Staying Inspired

11/01/17 • 9 min

I often ponder what exactly it means to be inspired and to live an inspired life. I listen to inspirational podcasts and motivational speakers almost daily, and I myself have started The Art of Inspiration podcast. It inspires me to hear from people who are also motivated, it keeps the fire that's inside me burning. Over time I have come to develop this picture of people who are constantly motivated, constantly fired up and always positive. So I try and mold myself after that picture and continually try to fire myself up on a consistent basis, then something happens. Something that completely drains the juice out of me. That something is Monday morning. Yes I will admit it, staying constantly motivated 100% of the time is nearly impossible. When I wake up on Monday morning I am almost always tired no matter how much sleep I have gotten, and waking up at 4:30am to get my day going is simply not appealing. I know I have an inbox full of emails that I don't want to read and a bunch of meetings that I surely don't want to sit through. I am just not a Monday kind of guy. What I find comfort in is that I am not alone. As I further study some of the worlds most elite performers from all different fields, the people who truly inspire me, I find that they too are not always fired up. So what does this mean? I've learned that it simply means your human. Being human means we are subject to emotions and staying in a constant state of motivation and bliss 24 hours a day, 365 days a year is nearly impossible. In fact I don't even think it would be that healthy. It's natural to get angry, it's natural to get sad sometimes, and it's completely unhealthy to suppress your emotions.

So now what? Now that we have shattered the image of people who are constantly geared up and ready to go, what do we do? It may be hard to picture your idol or someone you look up to getting angry, or lacking motivation. After all, when you look at social media for the most part you are bombarded with motivational quotes and photo-shopped pictures. You rarely ever see what goes on behind the scenes. You never see the bad days or the headaches. Just the good stuff. So what do you do? You breathe and relax, you realize that those people you look up to are just that, they are people. They are human beings just like us. They have bad days just as much as we do. I've learned it's perfectly alright to be human, and it's perfectly alright to have a bad day. What I have also learned is that you can't just wallow in your frustration or anger, you have to keep moving. You can't let a bad day derail all the hard work you put in, just like much everything else that comes your way, it will pass. So take notice of it, acknowledge your mood, or your anger, or your lack of motivation for whatever it is and keep moving. So how do I keep myself moving?

Ask Questions: When I have a bad day, or I miss my train ride home, or something goes bad at work I ask myself, "how can I use this?" How can I take this and use it to make me better
Keep Motivated: Listen to podcasts, read inspiring books. One of the best things you can do is just sit and visualize your goals, this will do two things; first it shifts your mind away from the things that are bothering you, and secondly, it will stoke your fire and inspire you to keep going.
Change of Physiology: Believe it or not, your physiology has a lot to do with how you feel. Just standing up tall and not slouching can improve your mood. Smiling whether artificial or from a joke has been shown in studies to increase your mood. Find what works for you. Throwing on headphones with my favorite playlist and going for a brisk walk has yet to fail me.
Frame It: Whatever difficulty you are going through is a result of your frame of mind. People can only suffer if they view what they are going through as bad. You can find good in just about anything, so find it and keep that your focus.
Gratitude: Stay grateful. Count the good things in your life, and go write them down. Writing things is so powerful. Remember that gratitude and negativity cannot occupy you mind at the same time.

Finally I just accept it. I accept that not everyday is going to be amazing, but never for one minute will I let it stop me from getting to where I want to be. I keep moving, rain or shine. I refuse to give up, I refuse to stop moving. I will not let anything get in my way. I will either get to where I want to be or I will die trying, and that is just the shear end of it. That's the attitude you have to take. Always get up when you fall, always treat obstacles as opportunities, and no matter what, always, always stay inspired.

