Refilling your inspiration bucket.
Tick Tock. Tick Tock. Day in, day out. Days, weeks, months go by before we realise it. Doesn’t it seem to you that time moves faster each year?
As we lead busy lives, the day to day toll of work can leave us operating with a leaky bucket. Inspiration, curiosity, and energy can drain out little by little. If we aren’t careful, our bucket can run empty. We struggle to find our creativity and lose our motivation.
We often hear about the importance of taking a vacation, and most of us are able to make the time to take them. Vacations are great for getting rest and having adventures; they aren’t the only things that are good for you though. For example, I’d like to know how often you intentionally refill our inspiration bucket? Do you have a plan for how you can refill yours?
For many years, I have been attending live theatre. My memories of theatre date back to my childhood. My grandmother used to take me to see a few theatre productions each year. Whilst I don’t remember the shows I saw, I remember the experience of theatre.
Today, I love and cherish the experience. Live theatre has been a key source of inspiration for my maverick inspiration bucket. I’d encourage you to consider attending live theatre and testing out the wonder of the experience, for yourself.
Refilling your inspiration bucket
What is it about the theatre that has been so important? Could this be the source you need to re-fill your inspiration bucket? Here are four questions to ask yourself to see if theatre might help you.
- Do you struggle to disconnect from technology? In the rapid pace of building a company or working hard at our jobs, it can feel like you are always on. When you are attending theatre, it is a blissful, joyful, dare I say, gleeful, few hours without your devices. No one wants to be “that person” in the theatre whose phone interrupts the production. Phone screens are visible across the theatre if you turn them on. It’s not even remotely tempting to have your phone on to “check” on things. This helps you break that phone cycle addiction, for a few hours at least.
- Do you struggle to rest your mind? If you are struggling to find your own internal off switch, this may help. Going to the theatre allows your mind a chance to get away from your everyday problems. It gives you something fresh to consider. My brain gets a chance to rest by fully immersing it in a different experience – yours may too.
- Do you need fresh perspectives to challenge how you approach problems? When you go to the theatre, you watch a story unfold in front of you. You see what the characters experience. You stretch your own experiences and understanding through the shared experience of theatre. Theatre lets the audience quietly observe and experience what they see. This often enables me to build empathy for others that might not look like me or have my life experiences.
Refilling your inspiration bucket is extremely important
Social media and television can be very confrontational and demanding. Our outrage is often demanded. It can be mentally and physically exhausting when this is our main entertainment. Most theatres I’ve attended don’t confront or demand I do something. Instead, theatre presents its case and lets me draw my own conclusions. Each person receives the grace to draw their own conclusions. Conclusions that can provide context for their own life experiences.
This is the true beauty of theatre. There is no one right answer. Some of the most interesting insights can come to you after the production, especially when other attendees share what they took away. Well done theatre will leave you percolating. You’ll be contemplating new perspectives for days and weeks.
Do you need a fresh perspective on your own challenges?
It’s easy to become completely obsessed with our problems and the things we focus on in our companies. Becoming obsessed with our own challenges can cause us to lose sight of the bigger picture. We can make big decisions to relieve temporary pain. Attending theatre lets you step back and put all those problems to the side for a short period of time. These problems get their own space to simply “be” for a period of time.
Take the time to immerse yourself in a set of experiences that are not your own. Then when you return there is a renewed sense of gratitude for your own life and experiences. This allows solutions to emerge that were unattainable when we were obsessed with the problem.
Do you have a plan on how you will refresh and renew your sources of inspiration this year? As you consider all you want to accomplish, I hope you’ll consider a few side trips to see live theatre. New experiences and fresh perspectives may be just the refill you need for your inspiration bucket.
