Encourage Inspiration is a series dedicated to practices that help foster creativity & inspiration.

You can’t expect to find inspiration if the soundtrack to your life is dull. You need to find the music that makes your soul scream out with joy. Only then will you feel complete, and never lack in inspiration.

There are plenty of tools online to help you find music you like. You do, however, need to have some idea of what you’re looking for.

Looking at the Similar Artists section on the Last.fm page for musicians you enjoy.

Try Pandora.com. You put genre’s or artist you like in, and it creates a custom radio station just for you. You can rate songs with a thumbs up or down, which then refines the station to be an even more perfect fit. This is how I’ve found lots of my favorite artists.

I say it all the time, but “Get out to a music festival!” Hop on Jambase.com/festivals, and look in your area. There has to be some sort of multi-genre fest going on within driving range. I make it a point to check out artists I’ve never heard of at festivals, they often turn out to be my next favorite band!

Once you have some awesome music to listen to, try GrooveShark, a free service that allows you to create & save playlists of almost any music you can think of!

Have any inspiration encouraging practices? Post them in the comments!

As I prepare to release my book, The Art of Creativity, I want to start putting more creativity & inspiration related posts up on the blog. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting a series of posts called “Encourage Inspiration”, which will each include a technique that I use to help encourage Inspiration & Creativity.

The first technique is called Fresh Journeys. I hope it helps you as much as it’s helped me!

Fresh Journeys

One thing I like to do, is take a different path to work every day. This helps to keep out of your routines, where things repeat over and over until you zone them out and don’t even see the beauty around you.

As you change up your environment, you get your creative mind working. It likes new experiences.
Give it a shot, try a different walk to work every day, doesn’t matter if it’s just one street over. I bet you start to notice lots of inspiring things all around you.

Have any inspiration encouraging practices? Post them in the comments!