In Search of Inspiration

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In this Draft, writer and strategist Tim Leberecht captures an encounter with bestselling author and coach Michael Bungay Stanier, exploring how friction, risk, and creative tension ignite fresh ideas. Dive into their insights and bring more creativity into your life.

There are long days. Then there are days so endless and exhausting that your brain is left feeling like an overstuffed carry-on bag rattling in economy class on a turbulent transpacific flight. This was the mental state I found myself in after thirteen hours of TED talks in Vancouver in 2019.

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I had come to Vancouver in search of new voices and unconventional perspectives. It was the early days of my organization, the House of Beautiful Business, and I needed to find speakers for our upcoming festival on the life-centered economy—an approach to business that focuses on sustainability, inclusivity, and creativity. TED promised to be a curator’s paradise, the perfect place to meet and greet tomorrow’s mavericks and leading thinkers. But as the conference wrapped up, I was in no condition to make intelligible conversation with anyone. It had nothing to do with the speakers, who’d been uniformly excellent. It was merely a reflection of my overstimulated mind in shutdown mode after spending the day digesting heaping platters of information while deprived of natural light.

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In this haze, I made my way to the lobby and found myself standing beside a stranger who looked as drained as I felt. Tall as a basketball player, wearing big glasses and a loud Hawaiian shirt, he stood out in the crowd. I wandered outside to get some fresh air only to find this stranger near me again: we’d managed to sit on opposite ends of the same bench, facing the city’s spectacular North Shore Mountains. Neither of us said anything for quite some time. When we finally did, it wasn’t to introduce ourselves or exchange job titles, but to comment on the light, the sky, the shadows that disappeared as dusk settled. We sensed a deep calmness within ourselves and an affinity with our surroundings. It occurred to me that I felt more inspired than I had all day.

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Michael Bungay Stanier and I became fast friends. Michael was already a renowned executive coach whose bestselling book, The Coaching Habit, had brought his method of curiosity-fueled leadership to readers around the world. We both got a kick out of the8 situation’s irony: A day of meticulously programmed “inspiration” had been trumped by a little fresh air and a mountain view. For me, the experience was something of a revelation. For Michael, the irony was less surprising. He was already well acquainted with inspiration’s quirks.

A Tale of Black Whiskey

In the mid-1990s, long before TED talks were a thing, Michael was part of a consulting team that found innovative ways to bring new products and services into the world. They were hired by a Scottish whiskey company—a client, you might say, that was selling the right product at the wrong time. The 90s were a decade of hard lemonade and vodka coolers; neither Scotch, nor the multi-consonnated Gaelic distilleries it came from, seemed particularly hip. For Scotch to sell, it would have to shed its image as the drink of grizzled grandfathers, and become alluring to modern consumers.

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Michael knew they needed a brilliant idea. It came in the form of “black whiskey,” the world’s first charcoal-colored Scotch. The hope was that its unusual hue and mysterious ingredients would create a whole new generation of scotch drinkers. The client loved the concept’s confidence and originality and, in 1996, Loch Dhu (‘black lake’ in Gaelic) hit the shelves.

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If you’re a whiskey drinker, you may well know where the story goes next. If you aren’t, suffice it to say the scotch did not take off. Mocked by customers and panned by connoisseurs, production was soon halted and bottles quickly went out of circulation. Did that mean the inspiration was misguided? Michael didn’t think so. For him, this experience illuminated a profound truth about the nature of inspiration. To open yourself to it, you have to risk getting things very wrong.

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Silence Your Inner Critic

If it feels as though inspiration is something you have no control over, there’s science to support this. Medical imaging has shown that the potential to be inspired is latent in our brains, but requires activation. This can be anything from a beautiful melody to a stunning view; it can be three minutes of heart-wrenching dialogue on your favorite Netflix series or the way the light looks dappled on the balcony off your kitchen. We can’t know when it will come or why. All we can do is stay open to the impulse, and welcome it without judgment when it drops by.

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But there are ways of increasing the likelihood of a visit. Michael is an avid walker; getting his legs moving in nature can create a peaceful, zen-like state in which his day dissolves behind him. I prefer films and galleries when I’m in need of a psychological reset. I don’t think I’ve ever left a gallery without a new lightness in my heart, the inkling of an unfamiliar idea. My partner reads voraciously; a beautifully crafted sentence that expresses a feeling she knows, but has never seen articulated, can kickstart a chain reaction of creativity.

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Your inspiration mode may look quite different. Some people are most creative when their minds are active and engaged, while others need a kind of decoy activity to get the sparks firing. “Shower epiphanies” are the classic example of this; we’ve all been struck by an unexpected idea when semi-engaged in lathering our hair. Others need contrast to power their imaginations. The shock of a fresh environment or new experience can knock you out of your routine, causing a creative collision between habit and novelty that makes everything familiar seem vibrant, different, changed. In fact, creative collisions are often at the heart of inspiration. When we stop compartmentalizing our lives and begin tearing down the conceptual walls between work, leisure, travel, family, community, culture, and more, we open ourselves to new spaces. These spaces make room for different parts of ourselves to come into contact, which can trigger a mysterious alchemy of thoughts, feelings, and ideas. That alchemy fertilizes the ground for inspiration.

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Michael has only one hard and fast rule when it comes to opening yourself to inspiration: Silence your inner critic. Nothing can sabotage creativity as irrevocably as judging it too soon. He pictures inspiration as a kind of coded dialogue between our conscious and unconscious minds. “I see a portal open and the beginning of a rich conversation” he tells me. “The worst thing you can do is interrupt it. Inspiration isn’t problem solving. You can’t start assessing viability or playing devil’s advocate. You have to keep that channel open. There’s something sacred about inspiration that asks for our patience and respect,” he says.

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And then life is full of twists—as Michael is quick to remind me. There’s a very funny epilogue to his black whiskey story. Pulled from the shelves so soon after its release, the drink accrued a kind of mythical status. Rumors circulated among connoisseurs around the world. Those who’d tasted the scotch shared horror stories; those who hadn’t listened with envy and dismay. Dwindling stocks gave the bottles an insider’s cachet and, within time, made them collectors items, bought and sold for amounts that far exceeded their original value. These days, black whiskey has nothing short of a cult following.

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What to take away from this Draft?

In other words, inspiration is short but history is long. With that in mind, I’ve been trying to invite more creativity into my life these days. It’s always a balance; you can’t force an epiphany or strong-arm your imagination into action. Our minds are incorrigible rebels. Instead, I’m opening myself to new impulses and stimuli by adopting a few techniques that can help me grow and change holistically. Here they are:

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Michael Bungay Stanier is an award-winning author, teacher, and speaker. He’s best known for his 2016 book The Coaching Habit, which brought his method of curiosity-led leadership to millions of readers. He’s the founder and former CEO of Box of Crayons, a renowned training and development company, and has spoken at top conferences around the world.

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Tim Leberecht is the co-founder and co-CEO of the House of Beautiful Business, the network for the life-centered economy. He is the author of the books The Business Romantic (2015), The End of Winning (2020), and the upcoming Picky: How the Superpower of Curation Can Save the World (2026). His two TED talks have garnered millions of views.