of course, there is also the distraction element. The moving from one environment to another, one activity to another. Moving the conscious brain from the problem allowing the rest of it to work away on it; shutting the mental and physical door on the room where the ideas weren’t coming and moving into the unceiling-ed outdoors. When you are bogged down in a problem or lack of ideas, the most counter-intuitive thing to do is go outside or do something else - but often it’s what works.
So that’s my list. Like I said, it is not the list, but a list that can spark something - if you consider the possibility. Remember that if you’re lost and blocked, stuck for ideas but desperate to fall back in love with work - or if you just want to elevate the way you work - Your Beautiful Creative Process can help you do exactly that.