August 8, 2025 • 34 mins
Is inspiration a luxury? A privilege? Do we have to go without inspiration in times of war or chaos or change? Or, is inspiration an absolutely vital part of life? In this episode, I share why I think inspiration is essential to human existence and talk about the simple things we can do to stay inspired.
How do you stay inspired? I’d love to hear from you. Write your list of 10 ways to stay inspired and tag me on Instagram!
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun. When
you write your story, you get the words and said,
don't you think it's time to let them out and
write them down? And Colord, it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write you write your story. Hi, and welcome
back to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon,
I'm your host, and on today's episode, I want to
talk about inspiration. I want to talk about where inspiration
comes from, why staying inspired is so important, talk about
the things that we do to stay inspired. And I'm
(00:48):
recording this episode from my home, from the guest room
in my home. Actually, I have tucked myself back in
a tiny little corner. I mentioned on the last week's
episode that I'm in a little bit of a transition
as far as how I record this podcast, which is cool.
The house that is right next door to my house
we purchased in order to renovate it and make a
(01:09):
space for my mother in law to move in next door.
We're very excited to have her here and as part
of that, we're also building out an addition in the
back for a little learning slash education school space for
our kids that we're going to invite some of the
neighborhood kids and do a little homeschool co op situation.
We're figuring it out as we go, not exactly sure
what it's going to be, but a learning environment for
(01:31):
kids in the community, including our kids. And then also
in the basement, we're building out a podcast studio. So
that's so exciting because it just means well, exciting for
me because more convenience, but also exciting for the podcast
because the quality of the sound is just going to
keep improving and improving, and there's so many amazing things
(01:51):
that I can do and guess that I can have
on when I've got a space where I can invite
people to come and record. So I'm really excited about that.
I think it's perfect that I'm sitting where I'm I
think recording this episode right now about inspiration because it's
currently eight forty at night, the night before this podcast
is supposed to go live. Shout out to my producer Houston,
because he's being very patient with me and staying up
(02:12):
late to edit this podcast and get it up early
tomorrow morning. I'm down to the wire, which is not
usually how I do things, but you know, such as life,
sometimes things just unfold the way that they unfold. So,
like I said, I'm kind of shoved in this back
corner my kids. I just got my kids to sleep.
This is kind of the first window that I've had
in the day to get this done. And I've been
(02:34):
talking with so many people this week and last week
about this idea of inspiration. It's been on my mind NonStop,
and I have so many things I want to say
about it, and I want to just open a dialogue
about inspiration because I have things that I want to say,
things that I feel passionate about that I think are
really valuable to share. But also I know that you'll
(02:56):
have things that are valuable to say and to share,
and you'll have feedback for me on the questions that
I pose. You don't have to give that feedback directly
back to me, although I would love for you too
if you want to reach out on Instagram and send
me a DM there, that would be wonderful. But you
can also just use these questions that I'm going to
ask as little conversation starters in your own community, in
(03:19):
your own friend groups, or as writing props for yourself,
because if you're anything like me, and I think this
is more than just me, I think this is a
global thing happening right now, because this conversation keeps coming
up again and again and again, and if you're anything
like me and like the people that I've talked to
in the last couple of weeks, this is a big topic.
This is something that we're really wrestling with right now.
(03:40):
It's attention that we're living in. And I want to
talk about all the reasons why, and I want to
talk about why I think this is such a massively
important conversation. Before I dive into all of that, I
do want to make sure that you know that as
you're listening to this, if you're listening to this the
day it's live, you have twenty four hours left to
join me for a book and six Months, which is
(04:00):
my program where we walk through the process of writing
a book manuscript together in six months. So we will
literally start July tenth, which if you're listening to this
to the day that it goes live, that's tomorrow. We'll
start Wednesday, July tenth as a group, and we will
by Christmas of this year Christmas of twenty twenty four,
you will be holding your finished manuscript in your hands.
(04:24):
This program is for anybody who has that nagging feeling
that they're supposed to write a book. This doesn't need
to be for someone who has publishing connections. Is doesn't
have to be for someone who has a degree in writing,
for someone who feels like they're a great writer, who
feels like they're a great writer. Even great writers don't
feel like they're great writers. It doesn't have to be
(04:45):
for someone who has a highly defined book idea. In fact,
none of those things aren't necessary to join this program.
This program is for someone who has a nagging feeling
that they're supposed to write a book, something they can't kick.
Maybe you have a book idea that's been kind of
pulling at you, tugging at you for a long while,
long time, and you haven't made much progress on your
own and you could use some support, some accountability, some community.
(05:06):
You could use a little bit of coaching, maybe some
direct feedback on your work. This program is for you.
If that's you, please please consider joining us for this program.
I tried to give lots of options because I know
times are tough, inflation is high, and I am not
unaware of how challenging it can be to make ends
(05:27):
meet right now. I don't know where you are specifically,
but I do know that we're living in a wild
world right now. So I wanted to make this as
accessible for as many people as possible, and so I
offered three different tiers for you to join at. There's
a basic tier where you get access to everything that
you need to the bi weekly coaching calls, to all
(05:48):
the digital content. There's a middle tier where you also
get access to late night office hours. The bi weekly
calls are in the middle of the day, in the
middle of the work day, and I kind of scheduled
them at a lunch hour. It's at one pm Central
Standard time on Wednesdays. I did that at a lunch
hour intentionally. But if you can't make that time for
some reason, maybe you're on a different time zone or something,
(06:10):
then the late night office hours are a really great
way for you to get your questions answered. But even
if you can make those bi weekly calls, those late
night office hours are really intended to be a more
intimate group time to get specific feedback on your work,
and they're just a really great way to touch base
an extra time on the we'll meet on the off
weeks from the bi weekly Wednesday calls, and so those
(06:34):
happen at eight pm Central Standard time. And then there's
a VIP tier where you get actually two forty five
minute one on one calls with me and some direct
feedback on your work. And let me tell you. If
the VIP option is available to you, let me just
encourage you to take advantage of that, because it is
by far the greatest value. It is the lowest price
(06:57):
that I've offered on one on one coaching in a
really long time. And in fact, a lot of the
people who were on my wait list for my publishing
coaching program, which is my one on one program, it's
like a three month one on one program, I sent
them to this VIP program because I think it's honestly,
in some ways kind of better to have the group support,
(07:20):
to have a community of people surrounding you, to have
that kind of built in accountability, and then also to
get someone on one attention on your book is such
a powerful thing. And so that VIP tier, in my opinion,
is like the most valuable of all the three. And
I know that that's not accessible for everybody. So I'm
not saying, you know, put it on a credit card
(07:41):
if you can't afford it. I'm just saying, if it's
accessible to you, that would be the one that I
would recommend. And for all three tiers, I am offering
payment plan options. So I wanted to make this as
accessible for as many people as possible because I really
believe in this program. It's life changing. This is not
just about writing a book. This is about becoming the
(08:03):
person that the book is asking you to become. There's
a message that's trying to come through your life. It's
trying to come through you. It's trying to come onto
the page, and you are the transmitter of it. You
are the only person who can transmit this specific message.
It's like a fingerprint that's completely unique to you. And
so I want to help you to do that. I
(08:23):
want to help you bring that message to bear. I
want to help you make it manifest in the world.
