Being yourself, being original, bringing something that is you, that has never been done before in the way that you can present it.
Study the ones who have done it before you and who have done it well.
It doesn't mean that we have to do it in the same way.
It just means that we can take some guidance from that and learn how to make it our own.
Who inspired you and how did they do it?
What did they say and what do you have to say about that?
How can you expand the message and take what is inspiring you and grow it into something of your own?
Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Flowering Philosophies.
I am your host, Anaya, and this evening I come to you after a weekend of celebration.
By the time you're seeing this, I will have already turned 24 years old.
Turned 24 on January 20th and it's been a refreshing winter.
I can say that it has been a renewing start to the year.
I just I feel very ready to do things in a different way, continuing to explore my craft and my style in different ways and expanding on myself as an artist and what I'm making, the person I am, and just continuing to grow in all types of ways.
I felt like I've taken on a new chapter or a new set of agreements or discoveries or opportunities to accept or look for or take in the new year.
I'm very excited.
And my birthday is always in the My birthday always feels like such a time of renewal, reevaluation.
It's cold.
And, you know, I used to not like having a winter birthday.
I used to feel hesitant about that.
I just wanted to celebrate in the summertime.
Why can't we be warm and happy?
But i started a few years ago to really appreciate, like what is happening in the winter okay, it's renewal, it's growth.
We couldn't have new growth without the winter time.
We need that season of honestly death sorry, but cutting things off.
Renewal, let's grow anew and start again, and we couldn't have that without winter.
And so i just i feel inspired by the winter and, speaking of winter, i just had a little sinus fit there, feeling dry, feeling a little bit dry.
Having some immunity tea blend.
It's like all these herbs i got it from the farmer's market.
It's like a jar of immunity herbs that help.
So i've just been drinking this.
Gotta love that about the winter that's what I always hated as a kid.
I would always get sick on my birthday and that's not gonna happen this year, but it would happen in the winter time.
So you know what winter.
It has its cons, but it also has its pros.
I've just I went on a hike the other day and I'm lucky in my city it gets cold, but it's not necessarily like freezing and snow all the time.
So there's a lot of like cacti, like things that stay alive even in the winter time and in the cold dryness, and I was just walking through these cacti and these old trees and just kind of loving the winter nature.
It's a little stark, it's a little barren, but there's something beautiful about that, and beautiful about a new start.
And so I've always felt honestly refreshed on my birthday.
I'm like, yeah, this is a new beginning for me and I'm ready.
It's cold and it's kind of uncomfortable, but we're stepping into a new start.
And with 2026, the new year, I didn't necessarily set resolutions, but I kind of just wanted to push myself into not push myself, but allow myself to accept a new chapter and maybe the new things that will come along, the changes, the opportunities, the steps that we must take.
Let's embrace it.
It's kind of crazy and uncomfortable, just kind of like the winter air, but we're just, we're going to embrace it and we're going to be like you know what.
This is the start. of something new we need this season this cold to bring us into the spring where things are born again we're we're making that transition and i'm proud of us and i that's what i'm trying to do except that we're starting anew we're making a new chapter and cheers to you i hope that 2026 has treated you right that you are you know feeling good about some of the steps you're taking and just sort of the adjustments and new embraces of the year what you're wishing to continue to move in the direction of as we continue on i'm excited i think it's going to be a great time guys i I know it's gonna be great.
Okay, but moving on, what I really wanted to talk to you guys about today was inspiration.
Let's talk about inspiration, because whenever I am stepping into a new chapter, a new year, bracing a lot of change and asking for new opportunities and wanting to introduce new habits, improve I don't want to say improving life but, you know, just maybe going about it a little bit differently than the year we did before.
I try to garner a lot of inspiration.
I am one to make the vision board the i make the dream boards i make you know you can call them dream board mood board vision board whatever you want to call it but just kind of like gathering and collecting a certain array of images pinterest is a good place to do it that's that's where i do it but you know also my friends and i have like printed out images that we find and just like pasting them to a physical board if you want to get crafty and do that but i just kind of find it easier i like to make it on my phone or on my computer and just have it to look at just kind of yeah gathering images they don't have to be so specific but like images that maybe just capture a feeling or like an energy or like something that you enjoy looking at like i just encourage you to make an inspiration board that that's what i have done like i said i've done it physically i've done it digitally i tend to do it digitally creating a board an album something in your phone a collection of images that sum up something that you desire or that you want to embrace or that you're trying to bring into your life.
