Why Inspiration Needs Space That Smells Like Strawberries
For some reason, people think creativity requires constant movement.
Maybe that’s why we confuse the race with inspiration.
Mass production with art.
Manufacturing with craftsmanship.
I’m not talking about quality here.
I’m talking about what we put into what we create —
whether the product is physical or intellectual.
Because when you create something from inspiration,
you can put a little piece of your own soul into it.
And that’s what makes it unique.
I’m not talking about price.
I’m talking about value.
There is a quiet moment before an idea arrives.
People often think that if you want to create something successful, you have to keep running.
I’m not sure that’s true.
At least for me, my best ideas usually come in moments of silence and peace.
Sometimes there are even a few days when I don’t want to do anything at all.
But that’s only how it looks from the outside.
I’m not doing nothing.
I’m filling up.
Sometimes we need to empty the glass before we can pour something new into it.
Sometimes we need a detox for the soul and the mind, not just the body.
And these days, I stopped running.
At first, I tried to inspire myself.
I searched for videos.
I looked at references.
I read things.
I tried to catch ideas as they flew past me.
And it worked.
I even enjoyed it.
For a while, I thought there was no better way to do it.
Until something happened in my life that made me decide to stop looking at social media for a while and simply keep posting my own content.
At first, I was afraid of the silence.
I had become so used to my mind constantly researching something that I was actually afraid of the emptiness.
Not even silence.
Emptiness.
I was afraid I would have nothing left to feed my brain and my imagination.
I’ve loved searching for formulas since childhood.
There is an old Soviet movie I watched when I was very little about a crazy wizard who was searching for the formula for love.
I’m a little like him.
Except I’m not looking for the formula for love.
I like looking for formulas for everything.
Not because my brain thinks in mathematical formulas.
I’m interested in how things work.
When I was going through my Twin Flame journey, I became fascinated by the psychological mechanisms behind it.
Why do we react this way and not another way?
Why does something happen?
What event triggers the next event?
What makes one reaction lead to another?
I became so fascinated with it that I created an entire account built around a chain of content where people could follow my journey step by step.
And when I look at that content now, I don’t regret a single moment of it.
I’m actually proud that I did it.
I created something that might help people recognize that what they’re feeling is real.
That they’re not alone.
Maybe that alone was worth creating all that content for.
But when I finally reached the end of my journey, something unexpected happened.
Silence.
I didn’t want to repeat what I had already said.
And that’s when I realized I had grown.
Children can be afraid of the unknown.
But I’m an adult now.
I had shown what it looked like to walk one road.
And when I reached the end of it, it was time to show what it looks like to jump onto another highway.
So I went into silence.
And then something unexpected happened.
Ideas started coming to me on their own.
I didn’t need to inspire myself with someone else’s videos anymore.
I didn’t need people’s questions to create content explaining something.
I didn’t even need Pinterest with its million beautiful references.
The ideas just came.
And that was priceless.
***
Sometimes we think silence automatically means emptiness.
It doesn’t.
Silence expands our space so we can expand our minds.
And I’m not talking about the kind of silence you deliberately create with candles, meditation music, and a perfectly organized notebook.
That’s not really silence.
That’s a background for a beautiful Instagram post.
If you like that, nobody is stopping you.
Life is short. We should do whatever makes us happy.
But the background itself won’t create anything.
It’s just a background.
I mean the completely ordinary kind of silence.
The kind that happens when you finally stop trying to think.
For me, apparently, it happens in the shower.
I can spend an entire day thinking about something.
Turning it around.
Analyzing it.
Trying to understand what I’m supposed to do next.
And nothing.
Then I turn on the water.
I close my eyes.
I wash my hair.
I love anything that smells delicious.
It helps me relax.
And then I wash my ass with strawberry-scented shower gel.
And suddenly—
there it is.
The thought I couldn’t find all day.
The sentence I couldn’t formulate.
The connection I couldn’t see.
The idea simply appears,
as if it had been waiting patiently for me to stop interrogating it.
Maybe that’s what the quiet moment before creation really is.
Not emptiness.
Space.
Space that smells like strawberries.
Or vanilla cookies and milk.
We often think creativity requires more input:
more information,
more inspiration,
more research,
more effort.
Sometimes it requires the opposite.
Less noise.
Less trying.
Less asking, “What should I create?”
And more moments when you’re simply existing.
Taking a shower.
Walking through a park in the evening.
Making coffee with cinnamon.
Looking out the window as birds carry summer away to warmer places.
Doing absolutely nothing that looks productive.
Doing something that makes your soul start singing.
Because an idea doesn’t always arrive when you chase it.
Sometimes it arrives when you finally give it somewhere to land.
***
And maybe that’s why some of our best ideas feel less like something we invented and more like something we heard.
The mind finally became quiet enough to notice what was already there.
The glass finally became empty enough for us to pour fresh water into it.
So if you are waiting for your next idea, perhaps you don’t need another strategy.
Maybe you just need to turn on the water, close your eyes, and stop trying so hard.
And yes—
don’t forget to add a scent that makes you happy.
Chocolate.
Vanilla cookies.
Strawberries.
Whatever it is for you.
Ideas don’t come when summoned.
They go wherever there is enough space for them to arrive.
Sometimes that place smells like strawberries.
Sometimes it smells like vanilla cookies in the shower.
Apparently, creativity has standards. 😂
The quiet moment isn’t the absence of creation.
It is where creation begins.
Previously Published on Medium
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