And I've watched this happen for I don't know thousands
of authors that I've worked with, where that process of
bringing that message to bear is so deeply satisfying that
it just boosts your confidence It changes who you are,
It changes the way you see yourself, the way you
move through the world. And of course sharing that message
(08:46):
with other people is also part of it. You get
to become the inspiration. You get to spread the inspiration
and share it with others, and that's another really exciting
part about it. So I'm a huge fan of this program.
It's my favorite thing that I get to do all year.
I'm so excited about it. I would love, love, love
to have you join us, and today is your last
chance to join. So if you have that inkling that
(09:08):
you're supposed to do this, I challenge you. I dare you.
I beg you to go to a book in six
months dot com. Check it out, check out all the
different options. Please join us. We start tomorrow. It's going
to be a really spectacular time together. So I couldn't
move on with the inspiration episode without talking about a
book in six months. But let's move on to talking
(09:31):
about inspiration. So this really all started because a couple
of weeks ago, I was on a thread with two
friends of mine who are moms. We're all three moms
to young kids, were in that toddler phase that's wild.
I mean it's fun and it's wild. It's kind of
all consuming. No, let me take the back. It's not
kind of all consuming. It's one hundred percent of all consuming.
(09:52):
There doesn't feel like there's much white space or margin
in your day. And I was saying to my friends,
how much I'm realizing that I give a lot of
attention to making sure my kids are good, making sure
the house is good, making sure my husband's good, making
sure everyone's good, and not as much attention to making
sure I'm good, making sure that I'm filled up, making
sure that I've got you know, I'm doing stuff for me.
(10:13):
Like people ask like, Okay, what are you doing for
the summer, and I'm like, we're doing one trip. I'm
trying to keep it really simple. We're doing one vacation.
And the vacation was one hundred percent for my kids.
It was all about what they would think is fun.
And that's not just vacation. It's every day, all day,
every day with my kids and with my just my
(10:33):
role in life that I feel like I'm constantly looking
out for to make sure my kids are really well fed,
they're very well nourished, they have fun activities going on,
they have things that make them excited. You know, their
little love buckets are full. Then at the end of
the day, I realized, Wow, I haven't really given a
lot of energy to making sure that my bucket is full.
And I know this is kind of an age old
(10:54):
conversation about self care, but I want to take this
a little further because I don't really think of this
as self care. I think of this as filling the well,
as Julia Cameron would say. Julia Cameron talks about inspiration
as filling your creative well. So if you think of
a well or a tank that's full of inspiration, like
(11:15):
you've taken in all these inspiring experiences. You have seen
all these inspiring things, and it just fills the well
or fills the tank all the way to the top. Now,
your creativity is an overflow of that. So you pull
in this inspiration, it fills up the well, and then
the well spills over and overflows, and the overflow of
(11:38):
that becomes your creative output. What's wild about that is
how true that feels when you think about it, and
then how much of us are living in a space.
We're living in a world that in many ways requires
us to put our creative output first, to put our
productivity first, to put our efficiency first. And I wouldn't
necessarily equate creative with productivity and efficiency, but that's how
(12:02):
it gets lumped together in the culture that we live in.
It's just like I call this the content hamster wheel.
I call this the content hamster wheel. That you get
on the hamster wheel of creating content. You've got podcasts
(12:23):
that have to go up, You've got Instagram videos, you've
got reels, you've got stories, You've got you know, email
newsletters that go out. And this is just from my job,
but your job has its own brand of this, its
own version of this, where you're on the hamster wheel,
and it's like go go, go, go go put more output,
more output, more out. Well, that defies the laws of physics.
(12:43):
You cannot keep giving output when there's no input. Here's
a question for you to use as a journal prompt
or to use as a conversation starter in your group
of friends. How much thought and effort have you given
to filling your own creative well? How much have you
given to what inspires you? What inspires you? Let me
(13:04):
just ask you what inspires you. I was at breakfast
with my husband. Yesterday, we tried to plan a monthly
day date. This is something we've been doing together for
the last year or so, because I was complaining a
year ago that when we would do date nights that
I didn't want to go out, Like he would plan
a date night and get a sitter and I would
just be like, oh, I can't. I don't want to
(13:24):
go out. It's like, you know, seven thirty pm, and
the last thing I want to do is leave the house.
So we started doing these date days together where we
get a sitter from like ten to four, ten to
five something like that. So we're there in the morning
with the kids and we're there for bedtime, which is
usually the hardest time of the day, and we go
do kind of whatever, Like we usually go to a
nice brunch or breakfast, but we wander, we window shop,
(13:48):
we go look at houses open houses. Is what we did.
The other day. We went to Trader Joe's, which Matt
and I neither of us had really been to Trader
Joe's since we left California a couple of years ago,
which is pathetic because there's a Trader Show's like twenty
five minutes from us. But that feels like a lifetime away,
especially with the kids, so I usually end up doing instacart.
(14:09):
My point here is that we spend a day of
filling the well and it doesn't have to be anything
that complicated. It can just be, you know, going to
an open house of a beautiful We were going to
these open houses. My husband is a real estate agent,
and so we did have a purpose for going to
the open houses. We weren't just going for no reason,
but we were going to these really beautiful houses that
(14:30):
were two and three million dollar houses and just admiring
the beauty of these places, not with the intention to
buy them ourselves, but just to admire the fixtures and
admire the tile and the floor and the finishes and
the choices that the builders made, and just to take
it all in. You know. Then, same thing at Trader Joe's,
just to see what there is to see, you know,
(14:51):
to take it in, to see, like what kind of
fun treats would there be, and can we take some
stuff home to our kids. You'd be surprised at the
simple things that can feel that well. Anyway, at brunch,
I was talking to Matt. I was asking him, like,
what keeps you inspired because I just had this conversation
with my two girlfriends over voice text, because that's how
(15:12):
when you have toddlers, this is how you catch up. Honestly,
when I get together with these two girlfriends, we bring
our kids with us and we go to the park
or whatever, and we like don't even get to talk.
It's just, you know, you speak for ten seconds and
then you get interrupted. So our longest conversations happen over
voice text. We just you know, volley these voice texts
back and kind of leave five to ten minute voice
(15:32):
memos for each other that act like a bit of
a podcast. So we had this whole long conversation over
voice text about what keeps us inspired and how can
we make more space in our lives for being inspired
and how can we do that in simple ways where
we don't have to like go to the Bahamas or
take a month off or whatever. And so then I
was asking Matt at breakfast, I was like, what makes
(15:54):
you inspired? And he said something that I thought was
really important to this conversation, which is he was saying,
you know, it's weird. I think that my answer right
now is going to be different than you would expect
it to be. And different than it has been in
the past, and probably different than it will be very
soon in the future. But he was saying, basically, right now,
what makes me feel inspired is like being in silence
(16:16):
in the woods, and that resonated for me too. I
was just like, oh, man, yeah, there's something about that,
isn't there Just about like going into nature having some quiet,
not really having many other people there, if any other
people there, just spending some time in silence. What is
it about that that sounds so inspiring right now? And
this is one of the reasons why I wanted to
(16:38):
bring up this conversation. I thought about this while I
was at breakfast with Matt having this talk, because I
realized that part of the importance of feeling the well,
this is something that's important all the time, anytime for
anybody who wants to be a creative person or live
a creative life. But also in this time that we're
living in, this really unique, special, weird czart time that
(17:02):
were alive right now, I said to Matt, and I
don't want to overstep my expertise here because I am
not a therapist, but I feel like what I want
to call this time is global PTSD like, we lived
through this global pandemic, which was one hundred percent unprecedented.
