Do you ever have days when what lies before you is veiled, unknown, and a bit scary, but you know you must go forward somehow anyway? Today was one of those days for me.
Let me tell you about my Inspiration Wall.
I have two 14’ x4’ whiteboard walls that my husband kindly painted for me when I moved into my current offices. One is in my office where I can view tasks and meetings; the To-Dos for the week. The other is in my conference room and one side of it I’ve been using as my Inspiration Wall – a place I go to write things that will inspire me to be myself or to help me learn and understand new truths – things waiting just outside the beckoning of my mind. Things that bolster me to live authentically and to know that others have come through this same journey, even when they might have been just as afraid as I am to walk on their own paths.
But the one thing that having so much “Inspiration” waiting for me every day in my conference room; it doesn’t give me comfort for the unknown that will happen to me tomorrow. Sometimes, the “Inspiration” points can lead to looking forward to the comfort of those sayings, day after day, without the thought of the new inspirations needed for tomorrow’s epiphanies. Such was my view of my Inspiration Wall this week. It was getting too crowded with things I have grown accustomed to and complacent in – they had become my crutches instead, bolstering me in myself without giving me breathing room for the “new new” in my life.
What had once been my Inspirations (and still are), had now become so overgrown with no new meaning that I knew it was time to tear down the wall and make way for more current life lessons that will lend themselves to building something completely new in my future. The sayings and that whiteboard Inspiration portion had become constrictive to me. But – it was hard to think about destroying inspirations from others that had come to mean so much to me. That, and thinking of the completely blank whiteboard wall that would soon be staring at me left me feeling weak – what if I couldn’t find new Inspirations? What if the things I was writing on the wall were the only inspirations that would ever mean anything true to me? Was I really willing to give up Sir Francis Drake or Marcus Aurelius? Was I ready to give up “Be Margaret” from the Melody Wilding book, Trust Yourself?
But I knew I had to do it. So I got out my microfiber cloths and a small glass of water and started to wipe it all down.
It didn’t take me too long to start tearing up. I LOVED those sayings and the truths that spoke to me – I loved each word and its placement in the sentences. The thought of wiping them from the wall was so incredibly tough to conceive of and then painful to do. I loved “Trumpets still need breath; breath needs to be pure; ‘pure breath’ for the trumpet needs a spit valve” and “Intuition is inside the rock; be purposely chosen” – they meant something to me.
When life’s current Inspirations don’t leave room enough for us to learn something new, it’s time to create clean space for us to grow into. And so, the only thing left on my Inspiration Wall is – white breathing room – the ability to lean into tomorrow, knowing that there will be time enough for new inspirations, time enough for new lessons learned, time enough to explore new things to get excited about and loved, all at once.
Yes, sometimes we have to be willing to let go of older inspirations to take hold of our new tomorrows – things we haven’t even conceived of yet, but which will be just as magnificent as discovering spit valves. I’m starting to get excited again.