Finding Inspiration for The New Year
Inspiration and motivation are funny things.
I’m sure like you, I’ve recently been trying to find the inspiration/motivation to get out there and crush my goals for the new year.
It seems like a natural thing to want to feel inspired about what we’re doing in our lives.
Inspiration Addiction
But inspiration is kind of like sugar. When it comes naturally it’s pretty good for you, but when it’s been refined and manufactured it’s just a mild form of sweet tasting poison. (Admittedly not the best metaphor, but work with me.)
I say that because manufactured inspiration can become a drug. I know because I’m an inspiration addict.
I’ve read virtually every article by Benjamin Hardy here on Medium.
Over the last several years I’ve watched countless hours of videos on Youtube of the people like Seth Godin, Mel Robbins, Tom Bilyeu, Eric Thomas, Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuck, Tim Ferriss, Simon Sinek, Grant Cardone, and the like.
I’ve read/listened to a bunch of books by these folks too.
Every minute of it felt good and I’ve learned a lot, but this last year I haven’t been crushing many of my goals.
Maybe you can relate to that.
I want to clarify that what makes my consumption of this content artificial is not what these people are offering. I’m not accusing them of being emotional drug dealers. They’re offering really valuable insights, experiences, and strategies.
What makes it artificial is why and how I’m consuming it.
In short, I’ve been doing it for the feel-goods.
When I’m sitting in front of my computer trying to get motivated to dig into writing papers or hours of reading for grad school, I’ve used inspirational content to make me feel better/numb out about the fact that I was avoiding and failing.
I was self-medicating, wanting an emotional experience I hadn’t earned yet.
I doubt I’m the only one doing this.
It’s pretty self-defeating because watching videos is already easier than doing real work. Now add the emotional boost you get as a reward for the behavior and the fact that you can pretend that watching this video is going to help you change and it gets pretty easy to choose “get inspired” over “do work.”
There’s more.
This emotionally convenient, entitled, and addictive approach to seeking inspiration can have another serious side effect.
It makes you start to feel like the Greek philosopher, Plato.
See, Plato was a little obsessed with the idea that perfection wasn’t possible in our mortal state where everything is always changing and out of control. So, he came up with the idea of the “World of Forms,” an abstract place where ideal “Forms” represented the most accurate reality of things.
For example, the idea would be that in the World of Forms, there is a perfect chair that perfectly embodies “chair-ness.”
This put perfection and ideals as inherently different from what we are currently experiencing.
When we have artificial inspirational moments, it becomes easy to start to feel this way about those who inspire us or even our “ideal self.” We start to see them as unaccessible and inherently different from ourselves.
We place them in a world of abstraction that can’t really touch our own reality.
It’s not surprising that this doesn’t affect change in us.
What to do about it.
So what’s the alternative?
What about taking on the responsibility to inspire yourself?
What if perfection isn’t an abstraction? What if perfection is just growth, change, and movement?
What if the “ideal you” isn’t an abstract or hypothetical “someday you?”
Maybe it’s simply the “right now you” taking a step forward.
Can you get any more ideal than that?
Can you give yourself permission be inspired by that one step?
After all, that step embodies humanity at its best.
Little wonder that all the productivity/business gurus listed above are always begging us to just take action and do something.
My crack at it.
I’ve had an experience with this recently that has helped bring all of this home for me.
I was looking for an app to help me track habits that I want to work on and stumbled upon one called Fabulous. It got a lot of great reviews so I decided to give it a try.
It allows you to create your own custom rituals/habits if you want, but as a default it starts you out with a morning ritual of simply drinking water when you wake in the morning.
It doesn’t even say how much, just drink water when you wake up.
In a rare moment of humility, I decided to shove down my initial sense that this was going to be a stupid waste of time and I gave it a try.
After a few days of doing that successfully, it added eating a healthier breakfast (not cereal or a muffin). I like eggs, so that was pretty easy for me.
Then it added doing some exercise. Not a lot. Just something.
In my case, this meant a few push-ups, crunches, or lunges just to get things going.
These were stupid little changes but I kept at it.
By the time I had been doing these things for about a week I was starting to feel some momentum and wanted more. So, I added an evening ritual to the mix that involved unplugging, journaling and reading before going to bed at 10 pm.
These stupid little changes have been changing everything.
I was starting to really get into it.
I decided my journaling was kind of pointless because it was just a task, not a tool.
So I’ve been reading articles about journaling, not to get inspired (have an emotional experience), but to get educated and learn new strategies.
I’ve started waking up a little earlier too.
I’m more motivated and inspired than I’ve been in a long time.
What I’ve been learning from all this is that inspiration is like love and happiness. You can’t pursue it for its own sake without things getting weird.
Instead, you have to live your life the right way and inspiration, love, and happiness will all come as a byproduct of what you are doing.
So now when I feel the need to “feel inspired” I want to do something, not read/watch/listen to something.
If I can keep it up, maybe 2018 will turn out to be something special.
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