30 Day Journal Affirmation Challenge (Day 12) Response
Note: This essay was written for my ENGL1302 classes, as an example essay.
“Too often we spend our lives consuming the world around us instead of creating it. – James Clear
In "The Two Types of
Inspiration” by James Clear, he points out that if you want to get somewhere
and do something, you need to use active inspiration instead of passive
inspiration, because passive inspiration only gets you thoughts.
James Clear is a New York Times bestselling author. His book, Atomic
Habits, has sold over 5 million copies and was listed on the New York Times bestseller list for over
a year. He has written and published a
number of articles for various well-known magazines, such as Entrepreneur Magazine, Time Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. As
a prolific author, he understands needing and getting inspiration.
In his article, Clear tells
readers, instead of wasting time consuming information from others, you must
apply the information to yourself, so that you can discover yourself, create
something, move forward, and progress.
This is active inspiration, not passive inspiration which is simply
consuming information.
He says it is important to learn,
but do not simply use this learning to search for things to inspire you, you
need to apply what you learned to yourself and your life. Only learning from others, gaining from
others, and consuming information is passive inspiration. You learn, but it is inactive and you are not
creating. You must use active
inspiration. That is create, apply, and make something in order to discover
things about yourself, such as who you are and what is important to you.
Consuming information creates a fading thrill, but acting and being hands on
creates lasting progression or movement.
Clear defines passive inspiration
as “consuming the success and ideas of others” by watching videos, reading
articles, or listening to interviews. He
suggests that you learn from these activities, but you do not do anything.
Active inspiration is blatantly
different than its counterpart, passive inspiration. Active inspiration is “—
the act of creating things, applying new ideas to our goals, and making
mistakes — that we discover who we are and what is important to us” (Clear).
He contrasts active and passive
inspiration succinctly by saying, “Watching someone else's success might leave
you feeling excited for a few minutes, but taking action and applying a new
idea to your life will inspire you more than anything someone else could say”
(Clear). Acquiring and consuming is
thinking. Crafting, generating, and testing is progress. You must act or create by using the ideas you
come across, and be sure to gain inspiration from creating.
Clear demonstrates what to do when
you come across ideas. “It's about stumbling across a brilliant idea and bringing it to life in your work. It's
about finding a new strategy and applying
it your own goals. It's about learning a new exercise and adding it to your workout. The
application of ideas will always be more powerful than the ideas themselves”
(Clear).
Clear’s point is apparent. To be inspired, action must take place. The best inspiration you can have is to create
or act. You must move past the will to
consume and move to the act to create.
The two types of inspiration that Clear introduces readers to lead them
to understand that they must do something.
As mentioned earlier, he defines passive inspiration as consuming
information, but not doing anything with the information afterwards. He directs reader’s attention to the fact that
many of them read and view what others say to get themselves inspired. He reminds them, “You might learn something,
but you don't actually have to do anything.” This is inactive because you only sit and
view. While you may learn something from
just sitting, you do not gain anything.
You do not move. You do not
act. You have to do more than view the
information. Passive inspiration does
nothing for you other than give you information.
He states that active inspiration
is the best way to be inspired. He says,
“active inspiration is what results in long—term passion and enthusiasm”
(Clear). If you are looking for
inspiration, being active and creating, applying, making, and using information
is the best way to become passionate and enthusiastic about what you are
doing. In other words, when you begin to
do, you will continue to do, thereby getting more ideas and inspiration to keep
doing. This is the essence of active
inspiration. It moves you forward. It helps you see who you are and be more of
who you are. Acting creates
movement. Movement creates inspiration.
Active inspiration is
powerful. Clear shows this by giving
examples of how active inspiration works.
He writes, “taking action and applying new idea to life will inspire you
more than anything someone else could say.”
This suggests that action is the best way to maintain a lifestyle of
inspiration. You doing something to
create action and movement and that will inspire you more than what anyone can
say or do. You must act and create.
He does say that we can consume
ideas to get started, but we must take this consumption a step further and use
it to craft.
