How to be Insightful

You're wasting the magic you already have + book me for private consulting

ANNOUNCEMENT: I’ve launched a 1-1 consulting service to provide support tailored to your situation. It’s a 60-minute call to talk about literally anything — past conversations include business branding, heartbreak counselling, talks about God, and overcoming creative blocks... let’s just say there’s a reason I’m keeping this unstructured, open-ended, and informal. Confidential, of course.

Not ready for 1-1? Maybe the following will give you something to think about:

---

Stop chasing miracles.

Miracles, by definition, are things that happen outside of your control. Insights can be miraculous, do not rely on miracles for your insights. Instead, OBSERVE THE MUNDANE:

In the name of convenience, we take life to go. We drink coffee from single-use paper cups with plastic lids. We eat our lunches from cardboard boxes. We drink while we walk, and we eat while we talk. We refuse to slow down because the next exciting thing is always calling to us from “over there.” So, our lives happen in tomorrowland. Never here. Never now. Never in the present.

We think experiences are split into two types: “the mundane” and “the miraculous.” We rush through the mundane and chase the miraculous. We take life to go.

This creates the misconception that insights must come from some divine source, that every lightbulb moment requires a heavenly bolt of light. We have normalized the idea that insights are something holy (literally, exalted and set apart). We don’t expect it to happen while we’re brushing our teeth or looking for matching socks. We assume that insights must come through extraordinary methods — by the miraculous. But that’s not the case.

George de Mestral, the Swiss engineer who invented Velcro, had the idea for the fastening system after observing how burrs stuck to his clothes and his dog’s fur during a walk in the woods. Known for its function and comfort, Charles Eames’s iconic Eames Lounge Chair was influenced by the shape of a baseball glove. Alan Watts understood the impermanence of human life by observing the flow of rivers and streams.

These creators didn’t take life to go. They moved slowly and found inspiration in mundane moments. If you stop and listen, the rhythm of life can be breathtaking. The motions of washing dishes. The tempo of a commute through a busy city. The symphony of textures, colors, and sounds at a mall — all these mundane moments can be inspiring.

One of my most-asked questions is, “Where do you get your ideas from (for your writing)?” and the answer is: everywhere. I get my ideas by observing what happens to me today, every day. The follow-up question is usually, “Do you only write when you’re inspired?” and the answer is: yes, but luckily for me, I am easily inspired.

I think of inspiration as a surface area you can expand with your curiosity. The more you make yourself open to what you see and hear, the more they inspire you. Salvador Dalí painted The Persistence of Memory after watching Camembert cheese melt in the sun. Jørn Utzon got the idea for the unique shape of the Sydney Opera House one morning while peeling an orange.

We’ve all seen baseball gloves and flowing rivers and had burrs stuck to our clothes, yet not all of us become de Mestral, Watts, or Eames. Few people allow melting cheese or peeling oranges to be a wellspring of inspiration. Yet, the names we talk about when we think of “the greats” have all made extraordinary things out of painfully plain, inexpensive, natural, and menial things.

The world has stories for those who listen and ideas for those who observe. Yet, insights will escape you if you are too busy chasing the miraculous. Slow down. Observe. Absorb. Then, create.

Okay… now are you interested in the 1-1?

You might like these:

There is a you-shaped hole in the world that no one is able to fill except you. How do you find that? Do not try.

To create is to reveal what only we can see to everyone else, using ourselves as an instrument to deliver beauty out of what’s in front of us.

Good taste is a sign of good judgment.

---