Speaker 1: 0:13

Aloha and welcome to your Heart Magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright. Author, psychologist and spiritual educator.

Speaker 2: 0:33

Aloha everybody. Welcome to your Heart Magic. This is Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright, and today we are talking about the topic of inspiration and diving into inspiration. How do we find it? How do we understand the concept of inspiration and find a little bit more inspiration for day to day life? It's airy season and we just passed spring equinox fall if you are in the southern hemisphere but we just started the astrological new year. There is an eclipse coming up and I always feel this time of year just has this fresh wave of movement. Anytime we change a season, especially, I think, starting the astrological new year, it just feels like new momentum and new beginnings. So inspiration seemed like the topic du jour today to talk about, and you might be able to hear roosters in the background of this podcast, but if so, you're not hearing things. There's just a lot of chickens and roosters out today on the island.

Speaker 2: 1:41

So before we dive more fully into our topic and look at some different ways to conceptualize and understand inspiration, I thought I'd talk a little bit about my process of finding inspiration for this podcast and finding inspiration for creativity and writing and being a creative person in general, and usually during a podcast, I either have an idea that comes through. It could be any time during the week. One of the ways that I have worked for a long time is just putting out to the universe my needs, and my needs are like hey, I need a podcast theme or I need something to focus on right now. I need some sort of inspiration, and something will usually come through. It will come through during the week. Some sort of inspiration, and something will usually come through, it will come through during the week. Some sort of an idea, a topic, something like that. Sometimes it will come through the morning of if I am going to make the podcast that day, I might put it out there and then, when I'm running I run almost every day it might come through during that time and I might have this moment of clarity and think, oh okay, this is what I feel really inspired to talk about. I love making podcast episodes when I feel inspired, because I think it makes for a juicier episode and it's joyful to talk about a topic that I'm jazzed about, and more often than not, that works for me.

Speaker 2: 3:06

Every now and then, something doesn't come through or I've got things going on in my life and it is my commitment to show up and do a weekly podcast. So I might be a little bit more hard pressed for inspiration and be like, okay, just put something together and try and make it from the heart. If nothing else, just show up, right. I think that is what it is to live an inspired life. When the juice isn't flowing and the zaza zoom isn't there and we might not feel the amazement, it is okay sometimes to say, well, I'm just going to show up and do the best I can. But I love those days where things flow.

Speaker 2: 3:43

And so I had a long run this morning and I'd put out to the universe I need a podcast episode and help tap something in me. And oh, it was a terrible run. Nothing came through. I had no moments of runner's high. I had no clarity. I felt like it was one of those runs where it was just like gutting it out is how it felt to me, and I had a certain mileage in mind. It was a training run for a marathon and I was like watching the miles and being like, oh my gosh, I've only gone like 0.2 miles. It feels like it's been forever. Oh, now it's 0.5 more miles. Like how long until I get there?

Speaker 2: 4:20

It was sort of this interesting experience and that actually is what got me thinking today of well, what do we do when we might not feel particularly inspired and we need to show up anyways, and how can we work with inspiration and define it in a way that we can still find it, even if something doesn't really move us to doing something? And I think, typically when we are thinking about the idea of inspiration, I think of it as the spark, a flame, something in us that animates us, it moves us, it makes our heart leap in the direction of something. We feel drawn to doing something. We are lit up by the idea and then we have this energy burst that we actually have the follow through. And sometimes inspiration might come as a flash of an idea or an insight. We might be inspired because we're talking to somebody and we have a great conversation, and they help spark something within us, like if you were trying to start a fire and you were rubbing sticks together or using flint to try and get a spark in the kindling. It's something will spark us and it could come from an external source. It could come from just something that lands in our brain. It could come from a dream. We might wake up from a dream and have a sense of which way to move. It could come from something we read on the internet and read on social media where we see something great that somebody else is doing and it moves us and it helps kindle that within us.

