Inspiration

I hope everyone had a great week so far. The weather is getting warmer, flowers are blooming and overall everything is starting to look up. Since it's one week from the first day of spring I wanted to talk about the importance of having fresh ideas, and after all fresh ideas are birthed from inspiration.On my website I say that one of my goals is to stay inspired, and that might seem like a strange thing to say at first. But being inspired means that you are motivated, excited, moved to action. And how many people do you know are really inspired? Sincerely stimulated and encouraged to do something? I’ve realized over the past year that there’s a lot in the world that can zap our energy—politics, the economy, relationships, bad jobs, daily stresses and more. If we let ourselves fall into a cycle where every day is the same and there’s nothing to look forward to, then we’ll quickly lose inspiration. The more monotonous our life is, the less excited we become. And that can lead to the dangerous downfall of apathy and lack of motivation. If we are an uninspired generation, we are a generation without innovation, creativity or life. That's a scary thing.So this week, I challenge you to find something or someone who inspires you. Maybe the nice weather inspires you to paint a picture. Or perhaps you'll read something that inspires you get involved in community service or meet a person who inspires you to get started on that project or career you've been wafting on. If you find this to be difficult, that's okay! A lot of times we all end up in slumps where it feels like inspiration couldn't hit us if we were standing right in front of it. Keep trying and here are a couple of things to help you become more receptive to inspiration.

• Read more. This includes multiple genres, biographies, news articles, poetry, novels,  self-help content or flash fiction. Having other ideas in your mind is helpful to gaining motivation
• Watch inspiring interviews and stories about regular citizens, athletes, business people, you name it.
• Start giving more compliments. One of the first steps to breaking down negative barriers in our life is to dish out what we hope to receive. The more encouraging you are the more you will be surrounded by encouraging people.
• Write down a list of things you enjoy or always wanted to do. From here you can find new goals to set. These can be simple, they don't have to be world-changing (but who knows, they could be!)
• Identify someone you look up to, whether in your life or someone famous. Identify them for specific reasons, and specific traits that are attractive to you. Internalize how they could make you a better person or help you overcome a current challenge.

Let me know what inspires you in the comments below! Happy Almost-Spring!