Some inspiration.
It could literally be anything.
You could be as abstract with it as you want.
It doesn't have to be so specific, but just things that really light your heart on fire when you're reminded of it.
I don't know, maybe it's a picture of money.
Maybe it's a picture of your family, maybe it's a picture of a stage and it's lit or has something to do with your career.
Just like whatever setting or environment you want to be in, the things that you love, the things you want to embrace, the things that you're grateful for like, make an inspiration board something that inspires you to live every day and move towards your goals.
That i can't even tell you, guys.
I don't even know when i started doing that.
Like i said, it maybe started with being inspired to do a physical craft, like a vision board on a new year with my friend, or maybe with Pinterest inspiration boards.
I've always done that.
Like, if I have a photo shoot in mind or something I want to do, I'll make vision boards for it.
Or like capture visual inspiration for different projects and things.
But I'm talking about your life.
I have an inspiration board for life.
It's very personal.
Not many people have seen.
On Pinterest.
You can really just be out here pinning pinning pinning pinning, pinning.
More ideas.
Hello, they're giving you more pins that are based off of the ones you've already pinned.
So sometimes I just get myself in an inspiration rabbit hole, but those are the best places to be.
You know, maybe the art that you like, i don't know, like the music, who you like now, like the movies you like now, the colors you like now i don't know anything, literally be creative with it, abstract with it, anything that you want, anything that lights your heart on fire man, go look for it, think about it.
See what it's like to kind of compose and gather a gallery of what maybe your most abstract, subconscious or very precise dreams look like.
Have fun with it and pick out images that match things that you desire, that you want to manifest into your life.
Or you know things that you just that you just love, that make you happy and make you inspire to live life.
What is that?
I can't answer that for you, but i i have made my inspiration board.
I've been working on it for a long time and it's just, it's very fun to look at.
I don't look at it every day, but I try to really have moments where I look at it and meditative moments that I really take it in and just uh look at it whenever i'm creating things or listening to music it's really fun to pin things and listen to music or look you know for images and it's really fun it it keeps me going so that would be one of my first uh things that i want to say when it comes to garnering inspiration pin it all together and look at it it's it's pretty powerful don't underestimate the power of putting a collection like that together things that make you feel strongly looking at all of it at once and really taking it in and thinking on that and meditating on that, like your life will become more of that.
When someone asks me, who's your biggest inspiration or what inspires you?
I find that question a little bit difficult to answer.
And that's why I wanted to make a video about this.
I feel like I find my inspiration from a lot of different little random streams in life.
And honestly, that's what keeps life exciting for me and keeps me creatively fulfilled, or continuing to keep going is being able to detect different sources of inspiration in my life.
Study the old masters, okay?
Study the ones who have done it before you and who have done it well.
Something that I find to be very, very important.
I'm giving you guys the secret sauce here, okay?
This is the thing.
That I really I value 100 in the artists that I admire and what I always try to be and what I think the striking secret to success is, is remaining timeless.
Not everybody does it.
Okay, and I'm on the journey of learning how to embody that in my own way.
I think the way that you do it is being yourself, being original, bringing something that is you, that has never been done before in the way that you can present it.
Teachers, we need inspiration.
We need something to project ourselves off of, to understand ourselves, to see ourselves through.
So I have always found great inspiration in studying the masters, the people who have done it best, the people who are considered timeless.
I guess whenever I say timeless, what I really mean is people who have stayed influential among wide, wide audiences and wide, wide ranges of time.
Decades, centuries I don't know whether that's in pop culture or in literature or history, just things that really continue to ring true throughout the human experience.
Going to the source of that and understanding what those people were like.
And maybe it is your greatest inspirations, musically or film, wise or I don't know.
Like historical figures, religious figures,
Maybe it's people that you truly do find so much inspiration and maybe it's family members.
Like I've really been reflecting a lot on my great grandfather today and just like the things that my dad did had told me about him and his daily routine in life, and I just found inspiration in that.
And that's just a random like anecdote of the lifestyle of an ancestor that I never met, but that's something that I felt like inspired by and but that was somebody who kind of came before me and someone who is remembered as so great and has lived their memory and what they've done and the work they've done has lived on past them and continues to remain inspiring and truthful.
And i i find that, with artwork and people that i look up to, like whenever something is created from a place of authenticity and truth and it resonates deeply, finding those sources of inspiration who we find to be timeless, what we find to be inspirational with within us, who did it before us.
