I was getting my hair colored yesterday and my tech asked me what’s inspired me this week. We were discussing The Good Life Project.

It made me think about all the books I was reading (yes, I read four or five at a time), the articles I see, the videos I watch. All the moments when I have to grab my Remarkable (which is the greatest invention of all time) and write down a quote so that I don’t lose it.

I define inspiration as anything that spurs me to more creativity, more generosity, more energy. Just More.

And it made me wonder if you might also want to know what I’m finding inspiring. It made me want to be more of an inspiration myself

Here’s the top five list of what I found inspiring this week:

1. Austin Kleon’s Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

If you’ve never read Kleon, you’re missing out. Several years ago I found Steal Like an Artist, a book all about art at its best being derivative. It was a relief to have someone say, “Yeah, feel free to write in exactly the same style as the authors you admire, because there’s something to be said for tailoring your own story, painting, song, etc. after those of the masters while telling your own story.”

It’s not plagiarism. It’s creating something new in an old form. It’s learning what works and then applying your own magic to it. At least that’s what I recall.

Keep Going is a short book about creativity and how to keep going. It’s just what I’ve been needing lately. There’s been some chaos in my world, and rather than feeding my creativity, I’ve been warily circling it. Thinking About versus Doing.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Keep Going:

Every day is created from scratch.

Every day is brand new. And that’s true about everything. But especially when you work at something creative (which I think we all do in one form or another), your work is never done, thank God! Every day is Groundhog Day.

Every day we begin again, fresh and open to possibility. And the practice of doing this every single day, of treating your craft with respect and care and giving it the hour or two or ten that it deserves, is how we stay the course in good times and bad.

That’s why I’m here today. This is the hour I’m giving myself to be creative and perhaps inspiring before the rest of the world creeps in with its demands.

2.  Tania Katan’s Creative Trespassing

Disclosure: Tania Katan is way too cool to travel in my social circles, and yet, somehow, she showed up at a party at my house a couple of weeks ago with the also too-cool-to-be-my-friend-but-he-is Jock Soto. She and her wife Angela just waltzed in the door as if they weren’t celebrities. We shared drinks and stories and they hung out in my backyard.

They even took home some produce from my garden. Does that make me sort of a celebrity friend? And I’ve hired Tania to be my coach for my next book proposal – I’m willing to pay her to be my friend if I have to.

But Creative Trespassing is beyond amazing. (More disclosure – if you happen to order the books at the links I provide, there’s a chance my Amazon affiliate link will actually work and I may make a few cents.) Here’s one of my favorite sections, verbatim, and it’s at the very beginning:

“You don’t need to turn into a corporate drone in order to kick ass in the working world. In fact, I’m here to tell you that you already have everything you need to stand out, take risks, and have a helluva lot of fun doing it. All you really have to do is trust your instincts, fire up your imagination, and stop apologizing for your magic and start unleashing it in the world.”

I could write an entire book about trusting your instincts and firing up your imagination and STOPPING THE APOLOGIZING because I’m an expert at not doing any of these things.  (And yes, I’m aware that there was someone else who wrote a book by that title, but I’m not inviting her to my parties.)

The reason I was so inspired by Tania is that it’s taken me decades to start trusting my instincts rather than looking both right and left before I say anything to be sure I’m not going to offend anyone. Tania is all about disrupting. She’s the brain behind the “It was never about the dress” campaign that taught us the ladies room symbol was perhaps a female sporting a cape.

Talk about spinning old symbols on their head. Talk about disruption.

Get the book. I’m about halfway through and inspired every time I turn a page. This Quay County girl might become a disrupter after all.

3.  The Good Life Project Podcast, July 18 Episode with Ron Friedman, Ph.D. on The Truth About Greatness

I’m a podcast junky, just like 90% of the rest of you, and I hear a lot of amazing people discuss ideas that never occurred to this late bloomer. Sometimes I listen twice, and because my brain is older than it used to be, I try to capture the lines that resonate. In this episode, Dr. Friedman visits with host Jonathan Fields (talk about a celebrity I want to have show up at my parties!) about how the old models say that greatness is either an innate talent you’re born with, or it’s created through repetition, as in the Malcolm Gladwell model of 10,000 hours of practice.

