Do you notice the times when you're happy?

Some of my father's wood carvings.
Circa 1995.

My father would often cloister himself away, to work on his many art projects, be it carving, drawing, painting, creating figurines of the Plaster of Paris etc.… He definitely knew when he was happy.

We often go through out our day noticing when things are not going right and usually are very aware of the impact it has. How often are you aware when you're happy throughout the day? Do you actually noticed the moments when you are happy as much as those times when you are negatively impacted? If the world is so busy counting the negatives, perhaps it is time to take pause and count the positives.

I am guilty of this as well. Although I do my darndest to catch these darker moments and events and balance them out with a clear perspective. Here's an example:

When I bought a bottle of wine, even if it's a screwtop, I am very aware that usually getting it open takes a little bit of planning. This is due to a disability I have, Cerebral Palsy, usually I put on rubber gloves to increase my grip and give the bottle a few tries before the lead cracks open. But occasionally the bottle opens without effort and I am instantaneously very pleased. But how long do I hold onto that memory?-This is the question. So today I'm going to make a conscious effort to notice the things that go right. At the end of the day I will look back and see what I feel about things. It is also very appropriate that it's Friday. That in itself always brings a smile to my face. This particular file goes way back to when I was a child and it meant the end of the school week was near. Even though I liked school, the weekend was always much better. Full of adventure 😌.

So, that's it then, let's all take some time to notice when we are happy and then reflect on that at the end of the day and see how we feel. The video with this incredibly short article goes into more detail and I can tell you that by the end of it I was feeling pretty darn good 😁!

There may be a follow-up video because I intend to keep this positive idea of being aware of my own positive events going for at least a week and then I will report back. So this article will get longer.

For now take care and enjoy the video. May it bring something nice to your day.
Patrick Clark

The Art of Being Happy.

There are of course many articles written on the art of being happy. This text however will be different it is a much more personal journey as I attempt to look at what happiness is for me and perhaps for you. There will of course be a video at some point. (It'll probably be just below this paragraph as Google loves videos to peer near the beginning of a piece so that users don't have to scroll very far😁

Step 1: Get Real, Stop the Mental Autopilot

I did an article and video almost exactly a year ago dealing with just this.-The article is called "Presence of Mind". To summarize the article you have to pay attention to what you are doing mentally. When everything is done by routine we almost immediately stop listening to the internal dialogue but we don't stop listening to the overall message. If that messages negative or in other ways untrue we still accepted as fact on an emotional level and that of course impacts everything.

Step 2: Stop Saying "Yes." To Every Task; Pair down Your To Do List.

I have a tendency to say "Certainly, I can do that.", because I like to accomplish things and help people in the process, or at least that's what I like to tell myself. But I think the truth is closer to something like this is how we validate ourselves or temporarily make ourselves happy. Well, the second step is to stop doing just that. A single person can only do so much and even though you and I may love to be involved in everything. In order to accomplish anything the tasks must be manageable. They must allow you to have breathing room. So since the goal is to be happy, let's say for today you must have the room and time to do it. If you look at very creative people they guarded their time jealously. (See the article "Intuition and the Curious Mind" )

 Step 3: Happiness Is Not External, it's internal And You Have To Own It.

This one a big one, which must be clearly understood. Happiness does not come to you. It is something you'll create by being involved and taking responsibility for how you feel. Yep, you have to work at it and it is only temporary. Which means you have to keep working at it and be willing to put in the effort. The details of this sobering paragraph are that you have to figure out your own personal mechanism to find happiness. Start with identifying why you may be unhappy. Separate the things you cannot change from the things you can. It may be necessary to change your self. Many people think they can attain something without changing themselves. Humanity was literally built on the idea of constant change. If you are unhappy at this very moment and then you manage to make your self happy you will not be the same person.

Click picture to view/download full
resolution printable copy.

This artwork is hereby placed in the
public domain and is based upon material
in the public domain. Patrick Clark

So happiness is really a voyage of discovery and effort. It has very little to do with external things. You definitely cannot buy happiness; you could only buy distraction at the end of the day you must deal with your self. Therefore embrace change and effort.

Step 4: The Discovery

So happiness is really a voyage of discovery and effort. It has very little to do with external things. You definitely cannot buy happiness; you could only buy distraction, and  at the end of the day you must deal with your self. Therefore embrace change and effort.

