What inspires you? Most of us would answer with the name of someone we admire. But do heroes actually inspire us or do we simply wish to emulate them? Inspiration is defined as something that stimulates the human mind to creative thought. Heroes don’t stimulate creative thought. They stimulate us to want a creative thought like theirs. If you agree, consider the following and then call on inspiration at will.

1. We talk ourselves out of inspiration because we don’t accept where inspiration really comes from. Thomas Edison said that genius is 99 percent perspiration and one percent inspiration. That’s it. From perspiration, comes inspiration. Now that is not exactly what Mr. Edison said, but think about it. Have you ever known inspiration to consistently happen for you any other way? Accept that inspiration is a process of discovery.

2. Don’t stare at a blank piece of paper. Scribble. There may be a few prodigies like Mozart, who write down a masterpiece perfectly on the first draft, but most people who create are more like Beethoven. His manuscripts were a mess. Revisions and corrections scribbled all over the page until it was probably only understandable to him. Why? He had to get rid of the dross to get to the gold. There is nothing wrong with finding inspiration like Beethoven did.

3. Talk to one of your heroes. Ask them how they do it. They will say that their best work did not come from some magical gift of genetics. It happened in a most ordinary way: they worked their magical tail off.

4. Ignore the looming disaster. Push down the fear that when you dip your bucket into the inspiration well, you will find it dry. Remember the typical reasons for failure: not enough time, too many restrictions, etc. These exist in all examples of success. Failure doesn’t happen because of obstacles. Failure happens when people talk themselves out of success. Champion athletes all say they imagine success before they go out and succeed. Masters champion, Ray Floyd said he willed long putts into the hole. He was in the moment, totally focused on the task at hand. When you can focus like that, there is no room left for doubt.

5. Inspiration comes during the doing. You can’t do a trick on a skateboard until you get the skateboard moving. The same principle applies to an inspired idea. It’s all about momentum. One idea leads to another, then another. And there aren’t great tricks without falling a few times and letting a little blood. Jump on your creation skateboard and get moving. You’ll soon move past ollies to a trick no one else has done. Don’t be surprised if they name it after you.

6. Identify your motivation. I remember a line from a movie with Cary Grant playing an ad executive. He’s asked where he gets his inspiration to create ads.

“The landlady delivers it once a month,” he says.

As humorous as his answer is, it is something to seriously consider. If you don’t have an end goal or purpose, there is no way to sustain your motivation to become inspired. A friend of mine used the acronym BEHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) to describe what is needed for inspiration. I find it ironic that “behag” means pleasure in Swedish. So the planets are aligned, you must have a BEHAG if you want to be inspired.

I read that Einstein was motivated by the desire to formulate physics in terms of observable quantities. Note that he was motivated by a desire before he was inspired. So too was Cary Grant’s character. He desired not to sleep on the street, so he was motivated to pay the rent.

This may sound rudimentary, but I’m always talking with people in my industry who want to make great ads, but don’t seem to know why. Granted being recognized by your peers comes to mind, but do that a couple of times and you’ll soon lose your motivation. A moment in the limelight just doesn’t feel good enough to keep one motivated for a career. Madonna’s answer to Dick Clark when he asked what she wanted in life was; “I want to rule the world.”