Nobody alive had ever experienced anything like this before. We
(17:25):
went through two years of it or more, I don't know,
depending on how you measure the time, and depending on
where you were in the world, your experience of it
was either more dramatic or maybe a little less dramatic.
We were in la for a lot of it, and
so the lockdowns were pretty dramatic. There were mask mandates
indoors and outdoors. We moved out of the city because
(17:47):
it was such a challenging place to live with a newborn.
My daughter was born in July of twenty twenty in
La County, and then we moved to Nashville in December
of twenty twenty. So, without going through the whole story,
which I've told before, and you have your own version
of the story that you lived through. Also, starting from
March of twenty twenty until present day, you've had wild
(18:09):
things take place. You've seen things that you never thought
you would see in your lifetime, not to mention, layered
on top of that, we also have the highest level
of political tension that I've ever experienced in my life. Before,
playing out for us on a stage on social media,
closer into our internal space than it's ever been before.
(18:30):
It's not like, you know, I remember being in my
twenties when it's just like on a TV and you
flip on the debate and you watch it with friends
and then you flip it off. And we didn't have
smartphones back then. It's different. Now it's right in your hand,
it's in your psychic space. It's kind of like harder
to turn it off, I think. And then you have
the war in the Middle East, and then you have
(18:50):
what's happening in the Ukraine, and then you have you know,
my husband was telling me how sad he's feeling about
what's happening in South Africa right now, and I hadn't
even really I've been in touch with that, Like, I
hadn't really heard much about it or done much reading
on it. And it's just like layers and layers and
layers of pain and heartbreak and horrors that are playing
out on the world stage on social media right in
(19:13):
front of our eyes. And we think that that's not
supposed to affect us, you know, we think that we
can just sort of like bop along as usual on
this content hamster wheel going like produce, produce, produce, put
out more content, write another book, make another podcast, you know,
put up another reel. And it's like, we need to
fill the well. You have to you have to fill
(19:36):
the well. You have to take in stuff that's inspiring
to you. You have to take in stuff that nourishes you.
Otherwise what will you have left for output? And I
think Matt's sense that he wanted to just go to
the woods is a strong statement about the level of
trauma that we've all experienced. Five years ago. You know,
(19:57):
Matt would have said something that inspires me would be
to go to Coachella or something. You know, He's Matt
loves music, he loves big cultural festivals, he loves being
around people. He's very extroverted. He would have wanted to
go to a concert, a you two show, Coldplay. And
now he's like, I want to go to the woods.
I want to just go to the woods and be
in quiet. And I think that says something about the
(20:21):
state that our nervous systems are in all of us collectively,
we are desperate for the well to be filled. I
think so few of us, myself included, are really giving
it the energy that it needs, that it requires of us.
If we're going to continue to be people who inspire others,
(20:42):
you cannot continue to inspire others unless you're also inspiring yourself,
unless you're first inspiring yourself. So how are you filling
the well? And you know I mentioned this, but I'll
go back to it for a second. Yesterday, when we
were on our day date, we went and did that
were very inspiring to me. I felt really full and
very nourished at the end of the day. That wasn't
(21:05):
crazy expensive. The most expensive part was childcare, and so
if you have small kids at home, I'm sorry, that's
just not cheap. Hopefully you live close to family who
can help you out. The rest of it was like
window shopping, just you know, walking through the mall kind
of seeing what's there that feels inspiring to me. I
like to look at the different colors and textures and
people watch and just kind of take in the sites,
(21:26):
the smells, the sounds. We went to Trader Joe's, like
I said, and we didn't buy a whole lot. We
bought like a small bag of groceries, but we bought
a couple treats for our kids. A couple little like
nostalgic things that we were like, oh my gosh, I
forgot about this special thing that you can only get
at Trader Joe's that we haven't had in forever, Like
the Trader Joe's peanut butter pretzels that are so nostalgic
(21:47):
for me, I have eaten so many of those in
my life. So we grabbed a bag of those and
some other just fun little things, and we went around
looking at open houses and like I said, just kind
of took in the beauty of these really incredible houses.
And we had a lovely breakfast, just kind of took
our time and it's slow, and drank a cup of
coffee and had good conversation and really filled the well yesterday.
(22:22):
I think the main point I want to make here
is that filling the well is not a nice to have.
It's not a luxury, it's not a privilege. It's an
absolute necessity. The only times in our life where we
forego filling the well is when we are in act
of trauma. In act of trauma, your body goes into
(22:44):
fight or flight, and you're not looking to get inspired,
you're looking to survive. So you're in survival mode. All
of your body's energy and attention goes to doing the
things that you know you need to do to stay alive.
And I have lived through seasons like that. It is
not pleasant if you are going through a season like
that in your life. Right now, I send my love
(23:06):
to you. I'm holding you in my heart right now
and holding space for that period of time that you're
going through because it is unpleasant but necessary, And the
best gift that the rest of us can give you
is to make it an absolute priority to stay inspired,
to make it a number one priority to fill our
(23:28):
own well. And this does not have to be complicated.
It can be something really really simple. Maybe ask yourself
right now, what's something simple I could do tomorrow that
would film my well? You know what, Since I'm talking
about all of us being in this collective kind of PTSD,
here are things that are really nourishing to a body
that is in PTSD or a nervous system that is
(23:49):
really dysregulating. One is water. I read this post a
long time ago. This was probably mid twenty twenty, like
right after Nella was born, so July or August, and
it was talking about how helpful. Water can be as
a tool to calm me your nervous system. Drinking lots
of water, getting in a body of water of some kind,
(24:09):
going swimming, getting in a swimming pool, getting in a river,
a lake, cold plunging has been very regulating for my
nervous system. Taking a warm bath, getting in the shower.
Notice how when you get in a body of water
there's something about that that regulates you. And in fact,
now that I'm saying this, on fourth of July, I
was with my friends. All of our kids were there.
(24:30):
Our kids were going nuts, like that five to seven
pm range when the kids just go off the rails
and it's wild, crazy town. The kids were going nuts,
and we were packing up and trying to get out
of the house because I was like, my son is
gonna just like destroy this entire house if we don't
leave soon. And one of the dads was like, why
don't we just put them back in the pool, And
in part of me was like, oh gosh, I don't know,
(24:52):
we're already dry and we've been swimming all day. But
I was like, Okay, let's try it. We'll put them
back in the pool. Put the kids back in the
pool and it was like like magic. We got back
in the pool with them and it was magic. It's
like something about being in water just calms the nervous system,
no matter how dysregulated you are. It's something very simple
and accessible to almost all of us that's at our
(25:16):
fingertips that we can use to ground. So that's something
really simple and free or cheap that you can use
to fill the well. Something else is sleep. Sleep is
very regulating to a disregulated nervous system. It's absolutely vital
for a body in PTSD. And one of the things
(25:36):
that I hear a lot of people say, as I've
been working with authors for the past couple of years,
I've heard a lot of people say, I've been so lazy.