Very often as you get closer to feeling happier, and you find with some astonishment that there is resistance. Human beings don't fundamentally like to change regardless of how miserable or positive there are normal is. The key thing to remember is that you are not trying to win an achievement. There is no plateau. More accurately, what you are doing is making minor alterations to your outlook one step at a time. Be prepared to practice and be very honest with yourself during this ongoing journey. At some point you will be astonished how happy you are.

Step 4.5: Keep Track of Your Discoveries

Most often a "lack of happiness" can be defined as a lack of knowing one's self. The more you understand about the person you are, the more you can address and make changes. Following the above steps will literally make you a happier person. Because you understand more about your self and it is an ongoing journey. It is not a simple task to be happy it is much easier for some people to be miserable because all they have to do is ignore the things that would make them happy. Which is to change what they are doing in some way.

So start digging around and considering the particular situation you find yourself in. You may not feel the change a lot of things but at the very least you can change how you interpret and react to any given event.

Take care have a great day Patrick

Learning and knowledge in the shadow of AI

Graduation cap image based on
"Student graduation cap with gold tassel and ribbon"
by upklyak under the Freepik license.

Since the advent of the public Internet the way we learn, and indeed what is acceptable as knowledge, has been evolving. Along with that, is the idea that the very processes by way we think and perceive information is changing. Now along comes something which will really alter the game, Artificial Intelligence (AI). Consider the following points:

Deep Understanding

In the last 30 years or so, the need to work on a problem or go through the process of "thinking" has become somewhat optional. If you don't know the answer to something you can simply Google it. Still though with Google and other search engines you have to know a little bit about the topic and a bit about how best to phrase it in text. And you still have to filter out many of the results. But the deep contemplation/understanding of the issue that you're working on has in many cases has become optional.

We don't look very far in the past to be truly astounded by people who undertook very complex problems and thought them through using only their brains, and I'm not talking about geniuses like Stephen Hawking or other exceptional people. It is the ordinary person of the past that understood algebra, chemistry or history. They truly understood the processes and relationships of the work because it was a necessity.. They could tell you why something appeared to be true and how they arrived at the conclusion. Even more importantly go and actually done the work mentally or physically to get the answer. Another way to put it is to a greater or lesser extent they learned the discipline of how to figure things out.

Just a Compendium of Information

Today with search engines and the Internet, we more or less just compiled information, at least the casual user does. Regardless of our chosen source be it Wikipedia, Google Scholar or some other tool, we essentially just bring together the facts. The depth of knowledge and understanding we have is beginning to change. I say "change" because I fundamentally believe that our brains are rewiring to store more facts at the expense of true understanding. It is an optimization. Because at no other time in the world's history as the average person ever had to deal with more input every day.

So this really has me wondering how the next steps will affect us. Will AI mean that we no longer have to "know" anything (this is obviously taking things too extreme, to make the point)? And again, how will this affect the very processes by which we think. Which in turn will affect how people construct their own personal realities.

Mental Effort

This is my own supposition, that the brain has evolved to give us the ability to truly understand and think. Look at all the great artworks and music over the past centuries. The subtleties involved in such undertakings. This took a great deal of effort, but it was an effort which was expected in many cases and it was through that very undertaking that greater mental and emotional skills evolved.

If we look at the world today we see one thing that is very obvious across certain aspects of the modern world. Look at the amount of repetition for example in the media. (If I see one more reboot of an old program or series I may go insane 😀 ). If we use 30 years as a timescale it is obvious that in the last 15 years there have been more and more duplications of things that were successful in the past. Where is the creativity and knowledge which spawned the original?  Yes, it is true that big media outlets will always try to reproduce a winning streak with something that worked before. But it really has me questioning the state of true creativity.

Have we inadvertently made things a little too easy and in doing so allowed the brain to prune a little too much in the understanding-circuitry department? With the beginnings of AI what will happen in this situation?

This is just one example of losing the benefits of  "mental effort" and it happens pretty quickly. But the answer is not to make things blindly more difficult again. Making things difficult without a purpose, a tangible outcome, never works.

I think the solution here is that we must remain aware of how society and AI are interacting and evolving.

I am a technologist at heart and a true heat so I do love all the intricacies involved and the potential positive outcomes. I have at last count seven computers in my apartment with a network of over 47 devices. (If you're worried about my power consumption by the way they are all single board Raspberry Pi computers aside from two.)