How did they do it?
How did they go about it?
It doesn't mean that we have to do it in the same way.
It just means that we can take some guidance from that and learn how to make it our own.
Who inspired you and how did they do it?
What did they say?
And what do you have to say about that?
How can you expand the message and take what is inspiring you and grow it into something of your own?
Create something of your own.
It's exciting.
I want to touch on now, there's a fine line between copying and being inspired.
You know, we don't ever want to replicate exactly what somebody's done.
That's cheap to steal somebody's idea or try to replicate their style, so obviously that's never appreciated.
I think it's always great if we can kind of do our own thing, but you know it's like okay well, how do we do that?
How do we do that is finding out what we like, maybe not just from one source, but multiple places.
Who inspires us?
What inspires us?
What tastes inspire us?
What do we see that inspires us?
What friends inspire us?
What plants inspire us?
What type of weather is interesting to us?
What's interesting to you?
What makes you laugh?
What makes you cry?
What makes you embarrassed?
Think about the things that really provoke emotion in your life.
Where is it coming from?
Let's learn how to kind of implement it all together and not replicate and rip off someone else's style, but enjoy it and maybe you know what, take some inspiration from that, but make sure to mix it with other things that you're interested in, creating something of your own.
There's no feeling like that and it comes from being able to pick up on the different sources of inspiration in our life and reflecting on them, maybe curating and collecting images and things to look at to remind us of that, but also looking at the ones who inspire us and kind of the, maybe the life they lived and what they did and their processes and their beliefs and their philosophies.
And what do you think about that?
And how does that grow and expand on what you believe and what makes you excited and what you see see as truthful?
It's interesting to be able to study those people and study maybe different cultures or genres or whatever it is that makes you excited.
Who did it before you?
Who did it well?
And how can you expand upon that?
But yeah, let's go back to the basics.
That's the next thing I want to say.
Let's strip it back to the basics.
While we're studying, the ones who did it before us, the ones that we appreciate and want to expand upon what we love about what they've created, like those who inspire us.
Go back to the origin.
Let's get back to the basics.
What is the origin of the things that you like?
I know this kind of sounds abstract in what I'm trying to say, but like I think about it, like I love diary writing,
Like even what I'm talking about with you right now, it's just things that I think about, write about in my diary, these introspective thoughts.
I like to write that stuff down.
I like to write poetry, like all these things.
But whenever I read it, I feel kind of crazy and I'm like eh, in order to continue to feel confident in what I'm creating and not like I'm a crazy person, I need some inspiration.
I need to see people who have done it and how they've done it, and it doesn't mean that I want to replicate and copy that, but it means that I want to understand that there were people who came before me, or people that I can look up to in a certain sense, and there are authors that I found now that maybe come from a different time period or, you know, just decades before me, but They describe or appreciate a type of writing that I am trying to do or articulate myself in, and it makes me feel validated.
It makes me feel like I have people to be inspired by and to look up to, and it doesn't mean I want to be them, but it means that I appreciate, like something about them, something about the way they articulate themselves and have made themselves known through their work.
And it's not just through, you know, my career or writing.
It's also through, like style and visual inspiration.
Miss you know what, let me grab her.
She needs to be featured here.
So my inspiration with elizabeth taylor runs deep.
My parents used to tell me that i had curly, dark hair and people would be like oh, she looks like elizabeth taylor.
And then i had to do a project about like somebody and i I don't remember what it was for actually, but some like maybe it was like an influential person in Hollywood or I don't know if it was for a film class or a history class, it might have been.
I think it was for history.
There was like a list of people that we could pick to read a biography of or to make a presentation about, and Elizabeth Taylor happened to be one of the people and I just thought her life was incredibly interesting and I was young when I did that project and I bought this big thick memoir about her and I have multiple now sitting around my house like photo books of her and things like that, and I haven't even seen her whole film archive.
I have not watched all of those.
I can't even say that I am a well-versed Elizabeth Taylor film fan, but something about her striking, iconic presence and the way that she presents herself and her style and, of course, the time period and her environment and media and culture and the movies she was working in everything influenced how she expressed herself to the public, but something about her image and what she represents in fashion and beauty and there's something timeless about it.
There's something simple and striking.
You can see the inspiration, right?
So it's like I can't exactly tell you every single detail that I love about her, but something about what she represents, her image, the way she makes me feel and what I was able to take from her is what fueled my own inspiration for my style, if that makes sense.