Speaker 2: 5:54

But usually inspiration starts with some sort of a spark, something that makes us say I want to do this thing and then, if we have good follow through, we don't just burn out and have the idea, we actually take a step in that direction, which is a pretty important part of inspiration. Inspiration isn't great for a lot If we don't take a step and follow through. If we just have the origin of inspiration and are really good at generating ideas but never feel inspired to move in that direction. We're just an idea person. That's an incomplete experience. I think of inspiration when I think of inspiration in a holistic way. We get the origin of the idea and then something animates us, it moves us inside and we find ourselves organically taking an action step or having that extra boost that we need to follow through on something.

Speaker 2: 6:48

I had no inspiration during my run today, not really, except usually I will start marathon training in March and it's usually right after the equinox, right around the middle of March, and the Kauai Marathon, which I run almost every year. Since we've moved here, it's always Labor Day weekend. There is a half marathon in June that we will usually run, and so this is just the time of year that I do my spring training, and so that was the inspiration that I drew on is that it wasn't an option to not do it. It's time to start building mileage again and running and getting all that in. But I didn't have anything natural within me. It was having that carrot dangling today that kept me inspired enough to keep going and not just quit. And even though I wasn't feeling it inside, I know the consequence of what happens if you don't train, and that's a terrible way to have to show up for a race or show up and feel unprepared. And so I suppose what was inspiring me today was nothing organic. I didn't feel particularly animated or resonant, I didn't really feel lit up by it, but I did know that I would feel better when I was done with it and that I would feel good about the completion of that.

Speaker 2: 8:06

So we can think of inspiration in a very multi-dimensional way, and sometimes inspiration is something that we have like a huge burst of energy for, and it's really just coming from in us, and sometimes we have to kindle that teeny, tiny spark inside of us and, like, keep that little flame alive in order to keep moving in the direction, towards something that we feel inspired to create or actualize in our life. So when I sat down today and conceptualized the idea of inspiration, I decided to break it into three levels, because I think inspiration, like any other concept, it's multidimensional, it's not just one linear thing and either you're inspired or you're not. I think inspiration is something that we can understand in a bigger way and a more holistic way than we might have traditionally thought of inspiration. First, I think there's what I'm calling macro inspiration, macro being like the bigger picture of our life or the bigger thing that we are trying to create. Macro inspiration is when, like, the big idea hits you and you have this huge inspired vision and say I feel inspired to do, fill in the blank of whatever it is, and it could be something huge. It could be something that you are starting a new venture or you decide to relocate and go somewhere geographically. It could be something external, where there's a big goal or dream or step that you take and it feels like this huge, purpose-driven picture for your life. Sometimes macro inspiration can be a little bit more internal, where we will have a moment where we see our journey and see ourselves from this higher perspective and it's almost like all of a sudden we have a higher vantage point and we have a greater access to understanding the scope of our path and we'll start to see why certain things happen. We'll start to see that things are moving together in our life journey in this very intelligent way and that, yes, our soul actually does know what it's doing and spirit and the universe and life is supporting us in creating that path, and so we might just have this sense of seeing ourselves from this wider gaze and having access to more of ourselves, a bigger picture than we had before, like all the puzzle pieces come together and we get this flash of clarity. So when I think of macro inspiration, I think of the big stuff, and I actually looked up what's the word that falls between macro and micro, because I was thinking like, well, what's the middle level of inspiration? And according to the internet it is meso, which means medium. So I'm calling meso.

Speaker 2: 11:08

Inspiration is the middle area. It is the ways that we might feel inspired to move towards that bigger picture. It is taking a singular step or breaking down the big picture. Like, let's say, you're trying to manifest a new business and it is going to take a little while to put all the pieces in place. Well, the meso stage might be taking it piece by piece and being able to focus on just one piece and move your energy in that direction. Meso inspiration might be something where we think what am I inspired to create this month? What's my focus point? What am I moving my energy towards? How do I want to interact in my life? What are the different things that I'm working on and how can I feel inspired to show up in those different areas and keep aligning, keep creating, keep doing the things that I need to do in order to build the next step, that is, creating this bigger platform of my life. So that's kind of this middle area, which is a little bit harder to define.