In summary, let's not make things too easy on ourselves

The trip to benefiting from AI and future advances, is to be involved as much as possible with all of the industries and results. Not just be a consumer of knowledge, even if we reach the point where the artificial intelligence knows more than we do. We must remain engaged in the effort and indeed in life itself. In other words there is no room for complacency. The world will change remarkably in the next hundred years. Probably outside of our current perceptions. I must admit part of me would love to be around to see this evolution or should I call it a dance between the various participants biological and technical alike.

Who knows, we may reach a point where there is no difference between AI and us. But that's another story, and there are many other factors to consider.

Stay engaged in life everyone and have a great day. There will of course be a companion video I think as I write this I will put them up both together at the same time.

Take care Patrick

When a backup goes wrong.

 

(When a backup or restore goes terribly wrong... )

Let's face it. Everyone has everything stored on their phone, tablet or other device now days. You name it, it's in there. Over the course of time, you can end up with millions of things and I'm not exaggerating. Some of the items you can see while others you cannot. These unseen items are usually created by the device itself to help keep track of items and functions you use.

Now yes this is going to be one of those articles that begs you to backup your material. But the most important thing is to know how to get your material back if the unthinkable happens and unfortunately it will.

Many people buy backup devices and then blindly follow the instructions and assume everything will be wonderful when the time comes to use the device again to retrieve their material.  The first time backup software  is used, it will suggest making a backup of everything, including the operating system software. When you use this file to restore from EVERYTHING on the destination device will be replaced, including the software which makes it work.  

So rule #1: Don't just go out and buy some software without understanding how it works. The following is based on a true event:

A friend of mine dutifully went out and bought some backup software complete with the backup hard drive. They set it up exactly how the instruction said and let the software do its thing every day.

One year later they got a new laptop and found that it wasn't set up to their liking. Rather than asking for assistance they took their backup hard drive and plugged it into the new machine and despite several warnings clicked the button in the software which read something like "Restore Everything". That's exactly what the software attempted to do "restore everything including part of the old operating system. Things came to a crashing halt apparently halfway through. They were left with a completely nonfunctional computer. Fortunately it was able to be restored to the appropriate modern operating system. My friend learned a valuable lesson that day which simply put is "when in doubt (or more accurately in this case, when you get a message saying are you sure? Unless you are sure, don't proceed.)

To summarize don't just trust blindly what software is going to do especially when it's dealing with a replaceable documents or other material. Please seek assistance before hand.

I just had a great idea, I am going to try to replicate what my friend did to their machine and capture the events on video. I can't remember exactly what software they were using but let's see what we can come up with. Click the video accompanying this article to watch what happens.

More after I created it 😀.... The video has been created and is near the beginning of this post. You can also watch it on YouTube. 

Some background on the video:

Oh boy did that turn out to be an adventure! I had some technical issues related to using multiple video streams and that is the reason why there is such a gap between this article coming out and the previous one. However I was able to replicate the disaster my friend had. In this 17 minute video we go through all the steps from the perspective of a casual computer user. The lesson learned at the end of all this is best summed up by the phrase "Read the Manual!"

To do this I bought a Western Digital two terabyte external USB drive. The first step was to install Windows 10 in a virtual machine, (A virtual machine is a computer emulated using software. That way if the virtual machine computer gets damaged you can simply reset the software. )Then I used the software which came with the backup drive to make a full copy of the virtual machine. This is exactly the same as backing up a real computer for all intensive purposes. Once I had that done I installed Windows 11 on another computer and attempted to install Windows 10 backup I had made. What surprised me was that the software did not try to stop the attempt.

You'll see the results in the video. It really underscores the importance of learning how to properly use the software and its limitations. Two important notes:

In the video I am using Acronis True Image, this is not meant to be a critique of their product in any way. It is simply what came on the backup drive. When used properly, this software will fulfill its task admirably.

Partition (this term is mentioned in the video)

In the video I mentioned "Partitioning"in relation to the hard drives. I forgot to explain the definition of this word in this context. So here it is: It is possible to take a physical hard drive and it divided up so that it behaves like two or more separate devices. In modern operating systems this technique is used to section off a protected area in the drive which keeps up backup of critical software should the need arise to install the operating system again. In Windows systems, this partition is normally hidden. Even if you delete all the files in your computer this hidden area will remain intact. However partitions aren't indestructible and the backup software completely destroyed this hidden area. Meaning that if you did this on a real computer you would have to obtain a brand-new copy of Windows in order to make the machine run.