Both paths suggest that in order to be GREAT at something, we either have to be born with amazing talent or spend the next several years perfecting and practicing. Dr. Friedman, after exhaustive research, argues that another answer is that we can also find greatness by deconstructing artists, authors, works, etc. that we admire and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. He doesn’t suggest that we copy so much as we learn from what others are doing successfully.

It’s the old “why reinvent the wheel” idea, one that I fully embrace since I don’t have decades (or the patience) to devote to 10,000 hours of practice.

There was something else Dr. Friedman said that resonated with me. He and Fields talk about the three things that make up a perfect day. He suggested we define those three things and then try to fit them into each day. Friedman said his three things were “learning, creativity, and exercise.” It was a light bulb moment for me, because those are my three things! I just never knew how to quantify them.

Simple right? What are the three things your perfect day includes?

And lest you feel guilty because you didn’t say something like “time with family,” Friedman is quick to say that those human pieces, the things you need to do to feel loving and loved, are essential, but not necessary to your list. The three things, as I understand them, are the activities you need in your perfect day to get you closer to the greatness of your unique self.

Which means that I need to go for a long walk as soon as I’m done here.

4.  My own podcast on Authentic Gratitude with Danielle Ripley Burgess 

I encourage you to give this a listen. Danielle was diagnosed with colon cancer at 17 and wrote a book about that experience  – Blush: How I Barely Survived 17.  I thought when we began the podcast that we’d talk about Danielle’s cancer and how her life now was so much more glorious for that crazy, awful, but inspiring experience.

except. . .

as often happens, in fact every time we record a podcast, my preconceived notions about what’s going to happen are quickly dashed and my guests share something unexpected. And more inspiring than I might have ever imagined.

This was a hard week for Danielle, and she was noticeably less enthusiastic than I’ve known her to be in the past. As we talked, she revealed that this was perhaps the worst week since her diagnosis two decades ago. And yet she showed up. She shared.

She talked about how gratitude doesn’t solve everything, it just makes what seems unbearable easier to navigate.

Take a listen. See if you’re not inspired as well.

5.  My friends Lynne and Bob who reached the end of their cancer journey.

Like Danielle, this has been a hard couple of weeks for me too. I wish gratitude fixed everything. I wish everyone’s life could be saved. I spend a lot of time feeling guilty that I’m a survivor.

In the past two weeks, two people I love reached the end of their cancer journey. I hate to say they “lost the battle,” because that’s bullshit. They didn’t lose, any more than I won. They simply stayed the course and then when it became too much for their body to endure another minute of wracking pain and torment, they stopped breathing and passed on from this world into the next.

Lynne had lung cancer. I wrote about her in a FB post on July 30 here. She was such a gift in my life, so much more optimistic and caring and gracious than I could ever hope to be. She never stopped smiling or checking in on all of us even when she was trying to catch her breath in the last couple of months. In a text she sent me on July 11, she asked about our mutual friend Bob. “He and Kathy both remain in my prayers, and if you see them, please extend my love. Such exciting times to be alive! Life is good!”

And then my friend Bob passed away this past Tuesday night. The last time I saw him, as we ate a lemon pie I made to try to fatten him up, he said, “You know, this stuff they’re trying now, I’m calling my last ditch effort. But you never know, right?” He had endured a series of chemo treatments that burned his skin from the inside out, and yet he was determined to live as long as possible. He survived over five years with stage IV prostate cancer. He went hiking and biking and camping and continued to work and plant vegetables with the love of his life, and he hung on for a granddaughter they were raising, a sweet, smart girl who will start her senior year of high school without Bob in her corner. Except that I know Bob. He’ll be in her corner, even if she can’t see him.

I’m inspired by the human spirit, by the people who endure unspeakable pain to get through every day for the people they love.

I’m more than a bit pissed off at a system that lets mean people live and good people die, but I didn’t invent the system. I just have to exist in it the best way I know how.

Where’s your inspiration this week? Should I do this every Friday, giving you a little extra something to ponder over the weekend? Because in the end, sometimes just sharing our highs and lows is the best way to take care of one another.

Thanks for checking in.