We talk about so many great things here: about where you can get information that will help you discover a passion or goal, about the power of having the right materials, about universal materials we all need on our creative quest, and about how to acquire materials on a low budget - and who doesn’t want that?

MM - 553 - Get More Materials

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me!

It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat.

Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me.

Today’s focus is: Get More Materials

Episode 542 talks all about gathering the necessary materials - materials that will help rev your creative engine and reconnect you with your passion. If you haven’t listened to Episode 542, I think it’s a great idea, especially if you’re someone who’s in search of their passion or in search of a goal to achieve. Because in this stage of my process, I knew I was searching for something but I had no desires. So maybe Episode 542 can help you, too.

The general idea of gathering your materials in the first place was to kickstart your exploration process. It was to get you to play again, play with the materials that speak to you.

Now, I wonder when you reached out to gather materials, did you, like me, have some around your home that you could start to play with? Did you have a good idea where those materials were, and you went over and just picked them up again? I knew were mine were because I had a sense of guilt every time I saw them, because I knew I should be using them, and I wasn’t.

My materials are writerly things. I knew exactly where I kept my blank notebooks and favorite pencils, so I started this process by picking up one little, one-subject notebook. I grabbed one pencil. And that is how this began. Very quickly, though, I felt myself being pulled in many creative directions when I sat down to write: I wanted to collect notes on what I’d been reading, but I also had begun writing non-fiction and journaling. And I wanted to write down other writing or business ideas I was having so they didn’t distract me, so I would finish things I was currently working on.

All of this began to overwhelm my little notebook, so I went back into the cabinet and pulled out five more one-subject notebooks. I went back to the drawer and pulled out a black marker. I labeled each notebook by subject making sure to have one about my “50 States in 90 Days” book that I’m writing and one about this journey I am taking with you: “Coming Back from Flat.”

I had all the notebooks labeled and I was filling pages in each one, and you know what happened? So many ideas began to flow that I needed better organization, and I wanted to collect all of my ideas in one place because I know that this way they would have more weight. That they would have a better chance of materializing. So I went back into the cabinet.

This time, I pulled out a brand new, fat binder and a brand new package of dividers with tabs, it was like they had been there waiting for me. Then I grabbled a stack of lined paper, my colored markers, and my clipboard.

I labeled the tabs with the colorful markers and began ripping the pages from the notebooks and filing them into the binder - not caring that the notebook pages are smaller than the looseleaf ones. Then I put a stack of paper on the clipboard and I began to write.

If I needed to, I added a note to a page already started in the binder,