I'm going to put her back up.
I am very, very proud of this.
If you don't know, this is one of my rare collectible items that I cherish deeply because it is a calendar from japan, 1955 elizabeth taylor calendar, and i cherish it deeply.
I found it at a vintage store here in town, locally and it is a prized possession of mine, deep anaya staple.
If you know me, you know that is that's right up my alley.
There are so many different things that inspire me, okay.
Like I said earlier, learning about my great-grandfather's daily life routine and his work and what he did was inspiring to me.
That's inspiring to me.
Elizabeth Taylor's inspiring to me.
The music I listen to is inspiring to me.
Who do I listen to?
I listen to FKA Twigs, Leonard Cohen, Brian Eno, Sufjan Stevens, Peggy Lee.
We listen to Wise Blood here.
Nina Simone is going to be a staple.
Adrian Lenker is one of my favorites.
Cowboy Junkies, Frank Ocean, of course.
Olds. country music.
We've been kind of listening to evangelists.
I love ambient music.
What I'm trying to say is that I find so much inspiration in the music that I listen to in my ancestry, in flowers.
That's why my podcast is called Flowering Philosophies because I love working with flowers.
I feel like nature is so timeless and inspiring to me because it always rings true.
It's the same thing that we can kind of reflect and understand ourselves through.
I find that inspiring.
I'm inspired by my friends.
I'm inspired by, you know, my favorite YouTubers.
I'm inspired by my favorite movies, Ghibli movies.
I
I've loved them since I was a child.
I love Miyazaki.
I just, that's something that is timeless to me until the day I die.
I will appreciate that artwork.
Like what are the things that get your wheels turning, man?
Since maybe since you were a young kid or maybe now.
I talked about it before in one of my videos about the ups and downs of girlhood.
But just talking about like being a fan of something.
I was a One Direction Harry Styles fan fangirl in like 2012 2013, that whole time, that craze of fan fiction and boy band hysteria.
You know it was a fun, beautiful tween time.
But the reason why I even bring that up is because so much inspiration struck from that whenever we were like Loving media or art or just kind of having fan culture and being so in love and infatuated with something, that type of energy and inspiration and love for something that is powerful.
It can bring people to stardom, like just watching, like the female hysteria of One Direction and how that skyrocketed those boys to success and truly fueled everything, was just that mass hysteria of love and infatuation and inspiration.
And yeah, you can kind of just write it off as like being a fan whatever, and like crazy fangirl behavior.
But you can also see it as like intense inspiration, like these people.
Whenever you're a fan of something, it's not just fangirls and boy bands and like a young age like I'm saying, it's just people like I see adults being deep fans of things.
I don't know if that's sports or you know, going to a concert or whatever, but whenever you love something so much like, what is it that you love about it so much?
Do you love the sound of it?
Do you love the visuals?
Is it dancing?
Is it movement?
Is it colors?
Is it winning, like what?
What is that thing that just like is inspirational to you, that is inspiring, that makes it entertaining and fun and infatuating?
Hudson and connor story man they are rising to fame before our eyes.
Let's talk about it.
It's really crazy.
Overnight practically, the show was filmed in a very, very limited amount of time.
And they have blown records here of just being an international success when that wasn't even necessarily what it was intended to be.
And it makes sense because it was a book and a great book, right?
Like the good story will do that.
Good characters, a good plot, plot that reels you in something that's, you know, just addicting to watch and consume and project your own excitement and love onto.
People want that.
People are about that like I find that show that was so much of my winter was like obsessing over that.
And like feeling so excited and that's what created this massive female audience and of course, everybody loves heated rivalry but like why they say so many, like you know, older women and straight women and all these things are so obsessed with it.
It's just, it just reminds me of being a young girl again and just sort of that like infatuation and that projection of your own desires onto something, onto a piece of media, onto a celebrity or whatever.
That excites you and you get something back from it, like you're entertained, you're locked in.
There are movies for me and books that have struck my soul and they they ring timeless for me.
They remain timeless for me.
They strike me so deeply.
They inspire me so deeply in stages of my life, in my character, in who I am, my style, how I present myself, how I look around and see the world, perceive the world, enjoy the world.
You know, these things all have a deep impact.
Heated Rivalry really riled people up this winter and got people like crying and screaming and emotional and wanting that romance and desire and like finding out what excites them through this.
Like it was an unexpected sensation and i just i find that interesting and i i connect it kind of back to that hysteria and like fangirl sensation of being younger and the posters on your wall and And just like what brought you joy.
