Mackay: Not all inspiration comes from aha moments

Joe was an ambitious young man who never missed a chance to submit a new idea to his boss. His boss never missed a chance to reject Joe's idea.

One day, Joe submitted a suggestion, and his boss said, "That's sheer inspiration!"

"No," Joe said. "It's 99% aspiration and 1% inspiration."

Thomas Edison had a similar take when he said, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."

Inspiration — the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something — often starts with aspiration.

That might be why Dolly Parton said: "When I'm inspired, I get excited because I can't wait to see what I'll come up with next."

But let's face it. Sometimes it is hard to get inspired, for a variety of reasons. What is the best way to get back to being inspired?

The future belongs to the curious — the ones who are not afraid to try something, explore it, poke at it, question it and turn it inside out. Curiosity makes us interested in a broad range of information. We learn for the joy of learning.

Let curiosity turn "I don't know" into "I want to find out." When we are curious, we approach the world with a childlike habit of poking and prodding and asking questions. We are attracted to new experiences.

Another page from the life of a child can also inspire: imagination. It's never too late to develop your imagination, although I would caution that the longer you suppress it, the more challenging it will be.

Creativity, thinking outside the box, is another way to get inspired. So is connection.

Harvard University tracked the physical and emotional health of 700 people. They followed these people and tested them (e.g., blood samples, brain scans) for 75 years. Here's the primary conclusion: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier.

The creation of Google can be traced back to a dream Larry Page had in 1996. Page had a nightmare in which he was admitted into college because of a clerical error and thought he would be kicked out at any moment. That anxiety fueled a dream of downloading and storing the internet on individual PCs.

When he woke up, he was curious to see if it was possible, so he did the math. It wasn't, given the amount of data, but he could save everything as individual links. That gave him the idea of creating a searchable database of links to web pages that led to the creation of Google.

The melody for one of the Beatles' greatest songs "Yesterday" came to Paul McCartney in a dream. In "The Beatles Anthology," McCartney recalls: "I woke up one morning with a tune in my head and I thought, 'Hey, I don't know this tune — or do I?' It was like a jazz melody ... I went to the piano and found the chords to it, made sure I remembered it and then hawked it round to all my friends."

Speaking of the Beatles, John Lennon, a self-declared dreamer, said his inspiration for one of his bestselling songs also came from a dream, and it was appropriately titled "9 Dream."

Mackay's moral: Aspire to inspire before you expire.