Stop in the name of my wallet

I know what it is to want something. I had the strongest urge this morning and it felt like pure, unadulterated inspiration. Follow your inspiration, my voice said. That’s got to be a good voice, right?

And to add sparkle rather than grist to the mill, it was a creative urge. (Double points, surely). Seeing something on my very-busy white board made me gripped with a desire to look at Matisse’s cut out work. And this led me to finding this exquisite publication. Which, it’s explained, is an ‘exactfacsimile’ of the artist’s 1949 book Jazz.

I wanted it. And it’s £135. For a book. But I wanted it with every feverish breath in my body.

For a good hour I let my sense of urgent want rush through me. As I schemed over how I could justify buying it NOW (I’d tracked down a real-life copy to a bookstore on the Charing Cross Road). I printed out a picture of the stained glass windows of Matisse’s chapel in Vence to tide me over. I put it up on the crowded whiteboard.

It looked beautiful. The whiteboard didn’t.

I finally accepted what had been bugging me for some time – I’d filled the whiteboard with laborious detail, which neither suited, motivated nor inspired me. So I got a cloth and I wiped the whole thing clean. Then I added a few simply expressed goals. And the picture.

And then I started to breathe more freely. Long deep breaths.

So what does all that mean? I’d looked on the board as I do every day and I saw clutter and I felt cluttered. When I thought of wiping everything clean I saw my goal of visiting the Matisse chapel. That led me to an unstoppable instinct to look at his work. I then reached for the most streamline, sublimely simple work from the end of his life. That inspiration made me take my own clutter and remove it. Thank you Matisse. I can breathe again.

We don’t know where inspiration’s going to come from or where it’s going to take us. When itcomes, go with it.

I cleared a board that’s been bugging me for months. I feel I have space now for creating a new vision for my life – which is something I’ve needed to do for a while. Now I have the space, I can do it.

And the book? Well I’m going to take a look at it now. I may or not buy it. If I do it’s because the work truly moves me and the investment will be benchmarked against that. I won’t be buying it to satisfy an unquestioned urge.

The point, I suppose, is if we follow the inspiration, not the urge, the reward is much more interesting.

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To find out how Creative Change Coaching can transform your life, call London coach Caroline Chapple on 07813 943 787 or email caroline@chapplecoaching.com