When watching the video after the partition has been damaged in the test computer you will actually see a message displayed asking for a "floppy disk to be inserted. "This is a very good indication that everything had been destroyed and the computer was relying on some very old built in programming. Basically a last ditch message.

A computer technician could of course reinstall the appropriate software and get the machine going again but it would be a bran new machine effectively. The owner of the machine would have to put all their files back in using another method and not their backup external drive.  This probably could have been avoided if when they did the initial backup of the Windows 10 machine they only backed up certain things like photos and documents. This underscores the importance of learning the software before hand.

This is today's lesson. 💾.

SIDE NOTE: It was a lot of fun creating this particular video. Hopefully I made it understandable and not too boring. I must admit I was really surprised when I was doing the restore portion that the software didn't try to stop me. This completely explains then how my friend was able to get into trouble.

The same situation could also happen with other devices, phones and tablets alike. So please whenever you are backing up something or trying to move to a new device be very careful about the software being used. If in doubt ask for assistance.

I have a feeling I'm going to be adding a little more content to this article as time goes on. Maybe we will do one for phones. Because I have also seen a very similar situation with them. However in the case of phones it was more to do with the person not adequately preparing the phone to be given to someone else. Now days just deleting everything on a phone is insufficient. The very first thing you must do is remove your accounts which are connected to your phone before erasing it and giving it away. More about that somewhere down the road in a later video and article.

For now have a great day! 😀
Patrick

What if there are different levels of sentience?

 

The immediate answer for most people is probably "Yes, there are a variety of levels…" But I bet you never considered that there might be something above the human's experience of sentience. --And at this point you know I will be talking again about artificial intelligence. Who's to say AI needs to stop at our level. What if it discovers awareness well beyond what we perceive? It is an interesting question to start with.

Human beings have never faced the possibility of something totally tangible; in the room with them so to speak which may have an enhanced version of sentience. Think of the avenues that would open up for all concerned. Personally I get a little excited at the thought and in a very positive way. It would be like going from black and white TV to full living colour. But that colour may in itself have levels above it. I find this all very humbling to contemplate as I sit here on a Friday night. I am sitting here comfortably in my chair and yet at the same time I wonder what I am not perceiving or to be more precise what I am "dumbing down" to fit into my own awareness.

I guess one way to look at this would be to consider some of the other animals on earth and asking the question: "Just where on the scale of sentience does this fit in?"I don't think it can be simply a binary choice that being that something is either aware of itself or it isn't. It is more likely to be far more nuanced and it is in those nuances I find itself pondering this question.

As a society I wonder if we are really ready to explore these nuances, big and small. To my way of thinking now days it doesn't take much for people to get offended or drop battle lines based on differences of opinion. The art of negotiation and debate seem to be fading... Maybe this will wake things up again.

When one debates in a healthy manner you can have differences of opinion and Outlook and yes even in the way you think. That could turn out to be really important in the coming years. The key here is that ass we discover more and more about the very process of being sentient, the more I think we will have to learn to be valuable and hopefully deepen our understanding. The best politicians and negotiators really comprehend the skills. They can be on opposite ends of the spectrum and yet still see the value in each other. Okay that Outlook is a bit perhaps a little too naïve sounding but I do like occasionally to put on the rose coloured glasses and strive to see the best in humanity. Because I don't think were going to be alone much longer on this little blue marble. There's going to be a new kid on the block. Regardless of what we end up calling them, they are indeed going to be fellow roommates of planet Earth.

This short article is being put together over a few days on a very busy weekend and it's the same situation for the accompanying video. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on this.

Have a great day Patrick

The Black Box of Knowledge.

 

Wow, it is been quite the week for my little blog. Great to see all the traffic.

Here it is Thursday night and I'm quickly writing a little note because the way Friday is shaping up I may not have time to post a decent article or video....

Well, as it turns out time was available to do a video😀 and while I was doing it, it brought up a few more thoughts.

A few articles ago I mentioned that I was doing a piece on how the advent of AI is going to affect how society perceives and uses knowledge. This is the first attempt at such article. What I find fascinating is that we are quickly reaching a point where people will not be able to understand how artificial intelligence solved a certain problem. For the simple reason that the AI is capable of going through so much more information. Google's Gemini for example can churn through hundreds of thousands of document in an hour. We must also be aware that we are only at the very beginning of this evolution in technology. Regardless however I think it's here to stay in one form or another. Then there was the announcement of AI starting to be phased into digital assistances in late 2024 by YouTuber  "Automate Your Life "in this video blog.