Speaker 2: 12:18

But I do feel like there's a middle area that falls between macro and micro, because when I was thinking of micro inspiration, I was thinking about like, well, what about the times that we don't have a bigger picture?

Speaker 2: 12:30

What if we feel dead in the water or feel kind of stuck, or we feel like something's coming in but it hasn't shown up yet. Let's say that we have been through some sort of big transformation but we don't have the next step yet we don't really know what we're working towards. Is inspiration not available to us, then that seems unfair and I really don't like that. And if you listen to your heart magic, you know I'm really big on redefining concepts to make them work for us and make them feel friendlier and more all-encompassing. So I really don't like the idea that inspiration is available to you only if you have all this fire and spark and movement and you're working on these big things and what you're not living an inspired life if you're just showing up and chopping wood and going to work and doing your normal things.

Speaker 2: 13:21

Like that feels really unfair to me and I refuse to accept that as the status quo. I refuse to accept that we always have to do some big, grand thing in order to feel inspired and to feel like inspiration is available to us. So I feel like this micro level of just focusing on our individual moments. How can I be more inspired in a moment? How can I show up in the day to day and find these like little polka dots of inspiration throughout the day, these Easter eggs of inspiration, and collect them and see myself from a bigger vantage point. I feel like that is a really important thing to understand, because if we're always operating at this big picture level of inspiration, then it cultivates the potential for this toxic productivity where we feel like we constantly have to be working on some big, grand life purpose or taking big steps, or working on the next project, working on the next thing. I think that is a real risk for creatives and for anybody who's some kind of a creative entrepreneur or artist or writer.

Speaker 2: 14:30

People always want to know what are you working on now? What's next for you? What's in the works, what's in always want to know what are you working on now? What's next for you? What's in the works? What's in the cauldron? What are you brewing and cooking? And what if there's nothing there? What if you're just doing it for the process? What if you're in between projects and you're not feeling particularly inspired?

Speaker 2: 14:50

We have to have moments where we're receiving. We can't always be in this output expat phase where we are pouring energy out. We have to have lulls and ebbs and moments of receptivity. We have to have moments where we're gathering our magic back into us, especially if we've just had a big burst of something and really moved energy to make something happen. It's like recharging a phone or recharging electronic device we have to plug in for a while and receive and feel ourselves back up. I think when we over focus on inspiration as always having to do some big thing that the risk to ourselves is minimizing the magic that's happening in the middle moments and the magic that is happening in the tiny little micro moments, and I think it's all inspiration. Inspiration is a multidimensional concept. It is a layer cake of many different flavors and many different ways of understanding the role of inspiration in our life.

Speaker 2: 15:57

Something else that I was thinking about today, when I finally honed in on talking about inspiration on the podcast, was five years ago now 2019. So I guess that was six years ago. I first launched my online newsletter and it's evolved since then. It was your Heart Magic, and then it was Intuitive you and then it was Akashic Magic Monthly, and it's still Akashic Magic. It's now Akashic Magic Quarterly. I recently shifted it to a quarterly newsletter instead of a monthly newsletter due to limitations of time and the fact that I am a one-woman show, doing quite a bit in my life and trying to make space for all of it and reinventing it to make it work for me. But when I first launched this newsletter, it was such an exciting thing and it was such a big step for me and it came together in a way that had to be a flash of inspiration. I don't remember specifically, but it was something I thought about for a while. Back then in 2019, I was really learning about how to ground inspiration that you can have an idea right, I have inspiration to make a newsletter but that if we can't ground it and take a step towards it or see the bigger picture of what we're trying to create, then usually it just stays in that idea phase. And at the time when I decided to call it, your Heart Magic which is where the name for this podcast actually came from is like way back then. I'm still doing your Heart Magic.

Speaker 2: 17:26

All these years later, I've just shifted form of how I'm bringing that into being. I really had the desire to help connect people to their hearts and to connect people to the voice of their hearts and the inspiration in their heart. The heart is very integral in my work for a lot of reasons, and it's not to rule out how important our mind is and our thoughts are, and it's not to rule out how important our body is and our somatic sensory experience. All of that needs to be in balance. But for me, listening to my heart and learning to work with the energy of my heart and the voice of my heart and the intelligence of my heart, which is different than the thoughts of the mind that has been key to every beautiful good thing that's happened in my life, every big risk that I've ever taken.

