A few times now, I've been asked where I get my inspiration for what I'll be writing about next.

The simple, honest answer to that is this: I write what I feel I need to hear at that point in time and lightly hope that somebody else out there might need/want to hear it too.

When I first started writing publicly, I decided that what I wrote would be self-motivated and I would not write to seek validation from others. I wanted to detach any expectations I had on whether or not the message would be received once it left my hands because my overarching intent was to write in order to understand things going on in my own life.

I've been told that once artists or writers (or all creative minds for that matter) release their piece out into the world, it no longer belongs to them but rather to whoever comes into contact with the work and has a reaction to that work.

The reaction can be positive or negative but the point is that when the audience receives the piece, it now belongs to them and they can take it, read it, see it, understand it or process it how they wish or don't wish.

I realize that much like all of the singer-songwriters out there, not every song (or article) can be a hit. Some of us are lucky to even get one hit.

After Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat Pray Love, many observers questioned how she could ever follow the huge success she experienced with her recent big hit. Just as they predicted, she wrote the Big Magic and it wasn't nearly as popular or well-received as Eat Pray Love.

However, in a TED talk she did in 2014, Elizabeth Gilbert explains that whether you're succeeding big or failing big, your subconscious doesn't know the difference; all it knows is that you are in this far out place that feels uncharted, a little scary and a lot different than wherever you just came from.

She spoke about how she had to make writing her home and always return to it no matter what the outcome. Whether a book was a huge hit or a huge dud, she kept going back "home" and kept writing because she valued writing more than her own ego.

I think this is an incredibly beautiful and delicate place to reach because it doesn't take long in life to realize that vulnerability is often synonymous with "bad idea."

According to thesaurus.com, it's actually synonymous with words like "susceptibility" and "openness" but a few years ago I would have said "bad idea" should be right there with them along with "stop now" and "keep it in you pressure cooker, you."

That is until I found writing to be a home for me, too.

I've always been prone to pushing down my feelings, emotions and all that good stuff but when I discovered I enjoyed writing, I noticed I was less likely to explode, letting all my steam out at once in a huge, colossal breakdown.

I think we all know somewhere deep down (or not so deep down) what is good for us and what is not, the best way to handle a situation and the worst way, the good ideas and the bad ideas.

Yet, we still make our mistakes, kick ourselves for doing so and think that we knew better because quite frankly, we probably did but I bet you learned something from that mistake so there was some reason in there somewhere as to why you didn't take your own advice.

What I'm getting at here is that despite the fact that these articles often contain encouraging words and advice, the hard reality is that I still make the wrong decisions and say the wrong things when it comes to dealing with these situations in real life.

As I mentioned earlier, my motivation for writing these is to write what I think I need to hear at that moment. In other words, I need my conscious to exist somewhere outside of my own head so that maybe, just maybe, I can take some of my own advice.

I believe that as humans, we all share this quality.

We can give advice but often can't take our own even when we know the exact words we should be listening to and the exact advice we should be heeding.

We come up with answers to questions that we didn't even know we knew (parents especially) yet find ourselves asking some pretty stupid questions every now and again.

They say there are no stupid questions.

I may be alone in thinking this but I find that to be an inaccurate statement.

If you've ever seen shows like Tosh.0 or Ridiculousness, maybe you share this sentiment after you've watched a 75-year-old man muffle out the question "you think I should really be doing this?" before he rears the front wheel of a dirt bike into the air, hops onto an icy, metal pole and attempts to do a wheely down a flight of stairs only to have a massive wipeout where he somehow made it out without life-threatening injuries and therefore, made it on the show too.

Needless to say, I think he knew the answer to his question but proceeded to test his luck anyways.

I also find that statement to be inaccurate because daily, we ask ourselves questions that we already know the answer to.

Especially when it comes to how we handle situations.

I know when I write pieces that contain more vulnerability, even though sometimes it's scary and I wonder if anyone will even relate or understand what I'm trying to convey, it ends up being a good idea because it gives others the opportunity to connect and be human in the most basic and loving of ways.

We know it's not decent or respectful to raise our voice at our mothers or fathers and become short-tempered when they're trying to help us through a situation where they have a lot of expertise but we do it anyway.

We know it's not the parking enforcement officer's fault that we got a ticket for parking in an illegal spot for too long yet we feel an urge to yell or detest and get mad at them anyway.

And finally, we know it's not our fault when relationships, opportunities or situations out of our control start to fall apart yet we blame ourselves anyway because sometimes that's easier than accepting our lack of control in this crazy cosmic hallelujah we call life.

Kenny Chesney is the one who introduced the term "cosmic hallelujah" to me via a recent album of his and while I'm sure this phrase means something very specific to him, I've found it to mean something very special to me.

In short, I feel that this cosmic hallelujah concept is one that gives life to anything being possible and perhaps "anything" includes having a lot of the answers, a lot of the time, already within us.

Elizabeth Gilbert sure believed so when she released Big Magic after Eat Pray Love but even more than that, she believed that even if the book did fail, she would still be okay because she decided long before the release of that book that whether the book succeeded big or failed big, it would be in her best interest to write the book because that was what was good for her, not the rest of the world.

Trust that you already have a lot of the answers and if you feel lost or uncertain, know that someone else has probably been in a similar predicament or situation and a few of them might have even figured it out.

And lucky for me and you, we have the same number of hours in a day, and share the same central organ (the brain) that they used to solve their situation.

If they can do it, so can you.

But I bet you already knew that.

Trust what you already know.