using Inspiration as fuel

When you’re fueled by inspiration

it’s like pouring jet fuel in your engine

you take off and the runway seems endless.

You’ve been there. You feel motivated to start or you do research. You buy a domain or start a new action list.

Depending on the task, you expend minutes to hours or days, if you’re lucky, in this zone.

But usually, hunger, a phone call, your dog, your partner, something, or someone steps in as usual.

and when you try to come back, it’s hard to pick up where we left off.

Jet fuel burns quickly.

Life is not a sprint.

and if you’re like me, you’ll happily do sprints over steady-state cardio any day of the week.

But that still doesn’t mean I want to sprint. I usually have to get in the zone in some way.

If you’ve ever tried to give something 100% when you’re feeling like the tank is at 50%, you know it’s much harder to turn it on.

The reality of course is that you can push to 100% with just a few drops of juice.

When your car’s tank is half full, you can still floor it and it will respond.

Unlike your car, however, your body feels 50% and it says, we can’t go that fast, we’ll use up what we have left!!! So we hold back…

Luckily our cars just take command.

If you’re on E and you floor it, the car will respond — just not for long. Although, often for much longer than we thought it would.

The human tendency to conserve energy for the future causes us to hold back the accelerator despite there being fuel in the tank, just because it likes to play it safe.

But sometimes, we have to rev up the engines when we’re at 50%, 25% or 10% and hit it.

It’s our mind that’s scared to push — our bodies can push much further.

Some days there is inspired action.

Other days I’m hoping inspiration shows up.

It’s the fuel of fools.

Discipline fuels leaders, change-makers, and those accomplished.

Do the thing and you shall have the power, says the proverb.

The world needs us disciplined, not just inspired.

08.21.2020