-Raf

Ask Questions: When I have a bad day, or I miss my train ride home, or something goes bad at work I ask myself, "how can I use this?" How can I take this and use it to make me better
Keep Motivated: Listen to podcasts, read inspiring books. One of the best things you can do is just sit and visualize your goals, this will do two things; first it shifts your mind away from the things that are bothering you, and secondly, it will stoke your fire and inspire you to keep going.
Change of Physiology: Believe it or not, your physiology has a lot to do with how you feel. Just standing up tall and not slouching can improve your mood. Smiling whether artificial or from a joke has been shown in studies to increase your mood. Find what works for you. Throwing on headphones with my favorite playlist and going for a brisk walk has yet to fail me.
Frame It: Whatever difficulty you are going through is a result of your frame of mind. People can only suffer if they view what they are going through as bad. You can find good in just about anything, so find it and keep that your focus.
Gratitude: Stay grateful. Count the good things in your life, and go write them down. Writing things is so powerful. Remember that gratitude and negativity cannot occupy you mind at the same time.

-Raf

Previous Episode

Sharpen Your Vision

In my last podcast I I gave just a few inspirational words, I hope you enjoyed the podcast. The purpose is simple, to get you to act on your goals. To inspire you to take the first step towards your goals. Hopefully I caught your attention, assuming I did, you now are up on your feet and ready to go. So now what, what exactly do you do to get started. Depending on your goal there are probably a myriad of different things you will need to do to get started. Everyone has different goals and they all will undoubtedly require different means to achieve them. One thing that I can say that is universally true no matter what your goal, is that in order to achieve it, you will need to build a plan. I have talked about planning numerous time, and for a very good reason, your plan is the foundation of your achievement. If you build it correctly and follow it, you will ultimately end up at your destination, right? Well, yes and no. Execution is everything, and when it comes to execution you must learn to sharpen your vision.

I hear stories of it all too often of people who are all fired up and motivated, they build a plan, then try to go do everything but end up getting nowhere. A few months down the road they are burnt out and have either given up already or are about to. I was guilty of this myself when I first started The Art of Inspiration podcast and blog. I had a belly full of fire, ready to go, all the motivation in the world, and a solid plan. In all of my excitement I tried to execute the whole entire plan at once. Where did that get me? If you were following the podcast you will see it got me quite nowhere. I ended up burning out and had to take some time to step back and reevaluate my approach. Now remember in Roadmap to Success, we laid out the steps to achieving your goals, if not here is a quick recap

Define our Goals: Goals must be very distinct in order for them to be tangible. Stating that your goal is to increase sales is vague, stating that you would like to increase sales by 60% in the next two years is a specific goal. Think granular, you can't start with a big picture and plan to tackle the whole thing. Have a very specific goal. This is sharpening your vision. Not just saying I want to build a business, saying I want to build a specific business, and have a specific area of expertise within that field, and have a specific goal for this business for the next 10 years.
Strategic Planning: Notice the first word here, strategic. You can plan to run in circles all day, but that will not necessarily bring you any further than where you started. So how do we avoid running in circles? Plan out exactly what you need to do to hit your 10 year goal, then your 5 year goal, a year a month, and keep going until you come to right now. Figure out what you need to do right now and get going. In order to accomplish this we first need to...
Execute: Get moving on your plan.

Passionate and motivated people always think big, and there is nothing wrong with that, I encourage it. The problem with big thinking is that it sometimes leads someone to try and take on too much at once. Again, this is something that I myself am guilty of when I started my blog and podcast. I wanted to do everything at once, and I had a vision and a plan. The vision was very broad, and what I am finding is a broad vision can lead to scattered results. By sharpening your vision on something very specific you are better able to plan and execute. You are essentially narrowing your focus. So why is narrowing your focus a good thing? Because it allows us to better concentrate our efforts. You may be saying, OK, I want to start a website or a business. Well, what is your goal for lets say the next five years? Now ask yourself to attain that, what must I accomplish in the next year. To hit that target goal, what must I accomplish at the end of the month. To reach that goal at the end of the month, what must I accomplish by the end of this week. See how the planning becomes more granular until eventually you say to yourself, if I need to accomplish this by the end of the week, what must I accomplish today. So if that is today's goal, what should I be doing right now. That's it!! When you can answer that question you have the successfully sharpened your vision. This is something you want to give a good deal of thought to, because the things you do today will determine how quickly you reach your goals or if you reach them at all. So give it some serious thought, and when you figure out that one thing, everything else is just noise. That one thing is what you should be doing and nothing else. Everything else is just a distraction.