I've been sleeping in in the morning. I've been you know,
normally I would get up into my writing early, but
I've been so lazy. I've been sleeping until seven or
seven thirty. And I just want to reframe this for
you a little bit, because if your body is in PTSD,
if your nervous system is disregulated, sleep is an absolutely
(25:59):
vital piece of the puzzle. It's a vital part of
the formula to bringing your body back to regulation and
to bringing your brain back to balance. So much healing
happens while you're sleeping, so let yourself sleep. Another thing
that I'll hear people say, because I've been doing a
lot of meditating and kind of encouraging some of the
(26:19):
authors who I work with to meditate also, and people
will say, oh, yeah, I like to meditate, but I
always fall asleep, And I'll say, okay, if you fall
asleep while meditating, and this I'm saying this because I
was taught this when I first started my journey with meditation.
If you fall asleep while meditating, that tells you your
body needs sleep. We've been so indoctrinated with this idea
(26:40):
that to sleep in is lazy, and it's like, well,
maybe it's because you're running yourself ragged, like running around
all day chasing your kids or working hard or doing
whatever you're doing, and maybe your body actually needs that
extra sleep. So water sleep easy, easy, easy ways to
fill the well. And notice that's how it's gonna like
(27:00):
go kind of up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where at
the bottom of the hierarchy, the bottom of the pyramid
are going to be like the most basic needs like
eat good food, drink water, sleep. You know, once you
have those basic needs met and once you're in safety,
then things like going to look at, you know, a
two million dollar house on a Sunday with your husband
(27:22):
because you have a babysitter is just like glorious, so glorious,
and filled the well right up to the tippy top.
And things like window shopping or buying a new shirt
or something like that fills that well right up to
the tippy top. You don't have to buy anything, you
could go into I used to do this when I
was in my twenties and had no money and could
(27:42):
not afford a single thing in Whole Foods. But I
would go into Whole Foods and I would just wander
the aisles and just check out what was in there
because the way that it's all organized and everything was
so soothing to me. It was so the opposite of chaotic.
What's the opposite of chaotic? It was so calming to
be in a Whole Foods that I would just wander
the aisles of Whole Foods and I wouldn't even buy anything,
(28:03):
but I would just At the time, I was living
in downtown Portland, living and working and I would walk
from my apartment to my job, and on the way
I would stop at Whole Foods and just wander the aisles,
And then I would go to my job, and then
sometimes on the way home, I would do the same thing,
pop in the Whole Foods and wander the aisles, and
if it had been a really good day at work,
I would buy myself a Lara bar or something that
(28:23):
was like a real treat for me back then. So
you know, you can do this within the confines of
what you have access to in your life. Where I
was talking about this with my group of friends on
the text thread, would it be ideal if I could
pick up and take a tropical vacation right now? Sure,
that's not something that I have access to. That's not
something that's accessible for me right this minute in my life.
(28:45):
I've got two little kids who need me, Our lives
aren't insanely busy. I'm not saying it's impossible ever in
the future. I'm just saying, right this second, that's not
something that I can reach for. So I'm going to
reach for something that's a little bit more accessible. I'm
going to reach for a day date with my husband,
reach for a pool day with some girlfriends where I
can just get a half a day where my husband
can cover the kids and I can go lay by
(29:06):
the pool and order Postmates or whatever. Maybe even that
feels out of reach for you right now, and that's okay.
I don't know what your specific situation is, if you
have kids, or if you have a full time job
or three full time jobs, or you're barely making ends meet,
or whatever your deal is. I want you to think
really seriously about what happens if you don't feel the well.
(29:29):
What is the alternative? And I want you to know
that you cannot give of yourself creatively or otherwise if
you don't feel your own well, you have to fill
the well to overflowing. And it's the overflow that is
the giveaway. And that's how we become people who can
inspire others. You can't just be inspiring and not be inspired.
(29:51):
It doesn't work that way. And so ask yourself what
kinds of things could inspire you? And maybe maybe it
would be cool to make a list of some things
that inspire you that really are out of reach right
this second, but that you would love to dream about
and think about and make plans for when I turned forty.
I took a group of friends up to New York
City and we spent the weekend there. It was a
(30:13):
quick weekend, but like forty eight hours in New York.
We did a Broadway show, We went to the Modern
Art Museum, we ate spectacular meals, We wanted around the city.
I did a ton of window shopping. I bought a
few gifts with some birthday money. A few little things
I bought, like a bag for myself and a necklace
with some birthday money. It was definitely a splurge, but
(30:35):
really really fun, and I came home just feeling so energized.
It was the first time that I had been away
from both of my kids overnight since having kids, and
I went from feeling totally depleted, like in the hole,
you know, just in the red, like nothing to give.
I made some really significant changes. First of all, I
(30:57):
started moving my body every day after that, for the
first time in a really long time, I decided to
run a ten k. I run a ten k a
couple weeks after that, I don't know, six or eight
weeks after that, and I started to just feel like
myself again. I started to feel myself coming back online,
and it just is a reminder of how important it
is to prioritize this. I'm not saying you have to
(31:19):
take a trip to New York City. I'm just saying,
if there's something like that that feels really, really inspiring
to you, maybe you write it down and maybe you
aspire to it, and then maybe in the meantime you
do some things that are more accessible to you. So
make a list. Let's do this. Let's all make a
list of things that are inspiring to us and try
to prioritize them the same way that we prioritize other
(31:39):
people in our lives. I have a friend whose parents
are very sick right now, and she doesn't have her
own kids, but she's always thinking about what does my
mom need, was my dad need? What's going to make
their lives easier, What's going to make this better for them?
And that's how I am with my kids, and I
know you're that way with other people in your life too,
constantly thinking about how you can make life better for them.
(32:00):
How can you you know, with my kids, it's like,
how can I inspire them? How can I give them
the things that they need to develop in the way
that I know that they're capable of. How can I
get them enough activity and enough friend time and enough
quiet time and enough naps and enough nourishing foods and
all the vitamins whatever. Constantly thinking about that, But how
(32:21):
much time and effort do I really give to filling
my own well? Not nearly enough, Except now that it's
top of mine, I'm definitely going to be thinking about it.
And my conversation with Matt at breakfast the other day
really brought home the importance of this as I thought
about being in this collective kind of PTSD. We have
an obligation to ourselves and to each other to do this,
(32:44):
to figure out ways to fill the collective well so
that we can find our way back to love, and
find our way back to each other, and find our
way back to compassion, and find a way to metabolize
our anger and our fear, and our our repulsion and
our resentment toward the other side or whatever it is,
(33:07):
find a way to metabolize all of that and turn
it into something good so that we can lock arms
and hold hands and move forward together in this world
and write write a story that's really inspiring for future generations.
We can't do any of that unless we inspire ourselves.
So I would love to hear from you. Let me know,
Send me a DM on Instagram, send me a picture
(33:29):
of your list. Make a list of ten things that
you can do that inspire you. I'm going to post
my list on Instagram so that you can see it,
and I want to see yours too. Send me your
list of things that inspire you, from the simplest of things,
just giggling on the floor with my kids, something simple
like that, all the way to a trip to New
York City or a tropical galification, or whatever it is
(33:53):
that feels your wealth. I can't wait to hear. I'm
so excited to see many of you in a book
in six months. Please, please, please, If you have a
book that's nagging at you, don't forget to join us.
