These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 7–Inspire

Inspiration, Not Imitation

• Imitation is almost a mechanical process. Inspiration is creativity that includes a deep spiritual dimension.

• Imitation is like making a copy of a paper without understanding its content. Inspiration is like reading a paper, absorbing its content, and thinking about how you can benefit from it.

• Slow down a bit before you start imitating. You can get more useful and sustainable results when you think about how you can tailor any outcome to your own inclination and objectives.

• In the long run, literal imitation and deep inspiration often have opposite outcomes.

• If you hasten to literal imitation and adopt a behavior or action without careful thought, nothing should prevent you from rethinking your choice and seeing how you can deeply draw inspiration from the original idea you imitated. Inspiration is not a rare opportunity that vanishes if you wait too long. There is always a chance to correct what you have imitated and turn it into rich inspiration.

• If someone puts forth an idea that you had intended to adopt and promote, do not despair. There are many ideas you can create and develop. You can still work on presenting that same idea, as long as your innovations are genuine.

• If someone buys an item in a new trend that you really like, make sure you genuinely need it before you buy it too. If you are confident that you need that item, find an opportunity to change your choice in some way, instead of buying exactly the same item.

• Do not be upset if you occasionally imitate someone else’s behavior or actions. Imitation is a concern only when it becomes habitual.

• The difference between literal imitation and inspiration is that imitation makes you feel satisfied once you have completed it, while inspiration gives you a strong incentive to carry on in some way.

• Don’t get annoyed when someone imitates you. Their imitation may mean that you were a source of deep inspiration, but your imitator did not know how to be inspired by you as they should have been.