This is to all the entrepreneurs and go-getters out there, I hear you. You got your motors fired up and you are ready to go get it, but don't do it all at once. It is proven that you will always be more effective if you focus on accomplishing one task at a time. The n...

Next Episode

The Law of Attraction: Why it's Real and What "The Secret" Never Told You

Many of us have heard about the law of attraction. The notion that our thoughts produce our reality. The concept was popularized in the 2006 Rhonda Byrne book "The Secret." A positive review from Oprah sent this book flying off of the shelves and into the hands of countless people across the globe. The book was a massive hit, it gave hope to millions who now believed they could think their way to a fortune! Just think and believe and whatever you want will be attracted to you! It's an awesome concept, but believe it or not this concept is far from new. In fact this is something that the ancients knew. People from all different countries and religions have believed in the power of manifestation for centuries. Napoleon Hill, while not referring to it as the law of attraction, spoke of the concept of manifestation in depth in his best selling book, "Think and Grow Rich". If you are an entrepreneur, you owe it to yourself to read that book.

So manifestation, or the law of attraction, whatever you want to call it. Does it work? If so how do we utilize it in our daily lives? Let me start by saying this, I am not some mystic who believes in a magical mysterious force that will magically bring you wealth or make your dreams come true. But this is no magic, and do I believe it? Absolutely, I do believe you can bring your dreams to life. One of the big things "The Secret" left out is massive action. You absolutely need to put in a ton of work to get what you want. Sorry to all the people who thought they could just sit back on the couch and think their wildest dreams into a reality, it just does not work like that. So how does it work? I'm glad you asked.

Let me geek out on you for a moment and talk about the science. For anyone out there who has heard of, or studies quantum physics you already know where I am going with this. For those who have never heard of quantum physics let me give you a very brief description. Quantum physics is a theoretical basis of modern physics that studies the nature and behavior of matter and energy at the atomic and subatomic level. Quantum theory goes a bit deeper and begins to look deeper into the subatomic level. Many believe matter to be made up of atoms which are then made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. What quantum theory suggests is that the electron, which happens to be the smallest particle of which all matter is comprised, may not be physical matter at all. Electrons when observed sometimes exhibit wave-like behavior. In other words, sometimes electrons seem to be light, or energy, rather than physical matter. What this suggests in layman terms is that the stuff around us, the physical matter we see, the solid objects around us, may actually not be made up of solids at all, but rather made up of energy. Try wrapping your brain around that.

Now that we have this radical theory that the chair we are sitting in is not actually a solid object, we take it one step further into the field of the noetic sciences. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, in a nutshell, the noetic sciences study how thought, beliefs and intentions affect the physical world around us. The popular and controversial book The Intention Experiment authored by Lynne McTaggart goes in depth into several studies that were conducted to test the idea that our thoughts and beliefs can permeate outside our physical bodies. The book details several scientifically controlled studies that point in the direction of this notion indeed being true. I don't want to get into the details of the book, but if you have an interest I suggest you you check it out. Audiobook would be best, as the reading is rather dry. After reading my mind was blown. There is indeed evidence that our thoughts can affect the world around us, that we can communicate to each other through thought and feelings. It's truly remarkable and it connects directly to the quantum theory we just talked about. This light, or energy that makes up the world around us is seemingly interconnected and influenced by our thoughts and feelings.

One last scientific bit and I will make it very short. Your heart, and not your willpower or determination, I am referring to your actual heart, the thing pumping blood in your chest. It turns out your heart is the largest generator of electromagnetic fields in the body. I'm sure this is common knowledge for some, but if you have never studied the body, it is interesting to know that we are literally wired with electric circuits. Our entire brain and nervous system is a network of electrical impulses that send signals throughout your body. Your heart as it happens, produces the largest electrical pulse. It was once thought it was the brain, but through various scientific studies we have found that it is indeed the heart which emits a considerably larger electromagnetic pulse. More interestingly we can measure this pulse, and it seems to be affected greatly by our th...