You can find more information at a Book in six
months dot com. I will see you there, and I
will see you next week on the Write Your Story podcast.
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun. When
you write your story, you get the words and said,
don't you think it's time to let them out and
write them down? And Colord, it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write you write your story. Hi, and welcome
back to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon,
I'm your host, and on today's episode, I want to
talk about inspiration. I want to talk about where inspiration
comes from, why staying inspired is so important, talk about
the things that we do to stay inspired. And I'm
(00:48):
recording this episode from my home, from the guest room
in my home. Actually, I have tucked myself back in
a tiny little corner. I mentioned on the last week's
episode that I'm in a little bit of a transition
as far as how I record this podcast, which is cool.
The house that is right next door to my house
we purchased in order to renovate it and make a
(01:09):
space for my mother in law to move in next door.
We're very excited to have her here and as part
of that, we're also building out an addition in the
back for a little learning slash education school space for
our kids that we're going to invite some of the
neighborhood kids and do a little homeschool co op situation.
We're figuring it out as we go, not exactly sure
what it's going to be, but a learning environment for
(01:31):
kids in the community, including our kids. And then also
in the basement, we're building out a podcast studio. So
that's so exciting because it just means well, exciting for
me because more convenience, but also exciting for the podcast
because the quality of the sound is just going to
keep improving and improving, and there's so many amazing things
(01:51):
that I can do and guess that I can have
on when I've got a space where I can invite
people to come and record. So I'm really excited about that.
I think it's perfect that I'm sitting where I'm I
think recording this episode right now about inspiration because it's
currently eight forty at night, the night before this podcast
is supposed to go live. Shout out to my producer Houston,
because he's being very patient with me and staying up
(02:12):
late to edit this podcast and get it up early
tomorrow morning. I'm down to the wire, which is not
usually how I do things, but you know, such as life,
sometimes things just unfold the way that they unfold. So,
like I said, I'm kind of shoved in this back
corner my kids. I just got my kids to sleep.
This is kind of the first window that I've had
in the day to get this done. And I've been
(02:34):
talking with so many people this week and last week
about this idea of inspiration. It's been on my mind NonStop,
and I have so many things I want to say
about it, and I want to just open a dialogue
about inspiration because I have things that I want to say,
things that I feel passionate about that I think are
really valuable to share. But also I know that you'll
(02:56):
have things that are valuable to say and to share,
and you'll have feedback for me on the questions that
I pose. You don't have to give that feedback directly
back to me, although I would love for you too
if you want to reach out on Instagram and send
me a DM there, that would be wonderful. But you
can also just use these questions that I'm going to
ask as little conversation starters in your own community, in
(03:19):
your own friend groups, or as writing props for yourself,
because if you're anything like me, and I think this
is more than just me, I think this is a
global thing happening right now, because this conversation keeps coming
up again and again and again, and if you're anything
like me and like the people that I've talked to
in the last couple of weeks, this is a big topic.
This is something that we're really wrestling with right now.
(03:40):
It's attention that we're living in. And I want to
talk about all the reasons why, and I want to
talk about why I think this is such a massively
important conversation. Before I dive into all of that, I
do want to make sure that you know that as
you're listening to this, if you're listening to this the
day it's live, you have twenty four hours left to
join me for a book and six Months, which is
(04:00):
my program where we walk through the process of writing
a book manuscript together in six months. So we will
literally start July tenth, which if you're listening to this
to the day that it goes live, that's tomorrow. We'll
start Wednesday, July tenth as a group, and we will
by Christmas of this year Christmas of twenty twenty four,
you will be holding your finished manuscript in your hands.
(04:24):
This program is for anybody who has that nagging feeling
that they're supposed to write a book. This doesn't need
to be for someone who has publishing connections. Is doesn't
have to be for someone who has a degree in writing,
for someone who feels like they're a great writer, who
feels like they're a great writer. Even great writers don't
feel like they're great writers. It doesn't have to be
(04:45):
for someone who has a highly defined book idea. In fact,
none of those things aren't necessary to join this program.
This program is for someone who has a nagging feeling
that they're supposed to write a book, something they can't kick.
Maybe you have a book idea that's been kind of
pulling at you, tugging at you for a long while,
long time, and you haven't made much progress on your
own and you could use some support, some accountability, some community.
(05:06):
You could use a little bit of coaching, maybe some
direct feedback on your work. This program is for you.
If that's you, please please consider joining us for this program.
I tried to give lots of options because I know
times are tough, inflation is high, and I am not
unaware of how challenging it can be to make ends
(05:27):
meet right now. I don't know where you are specifically,
but I do know that we're living in a wild
world right now. So I wanted to make this as
accessible for as many people as possible, and so I
offered three different tiers for you to join at. There's
a basic tier where you get access to everything that
you need to the bi weekly coaching calls, to all
(05:48):
the digital content. There's a middle tier where you also
get access to late night office hours. The bi weekly
calls are in the middle of the day, in the
middle of the work day, and I kind of scheduled
them at a lunch hour. It's at one pm Central
Standard time on Wednesdays. I did that at a lunch
hour intentionally. But if you can't make that time for
some reason, maybe you're on a different time zone or something,
(06:10):
then the late night office hours are a really great
way for you to get your questions answered. But even
if you can make those bi weekly calls, those late
night office hours are really intended to be a more
intimate group time to get specific feedback on your work,
and they're just a really great way to touch base
an extra time on the we'll meet on the off
weeks from the bi weekly Wednesday calls, and so those
(06:34):
happen at eight pm Central Standard time. And then there's
a VIP tier where you get actually two forty five
minute one on one calls with me and some direct
feedback on your work. And let me tell you. If
the VIP option is available to you, let me just
encourage you to take advantage of that, because it is
by far the greatest value. It is the lowest price
(06:57):
that I've offered on one on one coaching in a
really long time. And in fact, a lot of the
people who were on my wait list for my publishing
coaching program, which is my one on one program, it's
like a three month one on one program, I sent
them to this VIP program because I think it's honestly,
in some ways kind of better to have the group support,
(07:20):
to have a community of people surrounding you, to have
that kind of built in accountability, and then also to
get someone on one attention on your book is such
a powerful thing. And so that VIP tier, in my opinion,
is like the most valuable of all the three. And
I know that that's not accessible for everybody. So I'm
not saying, you know, put it on a credit card
(07:41):
if you can't afford it. I'm just saying, if it's
accessible to you, that would be the one that I
would recommend. And for all three tiers, I am offering
payment plan options. So I wanted to make this as
accessible for as many people as possible because I really
believe in this program. It's life changing. This is not
just about writing a book. This is about becoming the
(08:03):
person that the book is asking you to become. There's
a message that's trying to come through your life. It's
trying to come through you. It's trying to come onto
the page, and you are the transmitter of it. You
are the only person who can transmit this specific message.
It's like a fingerprint that's completely unique to you. And
so I want to help you to do that. I
(08:23):
want to help you bring that message to bear. I
want to help you make it manifest in the world.
