Seeing:Art, orig­i­nally uploaded by Thorsten Becker.

I’ve recently pon­dered a bit the rela­tion between inspi­ra­tion and moti­va­tion. Accord­ing to Dictionary.com inspi­ra­tion is defined as:

1. an inspir­ing or ani­mat­ing action or influ­ence: I can­not write poetry with­out inspi­ra­tion.
2. some­thing inspired, as an idea.
3. a result of inspired activ­ity.
4. a thing or per­son that inspires.
5. The­ol­ogy.
a. a divine influ­ence directly and imme­di­ately exerted upon the mind or soul.
b. the divine qual­ity of the writ­ings or words of a per­son so influ­enced.
6. the draw­ing of air into the lungs; inhala­tion.
7. the act of inspir­ing; qual­ity or state of being inspired.

Moti­va­tion is defined as:

1. the act or an instance of moti­vat­ing.
2. the state or con­di­tion of being moti­vated.
3. some­thing that moti­vates; induce­ment; incentive.

Inspi­ra­tion can be a form of moti­va­tion but my per­sonal expe­ri­ence taught me that this is not always the case. While I often feel inspired by many things around me — music, books, pho­tos, art — it does not nec­es­sar­ily moti­vate me to be cre­ative. Admit­tedly I am as much a cre­ative mind as a log­i­cal thinker. While my cre­ative side gets inspired with rel­a­tive ease my log­i­cal side needs to have a rea­son to turn this into a spe­cific action (com­pos­ing, writ­ing, draw­ing). At times it is com­pul­sory (based on my cur­rent mood) but even in those cases a cer­tain motive is appar­ent (I do it because I feel good and it “fits” the mood).

I believe there are many cre­ative peo­ple out there who aren’t always aware of their poten­tial due to a lack of motive. It seems in our mod­ern soci­ety the main moti­va­tion is money. We do it if it sells. This atti­tude is more dom­i­nant in con­sumer dri­ven nations. As a Euro­pean I am used to doing things sim­ply because I enjoy them. How­ever, liv­ing in the US for sev­eral years now I find that I’ve become more con­cerned with the ques­tion of prof­itabil­ity due to the gen­eral atti­tude. If it can’t be prof­itable it is not as desir­able to pur­sue. That is a rather dis­turb­ing obser­va­tion and per­cep­tion. I am now actively focus­ing again on being cre­ative so that I may express myself, be myself. I feel most sat­is­fied look­ing at life as a per­pet­ual cycle of Inspi­ra­tion Moti­va­tion. What inspires me can and should moti­vate me to be cre­ative dri­ven by the desire to inspire oth­ers who are then moti­vated to be cre­ative them­selves, which in turn inspires me again. Hence, instead of pri­mar­ily look­ing for inspi­ra­tion to turn my cre­ativ­ity into a prof­itable busi­ness I am again open to any form of inspi­ra­tion moti­vated by the desire to ben­e­fit oth­ers. This not only leads to a richer, deeper life expe­ri­ence but also enables me to pur­sue a much more ful­fill­ing and encom­pass­ing cre­ative career.