Like I used to listen on my little iPod to Avril Lavigne and I had my Taylor Swift complete cutout collage that I went in there cutting out in magazines, putting that all over my wall.
Where's that energy?
Bring that back.
I'm serious.
Like.
That's the only way that we're going to Make it there and make it through and continue to garner more of what we want in our lives if we're able to reflect on what we love and why we love it and what excites us.
Media, clothing, this, that, our careers, our personal lives.
Make that vision board.
Make that inspiration board.
Yeah, the last thing I wrote down in my notes here was yeah girls, feeling so much passion can move anyone.
But you know, I was just thinking about, like what I said, what I experienced as a young girl, like that type of passion and infatuation and inspiration for things, whether that's Harry Styles, or the books that you love, a series that you love, i don't know, like of the fashion designer that you love, an athlete that you love, or a sport that you like to do, or something that you like to cook, i don't know, whatever it is that really just like lights you on fire.
That type of infatuation, that passion, that excitement, it can move mountains.
Whenever we tap into sources of excitement and inspiration, we have the power to move mountains, to go about our life in a way that's exciting to us, that pushes us to move differently, to express ourselves differently, to expand upon the palette of things that we enjoy and like, and i just feel like that's that's really the secret is just tapping into and just letting yourself be random.
Be random guys, but i'm serious, just like be abstract with it.
You should see my vision boards.
It's like oh okay, like we have this random view of italy and then we have yeah, like i literally have a picture of like these celebrities that I specifically look up to, like hanging out here, but then I just have pictures of like photos that inspire me for photo shoots and like the type of journal I want, and then yeah, the type of house that I want oh, a picture in Japan.
Now there's a random hotel room and then there's.
You know, this doesn't have to be what you're doing here.
Maybe you're not wanting to be as abstract, but you can just do whatever you want like.
Give yourself the freedom to tap into these sources of excitement, of inspiration, however you'd like.
Maybe it's through reading, maybe it's through watching, maybe it's through I'm inspired by everything I do.
Sorry if that sounds so whimsical and crazy, but truly finding inspiration in these little things, in the type of tea you make, how you make it, your rituals, your daily lifestyle, the people you surround yourself with, your daily activities, romanticize your life.
Find inspiration in the small things, expand upon it.
The more that you focus on these things, the more that you tap into these things, you'll continue to expand upon it and your life will be full of the things that inspire you.
Thanks for having this chat with me, you guys, and letting me reflect on the joy of inspiration and Just continuing to grow that and preserve that, and how it comes from a pure place.
Things that really truly get you excited and happy and feeling passionate about life.
Like the reason I bring up heated rivalry too is I just saw so many people online saying like I just feel so happy about life again and I just have so much inspiration and hope for things again.
And like you wouldn't expect that from a romance adaptation story of this book, but like it did, because people saw passion in that and saw themselves in that and want to continue to feel that feeling and want to continue to live life excited and passionate and looking forward to things.
Like we all want something to look forward to, and I know it's hard sometimes in these times to always stay inspired and hopeful and grateful and all these things, but I think it's really the only way that we're going to continue to move through and move towards building the life that we desire is to reflect on the things that we are inspired by, the things that give us hope, the things that make us excited to live and make us excited to create and help us, aid us, teach us in our process of creation, and continuing to pull inspiration from the people, from the things, from the eras, from the genres, from the cultures, from the media, from everything that we are inspired by.
And doing it respectfully, like I said when we touched on the copying and everything like not Not looking to ever replicate other people's ideas, but learning how to create something of our own.
It's a valuable process and inspiration has a lot to do with that and where we source that from on the daily, how we tap into it and how we continue to expand upon it.
Anyways, guys, thanks for sitting with me here right before my birthday.
I'm already 24 by the time you're seeing this, but I'm about to turn 24 in two days.
So I am sitting with you here, basically the day before my birthday and continuing to move into this new year with inspiration in my heart, even through the hard moments, even through the ruts or, you know, not feeling great about what I'm doing, what I'm creating, or feeling doubtful about where I'm going, just continuing to look towards where I do want to grow, where I do want to go and who's done it before me.
How can I continue to do that in my own way?
And what keeps me excited and passionate and inspired to move forward in that?
That's what I'm keeping my eye on in the new year and in this new age of being 24.
I hope you all are well and that you're having a great start to your new year.
I will see you very very soon.
Bye.