Speaker 2: 18:17

Anytime inspiration has come through, if it has started in the mind as an insight, it is my heart that moves me and helps me find the courage and the fortitude in order to take whatever that is and find the audacity to put it out in the world and move past the fear of judgment and what others might say and is this going to be a success or a failure? And move past all of that nonsense, all that stuff that the mind throws up in our way to create obstacles. And my heart has overridden that and says well, this thing's in your heart, so you need to go do it anyways and that has been so integral. And I also see our heart as the gateway, the doorway that leads us into our soul, that helps us with our spiritual connection. All of that is accessed in the heart.

Speaker 2: 19:08

So at the time I had this desire to just talk about the heart and to use that as language that helps others connect with their heart magic and their heart wisdom, and to think about the way of the heart, the wisdom of the heart, as something that was distinguished from just wisdom in general, and conceptualize our heart wisdom and heart intelligence in a different way and start putting language to it. So I launched this newsletter and the theme was inspiration and I focused on how to find inspiration and how do we inspire ourselves, and I think I had some art activities and journaling prompts and a little reflection. I might have made a YouTube video or something that I linked to it and I wrote a blog post and I'm going to read a portion from that post in a moment because I cleaned it up and put it in my book Small Pearls, big Wisdom, and it's on inspiration. So it's very fun, six years later, to bring this podcast to you, your Heart Magic Podcast, and be inspired by the origins of inspiration, which was the your Heart Magic newsletter back in March of 2019. Definitely feels like I'm coming full circle.

Speaker 2: 20:22

The other thing I wanted to share that ties into this topic today is about a week ago. I had a big burst of inspiration come through and it was actually for a poetry book and it was something that did come through while I was running. Like I said, I have some of my best ideas while I am out running and they will just like come and almost like land on me, like it's been hovering around in the ethereal field and the Akashic field and it's just been waiting for me to be in a place where it can anchor in and land and it landed. And I actually have several ideas right now of creative projects that I'm wanting to develop and work on, and so I will have to sit down and ground and prioritize and all those good things. But I've been wanting to get back into my poetry recently and I've been wanting to redevelop a poetry practice and just rewild my voice as a poet and bring that back to the forefront as not only a creative practice but maybe one that I do something with, and so I had this idea come through to create this poetry book and the best news was is that I already have some pieces for it.

Speaker 2: 21:33

Sometimes when I'm starting a book, I will just sit down and collect all the recent writings that I've done since my last book and I'll see what's there and sometimes the ideas of something will take shape. Or I will see that I have a new collection, or it acts as a springboard where I can take it and get some buoyancy and then dive into something bigger and work on expanding that. So I was really excited about this book and I had some good ideas for the podcast come through. That's when the Aries archetype came through last week running as well, and I ran back home and, you know, did my thing, got ready, walk the dogs and all that sat down to make this podcast, to start writing this book, to do all the things.

Speaker 2: 22:15

Because I was so inspired and I pulled out my laptop and I got the dreaded black screen of death and, long story short, I spent most of last Sunday trying to relaunch, reboot, do all the things. I got my husband involved and we were watching all the YouTube videos and everything that they say that you should do. I called Apple support. I called a person on the island who does computer stuff. Tears were shed, nothing was changing, like I did everything and still had the black screen. And so I chucked myself in on Monday morning to the computer store in town and right now my computer's in Maui. It's not even on the island. They had to send it to the Big Mac store and it is apparently getting fixed and something is happening with the screen. The screen just wasn't displaying anything. The computer still works, so that's the good news. But I have some costly repairs coming my way this week and hopefully this time next week I will have my computer back and I will be back in action again.