Clear says:
It's about stumbling
across a brilliant idea and bringing it to life in your work. It's
about finding a new strategy and applying it your own goals. It's
about learning a new exercise and adding it to your workout. The
application of ideas will always be more powerful than the ideas themselves
While getting an idea from someone
is good, the idea becomes more real to you when you use it. Getting an idea is a start, but you must work
to change it or add to it to become and stay passionate and excited about your
work. The more you use your own
motivation, the more you will be inspired to create.
Clear uses a quote by Derek Sivers
that shows how powerful the application of ideas is. “The inspiration is not the receiving of
information. The inspiration is applying what you’ve received.” You must do more than receive. Application is action. Google.com Dictionary defines application as
“the action of pushing something into operation.” Since action is doing
something, Clear’s use of Sivers quote provides great impact and adds more to
Clear’s argument. This makes Clear’s
overall idea more understandable. You
have to apply the information you receive and make it your own to create better
things. What you do with information
will get you excited and passionate, not the information itself. Our actions can inspire us to do great
things. As Clear states, “don't forget
about the power your actions have to inspire you.” When you act, you get
motivated. When you get motivated, you
do more. When you do more, you create
better things, when you create better things, you add to the world; thus, making
it a better place.
In his article, “Where Do You Get
Your Ideas?” Neil Gaiman echoes Clears point that action is better than getting
information. Gaiman’s article answers a
question that he gets asked all the time by fans and people he meets. The question is where do you get your
ideas. He answers the question in the
article; by stating multiple ways he gets them, but makes the point that
getting ideas is not as important as creating with those ideas.
Gaiman writes:
The Ideas aren't the
hard bit. They're a small component of the whole. Creating believable people
who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is
the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to
construct whatever it is you're trying to build: making it interesting, making
it new.
This echoes what Clear says…
Getting the idea or inspiration is not what matters. Creating something after you get an is what
is important. Ideas happen all the time,
as Gaiman says in his article, when he writes, “You get
ideas all the time.” This lends to
Clear’s notion that action is key, not ideas, because ideas happen all the
time. Gaiman does note that writers have
an advantage when it comes to getting ideas or inspiration. He writes, “You get
ideas all the time. The only difference
between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.” This suggests that everyone is capable of
getting ideas, even though they may not realize it.
Gaiman further illustrates Clear’s
point about creating when he says, “… your task is to make things up
convincingly and interestingly and new.”
This suggests that creating, acting, and moving is more profitable than
getting an idea. Inspiration comes from
creating. Both Gaiman and Clear
understand this intention of creating is better than consuming. They both must continue to be inspired so
that they can continue to produce what their readers consume. They both know they must move from getting an
idea or inspiration to creating something convincing, interesting, and new.
Gaiman, too, gives an illustration
of how to get inspired by acting. He
says, “My idea of hell is a blank sheet of paper. Or a blank
screen. And me, staring at it, unable to think of a single thing worth saying… I
wrote my way out of it, though.” This
suggests that the way he came up with an idea was to write or to act by writing. He says that he was scared, but was brave
enough to act. He writes, “[I] took my
own terror, and the core idea [or inspiration], and crafted a story called Calliope,
which explains, I think pretty definitively, where writers get their ideas from.” This shows that to act is to be inspired. Gaiman seems to say to writers, when you need
inspiration; write. Clear says the same
things to everyone, when you need inspiration, create.
Clear tells us that we must be
inspired by our own actions. We cannot
just consume the ideas or thoughts of others.
Active inspiration is creating and using information, which is the best
of the two types of inspiration. We
cannot passively consume what others say and do and expect to be passionate or
excited. This article should inspire us
to act… We must ask ourselves, are we consumers or are we creators.
Works Cited Page
Clear, James. “About James Clear.” James Clear, James
Clear, 3 Aug. 2021, https://jamesclear.com/about.
Clear, James. “The
Two Types of Inspiration.” James Clear, James Clear, 24 Oct. 2018,
jamesclear.com/inspiration-types.
Gaiman, Neil. “Where Do You Get Your Ideas?” Neil Gaiman | Cool Stuff | Essays | Essays By Neil, Harper Collins Publishers, www.neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Essays/Essays_By_Neil/Where_do_you_get_your_ideas%253F.