I wrote this entry. Then I re-wrote it. I decided to put the most important thing first – the quotes that really made me think.
These words come from Paul Arden. (Initially I bought it for the cover. Not only did it have that powerful message, but it had gold lettering!)
- Without having a goal it’s difficult to score.
- Make your vision of where you want to be a reality.
- Do not seek praise. Seek criticism.
- Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you.
- Don’t take no for an answer.
- When it can’t be done, do it. If you don’t do it, it doesn’t exist.
- The person who doesn’t make mistakes is unlikely to make anything.
- Don’t be afraid of silly ideas.
Is inspiration something that we need? Wait for inspiration to come to you or…. ? Do some of us just have a capability to self motivate. Does inspiration or motivation depend on what we are doing, our current circumstances, the people we talk to or some other reason? I sometimes sit and watch people. Some hurry along, others just walk with the flow. All of them have their own paths and their own destiny. But is that true, what’s their motivation?
MOTIVATION
Something inside me, a feeling, a breathing telling me that where I’m at, is still not ‘the place’ I need to be in. I feel that there is more. It has always been there, but more so then at any other point in my life, it is starting to bubble at the surface. I imagine it was always at the surface. With busy life all around me I didn’t take the time to acknowledge it. It can easily stay suppressed and out of reach. But something happened in December. I had a birthday. I took note of where my life was, where I wanted it to go, and I made a decision to get there.
Anyhow! Not wasting my words or your time, the result was – I want more, I want to offer more, I want more to be shared.
I want more from myself. That was what started me thinking about motivation & inspiration. What is that special ingredient that makes the difference for someone who wants to make that leap. What reasons are there that makes you stand up and say this isn’t where I should be at this point in my life.
I made a decision. To make a change. Then I went on a hunt to get myself a little help on the confidence and motivation aspect of it all….
INSPIRATION
Sometimes I can sit in front of my computer and I want to write something or create something, and yet I just sit and stare at the screen. I don’t want to move away from it. Usually in those times I get frustrated. Just sitting, waiting.
At work I see my students answering a brief that I set, (or another tutor has set) and there can be an initial period where they do want to get started on the task, but how. They need to take a pause to reflect on what to do. This means they can have the same response that I described above, where they can be sitting looking at the screen but not sure how to proceed. (Unfortunately this tends to resolve itself by a quick search on YouTube for some time-wasting & side stepping searches.)
RESOURCES
Ted is a great place to find inspiration. They have really motivational and creative people delivering talks and these are posted on the site. This one here, Tim Brown on the powerful link between creativity and play.
I decided to go look at some old books I had. Two stood out: Paul Arden’s Best selling book: “It’s not how good you are it’s how good you want to be“. (Phaidon) and “Simplicity”, Edward DeBono
[EDIT: had to add this link, thou it really isn't even prominent enough listed here. This is the post I wanted to write! It is really spot on- you should check out How to Generate Inspiration on Demand. Really well written and full of great thought provoking solutions. ]
Other ways to get inspiration is to look at the work or lifestyle of people you admire, people in similar fields. Music is inspirational, sit back, listen to your favourite artist think of the words or the memories that you have associated with that song. Travel can be another motivator, seeing different people, cultures and ideas. Even the different colours of a landscape can change how you think. (@howardkang sent me that message about motivation, but he also said that his community is another area for inspiration, the people around him, inspiring and supporting makes a difference. )
The Wikipedia entry for motivation has a lot of links and resources in addition to descriptions of different types of motivations.
Pick the Brain has a list of 21 ways to motivate yourself and others.
The top 100 living geniuses is a list from The Telegraph that you may want to look at and possibly google some of the names on it. I did see Dolly Parton at 94 so not too sure about it.
This site: Media Inspiration is geared towards designers getting motivation in their work. It has resources and links about ways and methods to be inspired.
How do you find inspiration? What ways do you motivate yourself, and are there certain times in you life that you needed motivation or inspiration more than others?
Tags: book, confidence, goals, inspiration, life, motivation, Paul Arden, quotes, TED, wiki
Interesting and very thought provoking, Christine. My “macro” method of motivation as always been to spend time visualizing what it will be like once I've achieved the objective or goal. At a “micro” level (getting motivated to write a post, for example) I offer myself a reward for completing the task.
This is a great blog post – we just delivered a creativity workshop yesterday with a marketing team in a UK plc. Most of the them didn't believe they were creative and had lost inspiration for developing great marketing campaigns. They just got stuck in the rut and in the daily grind of their roles. However, with some encouragement from us, some creativity exercises and that fact that they had some fun on the day, they all left feeling tired, but motivated and with the belief that that they were creative.
The Ted vido is really good, as we get older our creativity is constrained as we are told ” you can't do that” and “that's not right”. I heard a quote by Paul Smith (the fashion designer), he said that when his being creative he is “child like” as it helps him to come up with new ideas and stops him putting boundaries around his ideas.
So the next time you have an idea, run with it, use the excellent resources that Christine has posted here on her blog. And more importantly don't stop having ideas, write them down and keep them in an ideas log, that you can use at a later date when you are struggling to thing of a new way of doing something.
Joanne
Thank you for your comments, and really great points
@ Mike, to reward yourself, that's essential and the fun part!
@ Joanne to write the ideas down. That is so important, having that little book of ideas that you can make notes in and then draw inspiration from.
Thanks!
[...] I found this blog and the person who wrote it while twittering on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. Christine Morris has some great ideas and thoughts when it comes to creativity and developing new ideas on her blog [...]