Speaker 2: 23:19

But I have to tell you that that just took the wind out of my sails. I had all this inspirational energy and I sat down to just launch it and to start doing it and the first thing I was met with was like this barrier, this obstacle, that was like you can't work on this right now. You have to go troubleshoot this instead. And so I've been kind of piecemealing things this week. Thankfully I have some other devices. I don't have a computer, but I have an iPad, and I have a business iPhone and a personal iPhone, and between all of that I've had access to the basics of what I need. I've had to use my husband's computer. That's how I spliced the music into the podcast last week. And when I said earlier you might hear roosters, I have my big podcasting microphone plugged into my iPhone because I don't have my computer that I usually make it on, so I think my voice is clear. But if you have heard background noise today and have heard the roosters crowing or anything like that, I don't have the technology that I usually use that helps drown that out.

Speaker 2: 24:25

So we are making do and I am being resilient and I am learning that barriers to inspiration are just that. They help us pause, they help us regroup, they help us reflect. They might not always feel particularly fair when we get a barrier. They might not always feel like there's a rhyme or a reason to them. But I do think when we are feeling inspired to do something, sometimes life just happens and we get a curveball and the timetable changes and we lose a little bit of momentum. But we have to trust that whatever we feel inspired to move our energy towards, if it's meant for us, it will still be there. Maybe we create it in a different way if we don't have access to the things that we had hoped for and we have to get a little bit resourceful in how we're going about doing something. Maybe we have the inspiration and the big picture comes through and then the timing's not there and we're not able to really take action on something until a little bit further down the line because life keeps throwing us curveballs. None of those things mean that we don't have an inspired life. We can always work with inspiration from any of those levels of the big macro picture, the meso-middle picture of just showing up and taking steps, and the micro, day-to-day pictures of being inspired by nature, by our lives, by our own journey. How can we inspire ourselves? How can we learn to see ourselves as the inspiration and the catalyst in our life?

Speaker 2: 26:02

I love the idea for inspiration of just making a list of what inspires you. What do you feel inspired to create right now and how have you inspired yourself in your own journey? How have you shown up for yourself? How have you taken a risk or a leap or made a change? How have you been brave? How have you been the hero, the shero, how have you been the source of inspiration in your own journey and if you're struggling for inspiration, then open up to the universe, open up to your angels, open up to your spiritual connection, your connection with energy, and just say help me feel inspired right now, help me to live with more inspiration, Help me to see the areas of my life where I can bring the quality of inspiration into it. I want to close today with a passage from Small Pearl's Big Wisdom. This is called A she Rose Point of View and, as I said earlier, it was originally part of that first blog for the your Heart Magic newsletter back in 2019, and it's been cleaned up and condensed to be published in this latest work, a she RoseRo's point of view.

Speaker 2: 27:15

Living an inspired life isn't about hopping from one giant aha moment to the next. It's not about keeping the momentum going all the time. It's not about never having crashes, burns and false starts. True inspiration is about showing up. It's about taking small, measurable steps that move you towards your dreams. It's about acknowledging those steps for what they are you doing you and being your dream shaker and change maker.

Speaker 2: 27:46

Each of us is living out our story of inspiration.

Speaker 2: 27:50

If we can learn to see ourselves through the right lens, we have to learn to see ourselves as the heroes and sheroes in our own stories.

Speaker 2: 27:59

Even if we're the unlikely protagonist or the dark horse story, we must learn to see the perseverance, grace and diligence it's taken to get this far.

Speaker 2: 28:11

We have to see ourselves through a bigger scope of possibility and keep re-scripting our narratives to honor the courage, heart and kindness it requires to take this human journey and engage with life from a wholehearted space, to heal our wounds, uncover our traumas, grow in wisdom and do the good work of soul becoming. Even in our dark stories we can find ways to see our resilience, to cover the story with grace, to forgive ourselves for what we didn't know or do, to notice our strengths, to look for the buried light of hope and to see ourselves through a shero's point of view. We can learn that inspiration isn't always a glorious flame but can be a quiet spark we nourish with persistent affirmation, fortitude and fervent belief in our possibility. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I will be back next week with a new episode on psychology, spirituality, heart, wisdom and storytelling. In the meantime, as always, be well, be love, be you and be magic you've been listening to your heart magic with dr bethan kapansky.

Speaker 1: 29:40

Right tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light.