So our relationship to knowledge is going to change and I think verily rapidly. Will knowledge become more of a, for lack of a better term, "black box", where we trusted by default simply because we cannot hold to comprehend all of the details.

Now project this down the road a bit into the future. How will this affect learning? Look at how dependent we are on our devices not only to store information but for basic mathematics or even arithmetic. When was the last time you sat down and divided more than a few numbers in your head or even on paper?

Remember when you could do basic math in your head or remember a phone number. How quickly those skills became obsolete and yet that little bit of mental exercise really did have an impact, which was far-reaching. The very basic exercise of doing math in your head I believe helps keep one grounded in reality and overall helps keeps a person more awake and less on autopilot.

Just how automatic do we want the world to become? This and other questions are important to answer. Too much automation is not good for society. It is through effort and collaboration that the human spirit grows.

Depending upon how my Friday goes I will add a video. Most certainly at some point over the weekend one will be added. For now however I just wanted to touch base and let everyone know I am still cooking up this idea in regards to artificial intelligence and the future of knowledge. 

Take care Patrick

Mindfulness of the Self.

 

The  Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines Mindfulness as follows:
 

"A mental state achieved by concentrating on the present moment, while calmly accepting the feelings and thoughts that come to you, used as a technique to help you relax."

This is a good starting point. After one does this on a regular basis for a while you may begin to notice patterns in your thoughts that you did not expect and these can tell you a great deal about the more subtle aspects to your self and personality."Take mindfulness to the next step." Is how I stated in the short video on this page.

Everyone as a public persona and everyone also has a private persona where they might tell themselves, "This is who I really am." Surprise, with regular mindfulness training you might discover that there is another layer which may be in contrast to who you think you really are. Most of the time it's much more subtle, but no less tremendously important to pay attention to, providing insights most often to feelings and states of mind you tend to automatically accept throughout the day.

It is a good idea to keep a journal of some kind listing these insights and other related thoughts. You will discover that you don't know yourself is much as you think you do. Then armed with this information you can form a plan on what you would like to change or just accept. 

This is very important in today's ultra distracted and fast-paced world. You will begin to be able to choose when you are letting things in which have an emotional impact on you. This knowledge will also provide one the ability to separate out the stuff that is unwanted before it really gets integrated into emotional or mental routines.

Years ago I read an article which stated that the average person is exposed to more information in one day then someone born in the late 1800s would receive in the one year. At first this sounded ludicrous, but then I began to think about it. Just look at the number of notifications you probably received in an hour on your phone. Then you can add in the number of interruptions and diversions etc. (If you're one of those lucky individuals who been able to will the door shut to give yourself some breathing room, congratulations. You will probably like another short article I wrote Intuition and the Curious Mind. )

The best part I have found is that it is never too late to have an insight and act on it. You may find that you have done something for years… Well now that you know about it you can modify your reaction moving forward and that is always a good thing.

 It is possible to even incorporate a response to what you discover in your mindfulness journey. Let's say during sessions you find yourself having a reaction to a recurring thought and although you've accepted it there's nothing stopping you from adding in a response to that thought. You can literally adjust the brains "volume knobs" if you'll pardon the really bad analogy, to whatever it is. There is no appropriate way to do it and there's no inappropriate way to do it. Whatever works for you. If during our journeys you discover you need some outside assistance seek out a good friend or professional. That's part of life and I am myself talk to a psychologist on a regular basis just to get an alternate viewpoint.

The mind is a great flexible tool at your disposal, go ahead and polish it up :-)

Finding motivation… It can always be found at the "Start".

Mont Blanc seen from Les Arcs in 1950
Untouched  photo by  Dmottl
Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed

Have you ever had one of those moments when you just can't get motivated? Of course we all of had this happen it can often initially be a very frustrating thing. What people in North America and indeed the modern world forget is that when you are in this state of not being able to be motivated there are often preconditions you are placing on your "Motivation". In other words you are putting blocks in the way waiting for a certain set of conditions to be true before allowing yourself to be motivated.

