“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London.

The struggle to get inspired every day to do something great often looks like a roller coaster ride. We encounter so many things every day that deflate us, push us down. This can be a bad meeting at the office, a bad boss or even a personal bereavement, the list is endless. All these things play havoc on our minds and sucks its creative energy.

But then let us remember that life is like a lump of clay and we define how we want to play with it.You can either create beautiful sculptures out of it or just get your hands dirty and crib on the dirty hands. The choice is ours and ours entirely. Luckily for all of us, the choice is not that tough. We only need to look around and get inspired from some incredible mortals we truly admire and put their thoughts and actions in use in our everyday lives.

Big things come from little packages.

“The elevator to success is out of order. You will have to use the stairs—one step at a time.”-Joe Girard.

Trash those BHAG(s) (Big Hairy Audacious goals) immediately. They are not helping you anyway. They only create more stress in your brain and it goes into overdrive, thinking about ways and means to achieve those insanely far away goals. Failure is doomed to happen.

Break those big goals into small “goal-lets” which can be accomplished everyday by you. These goal-lets not only inspire you but also help you to give occasions to celebrate small victories .Small victories lead to big victories and big victories cumulate together to lead to your biggest victory. Visible progress towards small goal-lets, releases the happiness hormone dopamine, which helps motivate us to take action to achieve, so we can experience the pleasure of the reward.

Learn something new every day.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”-George Bernard Shaw.

Stay away from every person who tells that “you are too old to learn something new. “They are losers and want you to be part of their ever growing club. Do not attempt to convert them. They will beat you down with their experience and bring you down to their level and then suck you in.Stay away, stay focused.

Learn something new every day. It can be one page of a new language lesson, an interesting conversation at the office canteen or even that exotic oriental dish for which you wanted to get the recipe. Education is key to slowing brain aging. Simply put, the more you know, the more you stretch your brain's capacity for learning. Keeping your mind active keeps arterial aging, immune aging, and even accidents in check and has a real time benefit of making you 1.3 years younger! To stay sharp as a whip, continue to challenge your brain on a daily basis.

Cheer yourself by cheering others.

“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”- Mark Twain.

Do you find yourself ruing alone in sorrow after a bad day at office? Do you find yourself inadvertently asking yourself a question “Why me” after a bitter lashing by the boss? Do your immediately cascade your anger on to your subordinates? If the answer is “yes” to all the questions, then you have doing grave harm to your self-confidence which in turn will erode your self-esteem. Without self-esteem, of course you will not have any inspiration.

Just come out of all this destructive vortex of negativity by talking to someone whom you can cheer up. The person can be anybody; from your programmer who has done commendable coding to the security guard who sits outside your office. Cheering others is one of the most significant gifts you can give to them, and at the same time give yourself a bout of serotonin, the happiness hormone. Serotonin regulates the mood, prevents depression and makes you feel happy. It may sound counter-intuitive to those who haven’t tried it before, but it really is a great way to feel better about yourself.

You might want to refer to an excellent article written by Varthika Kashyap - Are you still waiting to get inspired which relates to the same topic.

Check out this motivational video Change your mind which gives you fuel for the entire day!!









About the author-:

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Ravi Rajan is a global IT program manager based out of Mumbai, India. He is also an avid blogger, Haiku poetry writer, archaeology enthusiast and history maniac. Connect with Ravi on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.

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