Types of inspiration
Within your field - exciting things that are happening in the circles that you travel and others are doing in your field
Outside your industry - Looking at the world through the eyes of patterns and frameworks
Internal - your experiences
Nature - organic (the natural world) Inspiration is fuel to me. It fills me up.
I love looking around for things that inspire me... things that light internal fires that I can use to propel me forwarding some way. But I also see the danger in relying on one type of inspiration... the things closest to me in my industry. The things that people are doing to the left and right of me on a similar path.
I find that when the inspiration I look to is too close to me I fall into the trap of comparison quickly. The closer a concept is to me the faster and easier I fall into feelings of not being good enough.
So conversely, the further away inspiration is from my immediate sphere of action, the more original and energized I become. It prowls me forward in new and unique ways. I don't fall into the trap of comparison because there is nothing to compare this inspired action to. No one else is doing 'it' in this way.
The worse I feel about myself as a creator, I have found, the more I am looking to sources too close to me. I have to widen up the circle. I have to go further to fuel myself up.
By widening the sphere of inspiration to things like:
Going for a walk without the distraction of a phone and meditating on nature and the natural world around me
Looking to the distant past for the ways people thought about similar problems... not just the solutions they used
Making notes on the patterns and frameworks of arriving at a new solution are always useful
Overlaying that way of thinking to other industries and seeing how problems are solved in areas far outside of my own experience
Looking to the origins of where current trends emerged and seeing what may be missing or underutilized
Always going back to my own core values and ideals to see how these concepts match up or don't so I can make decisions right for me
All of these things help me to open my mind to new and divergent solutions to simple (and complex) problems in my day to day. I find that it helps me to have a broader understanding of the solutions available to me for whatever it is that I am working on... from organizing my home to designing a product for a client to painting a picture or even writing a blog post. All areas that I have looked to a wider scope of inspiration to find a way forward that most closely slings with the world I want to live in and to solve the immediate problems I face in new and unique ways.