Sometimes we think too much. We can get caught up in thinking so much that we never allow ourselves to just start the project. Or allow ourselves to start any activity. Indeed that is one of the tricks, if you can't start the big item that you want to be motivated about. Start something smaller or different. Actually this is why I created this short video attached to this blog post. I was having trouble getting motivated this morning so I decided to start with a video and sort of talk myself through the process. Four minutes later, because that's all it took to make the video, I am now feeling motivated 😀 and ready for the day.

The video simply says this in a nutshell: If you're having trouble finding motivation for your big idea, start on something different or smaller and that most likely will give you the motivation and momentum you need to work on the bigger idea.

And with that said I will now start my day! Hopefully this very short article and video will be of usefulness to you or at least allow you to start your day with a smile. Because you and I can do it. Whatever it is we need done, can be done!

Have a great day Patrick

 

Are we losing control of how information is organized?

With the sheer volume of information available out there, and the number of times it is updated every single day has it exceeded our traditional ways of organizing information?

Most of this article is probably going to be in the video below, because while I do want to get this out today my time is growing short.

Society is now dealing with more information coming at them per day than at any other time in history. I find myself really wondering if the old ways of organizing material are up to the task at hand. Just look at any smart phone to see not only the myriad of settings but the desperate attempt the developers face in trying to organize it. Never mind the nightmare of trying to keep documentation up to date.

I know there is something else universal we have all faced and that is when we connect to our business or office network only to find that the application we depend on to be efficient has been updated and everything is moved around, if not removed. That's when efficiency goes right out the door. Yet when you talk to the developers they are locked in a cycle of keeping the product fresh. And who can blame them? If you're not new or updating on the Internet, you are pretty much dead in the water.

There must be a better way to handle information we need a fundamental shift. This is going to be a very good exercise, mainly because we are all so steeped in the traditional ways of organizing information and thoughts. This ties in very nicely with my upcoming articles on knowledge and AI.

Not only organization but the very fact that a great deal of information that we deal with on a day-to-day basis is now only temporary or hyper specific. We will continue to use a smart phone as an example. Even within the same brand functions and their placement can vary a great deal. I recently bought a new phone and a feature I had always assumed was part of the very basics of android was not available. Namely, the ability to answer a phone call automatically on Bluetooth after only a set number of rings. You actually have to physically push a button on your headset to answer the call. I was able to find an app that provided the missing feature but I was stunned and this is a Google pixel six. I did contact the developer and they said they had no plans to implement the feature. When I inquired a little further they were very quiet as in not responding when I asked why it was not being included. My only guess is that Google wants to push their auto answer feature with Google assistant. The phone will answer a call on its own and do a speech to text conversion of what the caller says. This functionality was turned on by default by the way

The video in brief just some thoughts I have on the current situation and how we might better deal with things.

Take care Patrick

Intuition and the Curious Mind.

This is got to be one of the most important aspects in doing well with life. By doing "well with life"I mean your own personal satisfaction from your own unique point of view.

The curious mind is a brain in which you are consciously engaged with. It is almost a discussion, a positive feedback loop. Sometimes it can be very quick following a train of thought rapidly down the tracks, while at other times, it can be deep pondering perhaps only one aspect of a greater thought. It can become quite euphoric. Especially if one experiences some insight. The classic "Ah Ha!" moment. It makes you feel like a kid again. Einstein said it best and I'm paraphrasing here "Genius is childhood rediscovered.".

So how do we cultivate this; what are some of the things we need to ensure are in place so that the curious mind and intuition flourish?

 

The following ideas are strictly for my own perspective.

• You must be free from the burden. That is you must have a place both physically and mentally where you are not distracted or thinking about other responsibilities. It is actually a healthy requirement that you set aside a period of time or days when the rest of the world does not need your attention. No answering the cell phone or checking anything online unless it has to do with whatever project or idea you are delving into. Preferably this free space is a long enough that you can really indulge.
  
  
• No distractions. This one is very important, there can be no interruptions. Interruptions break the train of thought and can seriously derail inspiration. Inspiration occurs when you give it space.
  
  
• Ensure that your environment is comfortable and stimulating to your way of thinking and feeling. It is not easy to get into the flow of creativity if you are in a dark cave ( unless that is what you're into).

Follow these three steps and I have a feeling you will not only find inspiration. Your brain and body will be also in better health. Simply because you will allow yourself to be your self. For me it kind of synchronizes things. It changes my hold state of mind and mood. It definitely brings back any lost energy. Almost by definition intuition will tend to spontaneously occur if you can create the right environment.

Have a great day! Patrick