Creative people are often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” or “Where do you get your inspiration?”

What people usually mean by these questions is, “How can I find my own inspiration?”

The surprising thing about inspiration is that it rarely comes when you’re sitting on the beach waiting for an idea to strike from the heavens.

Most creative people get inspired by sitting down and working on a project.

Let’s take a writer. She has an idea for a book, and knows she wants to write about a young artist who loses her sight in a car accident.

The biggest issue that my creativity coaching clients struggle with is having enough time to create.

“Dan, of course I’d love to create more, and spend more time on creative projects. But I just don’t have time!”

As long as you don’t feel you have enough time to create that’s what will be true. And that’s how you’ll act and live your life.

All the while you believe that you’re not in control of your time, well, that will be true for you too. You won’t be in control of your time.

“Creative Freedom” is a phrase that at first sounds like the ultimate goal to strive for.

Free to create whatever we want to create, free from restrictions and pressures and demands. Free from limitations put on us by ourselves and by others. Free from anything and everything that might restrict our creativity.

Heaven!

Except it doesn’t quite work like that…

What happens when we have this complete freedom is not that our creativity flows with the might and volume of the Amazon River.

In fact you might be lucky to even get a trickle with the force of a pinhole in a hosepipe.

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