And I've watched this happen for I don't know thousands
of authors that I've worked with, where that process of
bringing that message to bear is so deeply satisfying that
it just boosts your confidence It changes who you are,
It changes the way you see yourself, the way you
move through the world. And of course sharing that message
(08:46):
with other people is also part of it. You get
to become the inspiration. You get to spread the inspiration
and share it with others, and that's another really exciting
part about it. So I'm a huge fan of this program.
It's my favorite thing that I get to do all year.
I'm so excited about it. I would love, love, love
to have you join us, and today is your last
chance to join. So if you have that inkling that
(09:08):
you're supposed to do this, I challenge you. I dare you.
I beg you to go to a book in six
months dot com. Check it out, check out all the
different options. Please join us. We start tomorrow. It's going
to be a really spectacular time together. So I couldn't
move on with the inspiration episode without talking about a
book in six months. But let's move on to talking
(09:31):
about inspiration. So this really all started because a couple
of weeks ago, I was on a thread with two
friends of mine who are moms. We're all three moms
to young kids, were in that toddler phase that's wild.
I mean it's fun and it's wild. It's kind of
all consuming. No, let me take the back. It's not
kind of all consuming. It's one hundred percent of all consuming.
(09:52):
There doesn't feel like there's much white space or margin
in your day. And I was saying to my friends,
how much I'm realizing that I give a lot of
attention to making sure my kids are good, making sure
the house is good, making sure my husband's good, making
sure everyone's good, and not as much attention to making
sure I'm good, making sure that I'm filled up, making
sure that I've got you know, I'm doing stuff for me.
(10:13):
Like people ask like, Okay, what are you doing for
the summer, and I'm like, we're doing one trip. I'm
trying to keep it really simple. We're doing one vacation.
And the vacation was one hundred percent for my kids.
It was all about what they would think is fun.
And that's not just vacation. It's every day, all day,
every day with my kids and with my just my
(10:33):
role in life that I feel like I'm constantly looking
out for to make sure my kids are really well fed,
they're very well nourished, they have fun activities going on,
they have things that make them excited. You know, their
little love buckets are full. Then at the end of
the day, I realized, Wow, I haven't really given a
lot of energy to making sure that my bucket is full.
And I know this is kind of an age old
(10:54):
conversation about self care, but I want to take this
a little further because I don't really think of this
as self care. I think of this as filling the well,
as Julia Cameron would say. Julia Cameron talks about inspiration
as filling your creative well. So if you think of
a well or a tank that's full of inspiration, like
(11:15):
you've taken in all these inspiring experiences. You have seen
all these inspiring things, and it just fills the well
or fills the tank all the way to the top. Now,
your creativity is an overflow of that. So you pull
in this inspiration, it fills up the well, and then
the well spills over and overflows, and the overflow of
(11:38):
that becomes your creative output. What's wild about that is
how true that feels when you think about it, and
then how much of us are living in a space.
We're living in a world that in many ways requires
us to put our creative output first, to put our
productivity first, to put our efficiency first. And I wouldn't
necessarily equate creative with productivity and efficiency, but that's how
(12:02):
it gets lumped together in the culture that we live in.
It's just like I call this the content hamster wheel.
I call this the content hamster wheel. That you get
on the hamster wheel of creating content. You've got podcasts
(12:23):
that have to go up, You've got Instagram videos, you've
got reels, you've got stories, You've got you know, email
newsletters that go out. And this is just from my job,
but your job has its own brand of this, its
own version of this, where you're on the hamster wheel,
and it's like go go, go, go go put more output,
more output, more out. Well, that defies the laws of physics.
(12:43):
You cannot keep giving output when there's no input. Here's
a question for you to use as a journal prompt
or to use as a conversation starter in your group
of friends. How much thought and effort have you given
to filling your own creative well? How much have you
given to what inspires you? What inspires you? Let me
(13:04):
just ask you what inspires you. I was at breakfast
with my husband. Yesterday, we tried to plan a monthly
day date. This is something we've been doing together for
the last year or so, because I was complaining a
year ago that when we would do date nights that
I didn't want to go out, Like he would plan
a date night and get a sitter and I would
just be like, oh, I can't. I don't want to
(13:24):
go out. It's like, you know, seven thirty pm, and
the last thing I want to do is leave the house.
So we started doing these date days together where we
get a sitter from like ten to four, ten to
five something like that. So we're there in the morning
with the kids and we're there for bedtime, which is
usually the hardest time of the day, and we go
do kind of whatever, Like we usually go to a
nice brunch or breakfast, but we wander, we window shop,
(13:48):
we go look at houses open houses. Is what we did.
The other day. We went to Trader Joe's, which Matt
and I neither of us had really been to Trader
Joe's since we left California a couple of years ago,
which is pathetic because there's a Trader Show's like twenty
five minutes from us. But that feels like a lifetime away,
especially with the kids, so I usually end up doing instacart.
(14:09):
My point here is that we spend a day of
filling the well and it doesn't have to be anything
that complicated. It can just be, you know, going to
an open house of a beautiful We were going to
these open houses. My husband is a real estate agent,
and so we did have a purpose for going to
the open houses. We weren't just going for no reason,
but we were going to these really beautiful houses that
(14:30):
were two and three million dollar houses and just admiring
the beauty of these places, not with the intention to
buy them ourselves, but just to admire the fixtures and
admire the tile and the floor and the finishes and
the choices that the builders made, and just to take
it all in. You know. Then, same thing at Trader Joe's,
just to see what there is to see, you know,
(14:51):
to take it in, to see, like what kind of
fun treats would there be, and can we take some
stuff home to our kids. You'd be surprised at the
simple things that can feel that well. Anyway, at brunch,
I was talking to Matt. I was asking him, like,
what keeps you inspired because I just had this conversation
with my two girlfriends over voice text, because that's how
(15:12):
when you have toddlers, this is how you catch up. Honestly,
when I get together with these two girlfriends, we bring
our kids with us and we go to the park
or whatever, and we like don't even get to talk.
It's just, you know, you speak for ten seconds and
then you get interrupted. So our longest conversations happen over
voice text. We just you know, volley these voice texts
back and kind of leave five to ten minute voice
(15:32):
memos for each other that act like a bit of
a podcast. So we had this whole long conversation over
voice text about what keeps us inspired and how can
we make more space in our lives for being inspired
and how can we do that in simple ways where
we don't have to like go to the Bahamas or
take a month off or whatever. And so then I
was asking Matt at breakfast, I was like, what makes
(15:54):
you inspired? And he said something that I thought was
really important to this conversation, which is he was saying,
you know, it's weird. I think that my answer right
now is going to be different than you would expect
it to be. And different than it has been in
the past, and probably different than it will be very
soon in the future. But he was saying, basically, right now,
what makes me feel inspired is like being in silence
(16:16):
in the woods, and that resonated for me too. I
was just like, oh, man, yeah, there's something about that,
isn't there Just about like going into nature having some quiet,
not really having many other people there, if any other
people there, just spending some time in silence. What is
it about that that sounds so inspiring right now? And
this is one of the reasons why I wanted to
(16:38):
bring up this conversation. I thought about this while I
was at breakfast with Matt having this talk, because I
realized that part of the importance of feeling the well,
this is something that's important all the time, anytime for
anybody who wants to be a creative person or live
a creative life. But also in this time that we're
living in, this really unique, special, weird czart time that
(17:02):
were alive right now, I said to Matt, and I
don't want to overstep my expertise here because I am
not a therapist, but I feel like what I want
to call this time is global PTSD like, we lived
through this global pandemic, which was one hundred percent unprecedented.
