We have all felt that moment of inspiration; when the perfect idea springs from the depths of a restless subconscious, and births into the light of our being.

Sometimes those moments are rare and sometimes they are so frequent that we barely have the time to write them down and visualize them. But rare or frequent, they are precious, and deserve our attention.

Creation is the easy part (ask any parent of a teenager). We birth an idea, and then it’s our responsibility to nurture and care for it until it reaches its maturity.

This is when we move from creation to commitment. Committing to following through on our ideas is where most of us loose the battle, no matter how splendid the idea is. Without our commitment, ideas wither and die.

Try these tips to stay focused on your creative inspirations!

Have a Goal
No goals means having no focus. This means you can easily loose your enthusiasm for your project. And lack of enthusiasm is a destroyer of dreams! So keep a goal list, and promise yourself that everyday you will do something, no matter how small, to work toward your goal.

Visualize the End Result
The University of Chicago conducted a study on the benefits of visualization using three groups of people. The first group had to practice free throwing a basketball for an hour a day for 30 days. The second group had to visualize free throwing a basketball and the third group did nothing.

At the end of 30 days the first group had increased their free throwing ability by 24 percent. The second group (that only visualized) increased their ability by 23 percent. The third group actually got a little worse!

So even science is showing that visualization helps us to improve whatever we are visualizing!

Spend time visualizing the accomplishment of your goal. Don’t worry about the little details, just see the end result – getting the ball into that hoop!

Stay Passionate
In the last year I have visited five massage therapists. Two were very successful, while the other three were failing with their businesses, even though they gave a pretty good massage. The difference was that the two successful massage therapists were passionate about what they did; they were proud to offer their services, and they wanted the world to know. The other three daydreamed about getting out of the business and moving on to something else. They’d lost their passion, and their clients knew this.

If you aren’t passionate about what you are doing, you have no energy or enthusiasm to create something amazing. It takes commitment and focus to bring our dreams into existence. Otherwise they stay in the realm of dreams, never quiet being born, but never quite leaving us alone either.

Nurturing a creative inspiration requires our attention. Whether it’s a relationship or an artistic endeavor, it’s our focus on what we are creating that fills us with the necessary passion to see it through until the end.