Nobody alive had ever experienced anything like this before. We
(17:25):
went through two years of it or more, I don't know,
depending on how you measure the time, and depending on
where you were in the world, your experience of it
was either more dramatic or maybe a little less dramatic.
We were in la for a lot of it, and
so the lockdowns were pretty dramatic. There were mask mandates
indoors and outdoors. We moved out of the city because
(17:47):
it was such a challenging place to live with a newborn.
My daughter was born in July of twenty twenty in
La County, and then we moved to Nashville in December
of twenty twenty. So, without going through the whole story,
which I've told before, and you have your own version
of the story that you lived through. Also, starting from
March of twenty twenty until present day, you've had wild
(18:09):
things take place. You've seen things that you never thought
you would see in your lifetime, not to mention, layered
on top of that, we also have the highest level
of political tension that I've ever experienced in my life. Before,
playing out for us on a stage on social media,
closer into our internal space than it's ever been before.
(18:30):
It's not like, you know, I remember being in my
twenties when it's just like on a TV and you
flip on the debate and you watch it with friends
and then you flip it off. And we didn't have
smartphones back then. It's different. Now it's right in your hand,
it's in your psychic space. It's kind of like harder
to turn it off, I think. And then you have
the war in the Middle East, and then you have
(18:50):
what's happening in the Ukraine, and then you have you know,
my husband was telling me how sad he's feeling about
what's happening in South Africa right now, and I hadn't
even really I've been in touch with that, Like, I
hadn't really heard much about it or done much reading
on it. And it's just like layers and layers and
layers of pain and heartbreak and horrors that are playing
out on the world stage on social media right in
(19:13):
front of our eyes. And we think that that's not
supposed to affect us, you know, we think that we
can just sort of like bop along as usual on
this content hamster wheel going like produce, produce, produce, put
out more content, write another book, make another podcast, you know,
put up another reel. And it's like, we need to
fill the well. You have to you have to fill
(19:36):
the well. You have to take in stuff that's inspiring
to you. You have to take in stuff that nourishes you.
Otherwise what will you have left for output? And I
think Matt's sense that he wanted to just go to
the woods is a strong statement about the level of
trauma that we've all experienced. Five years ago. You know,
(19:57):
Matt would have said something that inspires me would be
to go to Coachella or something. You know, He's Matt
loves music, he loves big cultural festivals, he loves being
around people. He's very extroverted. He would have wanted to
go to a concert, a you two show, Coldplay. And
now he's like, I want to go to the woods.
I want to just go to the woods and be
in quiet. And I think that says something about the
(20:21):
state that our nervous systems are in all of us collectively,
we are desperate for the well to be filled. I
think so few of us, myself included, are really giving
it the energy that it needs, that it requires of us.
If we're going to continue to be people who inspire others,
(20:42):
you cannot continue to inspire others unless you're also inspiring yourself,
unless you're first inspiring yourself. So how are you filling
the well? And you know I mentioned this, but I'll
go back to it for a second. Yesterday, when we
were on our day date, we went and did that
were very inspiring to me. I felt really full and
very nourished at the end of the day. That wasn't
(21:05):
crazy expensive. The most expensive part was childcare, and so
if you have small kids at home, I'm sorry, that's
just not cheap. Hopefully you live close to family who
can help you out. The rest of it was like
window shopping, just you know, walking through the mall kind
of seeing what's there that feels inspiring to me. I
like to look at the different colors and textures and
people watch and just kind of take in the sites,
(21:26):
the smells, the sounds. We went to Trader Joe's, like
I said, and we didn't buy a whole lot. We
bought like a small bag of groceries, but we bought
a couple treats for our kids. A couple little like
nostalgic things that we were like, oh my gosh, I
forgot about this special thing that you can only get
at Trader Joe's that we haven't had in forever, Like
the Trader Joe's peanut butter pretzels that are so nostalgic
(21:47):
for me, I have eaten so many of those in
my life. So we grabbed a bag of those and
some other just fun little things, and we went around
looking at open houses and like I said, just kind
of took in the beauty of these really incredible houses.
And we had a lovely breakfast, just kind of took
our time and it's slow, and drank a cup of
coffee and had good conversation and really filled the well yesterday.
(22:22):
I think the main point I want to make here
is that filling the well is not a nice to have.
It's not a luxury, it's not a privilege. It's an
absolute necessity. The only times in our life where we
forego filling the well is when we are in act
of trauma. In act of trauma, your body goes into
(22:44):
fight or flight, and you're not looking to get inspired,
you're looking to survive. So you're in survival mode. All
of your body's energy and attention goes to doing the
things that you know you need to do to stay alive.
And I have lived through seasons like that. It is
not pleasant if you are going through a season like
that in your life. Right now, I send my love
(23:06):
to you. I'm holding you in my heart right now
and holding space for that period of time that you're
going through because it is unpleasant but necessary, And the
best gift that the rest of us can give you
is to make it an absolute priority to stay inspired,
to make it a number one priority to fill our
(23:28):
own well. And this does not have to be complicated.
It can be something really really simple. Maybe ask yourself
right now, what's something simple I could do tomorrow that
would film my well? You know what, Since I'm talking
about all of us being in this collective kind of PTSD,
here are things that are really nourishing to a body
that is in PTSD or a nervous system that is
(23:49):
really dysregulating. One is water. I read this post a
long time ago. This was probably mid twenty twenty, like
right after Nella was born, so July or August, and
it was talking about how helpful. Water can be as
a tool to calm me your nervous system. Drinking lots
of water, getting in a body of water of some kind,
(24:09):
going swimming, getting in a swimming pool, getting in a river,
a lake, cold plunging has been very regulating for my
nervous system. Taking a warm bath, getting in the shower.
Notice how when you get in a body of water
there's something about that that regulates you. And in fact,
now that I'm saying this, on fourth of July, I
was with my friends. All of our kids were there.
(24:30):
Our kids were going nuts, like that five to seven
pm range when the kids just go off the rails
and it's wild, crazy town. The kids were going nuts,
and we were packing up and trying to get out
of the house because I was like, my son is
gonna just like destroy this entire house if we don't
leave soon. And one of the dads was like, why
don't we just put them back in the pool, And
in part of me was like, oh gosh, I don't know,
(24:52):
we're already dry and we've been swimming all day. But
I was like, Okay, let's try it. We'll put them
back in the pool. Put the kids back in the
pool and it was like like magic. We got back
in the pool with them and it was magic. It's
like something about being in water just calms the nervous system,
no matter how dysregulated you are. It's something very simple
and accessible to almost all of us that's at our
(25:16):
fingertips that we can use to ground. So that's something
really simple and free or cheap that you can use
to fill the well. Something else is sleep. Sleep is
very regulating to a disregulated nervous system. It's absolutely vital
for a body in PTSD. And one of the things
(25:36):
that I hear a lot of people say, as I've
been working with authors for the past couple of years,
I've heard a lot of people say, I've been so lazy.
I've been sleeping in in the morning. I've been you know,
normally I would get up into my writing early, but
I've been so lazy. I've been sleeping until seven or
seven thirty. And I just want to reframe this for
you a little bit, because if your body is in PTSD,
if your nervous system is disregulated, sleep is an absolutely
(25:59):
vital piece of the puzzle. It's a vital part of
the formula to bringing your body back to regulation and
to bringing your brain back to balance. So much healing
happens while you're sleeping, so let yourself sleep. Another thing
that I'll hear people say, because I've been doing a
lot of meditating and kind of encouraging some of the
(26:19):
authors who I work with to meditate also, and people
will say, oh, yeah, I like to meditate, but I
always fall asleep, And I'll say, okay, if you fall
asleep while meditating, and this I'm saying this because I
was taught this when I first started my journey with meditation.
If you fall asleep while meditating, that tells you your
body needs sleep. We've been so indoctrinated with this idea
(26:40):
that to sleep in is lazy, and it's like, well,
maybe it's because you're running yourself ragged, like running around
all day chasing your kids or working hard or doing
whatever you're doing, and maybe your body actually needs that
extra sleep. So water sleep easy, easy, easy ways to
fill the well. And notice that's how it's gonna like
(27:00):
go kind of up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where at
the bottom of the hierarchy, the bottom of the pyramid
are going to be like the most basic needs like
eat good food, drink water, sleep. You know, once you
have those basic needs met and once you're in safety,
then things like going to look at, you know, a
two million dollar house on a Sunday with your husband
(27:22):
because you have a babysitter is just like glorious, so glorious,
and filled the well right up to the tippy top.
And things like window shopping or buying a new shirt
or something like that fills that well right up to
the tippy top. You don't have to buy anything, you
could go into I used to do this when I
was in my twenties and had no money and could
(27:42):
not afford a single thing in Whole Foods. But I
would go into Whole Foods and I would just wander
the aisles and just check out what was in there
because the way that it's all organized and everything was
so soothing to me. It was so the opposite of chaotic.
What's the opposite of chaotic? It was so calming to
be in a Whole Foods that I would just wander
the aisles of Whole Foods and I wouldn't even buy anything,
(28:03):
but I would just At the time, I was living
in downtown Portland, living and working and I would walk
from my apartment to my job, and on the way
I would stop at Whole Foods and just wander the aisles,
And then I would go to my job, and then
sometimes on the way home, I would do the same thing,
pop in the Whole Foods and wander the aisles, and
if it had been a really good day at work,
I would buy myself a Lara bar or something that
(28:23):
was like a real treat for me back then. So
you know, you can do this within the confines of
what you have access to in your life. Where I
was talking about this with my group of friends on
the text thread, would it be ideal if I could
pick up and take a tropical vacation right now? Sure,
that's not something that I have access to. That's not
something that's accessible for me right this minute in my life.
(28:45):
I've got two little kids who need me, Our lives
aren't insanely busy. I'm not saying it's impossible ever in
the future. I'm just saying, right this second, that's not
something that I can reach for. So I'm going to
reach for something that's a little bit more accessible. I'm
going to reach for a day date with my husband,
reach for a pool day with some girlfriends where I
can just get a half a day where my husband
can cover the kids and I can go lay by
(29:06):
the pool and order Postmates or whatever. Maybe even that
feels out of reach for you right now, and that's okay.
I don't know what your specific situation is, if you
have kids, or if you have a full time job
or three full time jobs, or you're barely making ends meet,
or whatever your deal is. I want you to think
really seriously about what happens if you don't feel the well.
(29:29):
What is the alternative? And I want you to know
that you cannot give of yourself creatively or otherwise if
you don't feel your own well, you have to fill
the well to overflowing. And it's the overflow that is
the giveaway. And that's how we become people who can
inspire others. You can't just be inspiring and not be inspired.
(29:51):
It doesn't work that way. And so ask yourself what
kinds of things could inspire you? And maybe maybe it
would be cool to make a list of some things
that inspire you that really are out of reach right
this second, but that you would love to dream about
and think about and make plans for when I turned forty.
I took a group of friends up to New York
City and we spent the weekend there. It was a
(30:13):
quick weekend, but like forty eight hours in New York.
We did a Broadway show, We went to the Modern
Art Museum, we ate spectacular meals, We wanted around the city.
I did a ton of window shopping. I bought a
few gifts with some birthday money. A few little things
I bought, like a bag for myself and a necklace
with some birthday money. It was definitely a splurge, but
(30:35):
really really fun, and I came home just feeling so energized.
It was the first time that I had been away
from both of my kids overnight since having kids, and
I went from feeling totally depleted, like in the hole,
you know, just in the red, like nothing to give.
I made some really significant changes. First of all, I
(30:57):
started moving my body every day after that, for the
first time in a really long time, I decided to
run a ten k. I run a ten k a
couple weeks after that, I don't know, six or eight
weeks after that, and I started to just feel like
myself again. I started to feel myself coming back online,
and it just is a reminder of how important it
is to prioritize this. I'm not saying you have to
(31:19):
take a trip to New York City. I'm just saying,
if there's something like that that feels really, really inspiring
to you, maybe you write it down and maybe you
aspire to it, and then maybe in the meantime you
do some things that are more accessible to you. So
make a list. Let's do this. Let's all make a
list of things that are inspiring to us and try
to prioritize them the same way that we prioritize other
(31:39):
people in our lives. I have a friend whose parents
are very sick right now, and she doesn't have her
own kids, but she's always thinking about what does my
mom need, was my dad need? What's going to make
their lives easier, What's going to make this better for them?
And that's how I am with my kids, and I
know you're that way with other people in your life too,
constantly thinking about how you can make life better for them.
(32:00):
How can you you know, with my kids, it's like,
how can I inspire them? How can I give them
the things that they need to develop in the way
that I know that they're capable of. How can I
get them enough activity and enough friend time and enough
quiet time and enough naps and enough nourishing foods and
all the vitamins whatever. Constantly thinking about that, But how
(32:21):
much time and effort do I really give to filling
my own well? Not nearly enough, Except now that it's
top of mine, I'm definitely going to be thinking about it.
And my conversation with Matt at breakfast the other day
really brought home the importance of this as I thought
about being in this collective kind of PTSD. We have
an obligation to ourselves and to each other to do this,
(32:44):
to figure out ways to fill the collective well so
that we can find our way back to love, and
find our way back to each other, and find our
way back to compassion, and find a way to metabolize
our anger and our fear, and our our repulsion and
our resentment toward the other side or whatever it is,
(33:07):
find a way to metabolize all of that and turn
it into something good so that we can lock arms
and hold hands and move forward together in this world
and write write a story that's really inspiring for future generations.
We can't do any of that unless we inspire ourselves.
So I would love to hear from you. Let me know,
Send me a DM on Instagram, send me a picture
(33:29):
of your list. Make a list of ten things that
you can do that inspire you. I'm going to post
my list on Instagram so that you can see it,
and I want to see yours too. Send me your
list of things that inspire you, from the simplest of things,
just giggling on the floor with my kids, something simple
like that, all the way to a trip to New
York City or a tropical galification, or whatever it is
(33:53):
that feels your wealth. I can't wait to hear. I'm
so excited to see many of you in a book
in six months. Please, please, please, If you have a
book that's nagging at you, don't forget to join us.
You can find more information at a Book in six
months dot com. I will see you there, and I
will see you next week on the Write Your Story podcast.
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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