As you know I am dyslexic. Very dyslexic. Reading even my own articles online is nearly impossible.
Today I got an article in an email where Andy of bugfree fame talks about the difference between motivation and inspiration. I could grab a sentence here and there… but I really could not read the article. But it’s been knocking about in my head, and I want to share with you what I experienced, and what opening I see for myself, an opening I have never seen before. I put the whole article in the footnotes… the article I could never read myself… 1
It is related to the “supposed to” article I wrote earlier today, so make sure you read it again.
Here it goes:
You can push someone or you can pull someone. What pushes and what pulls can be created by yourself. By what you want… and yet, when you are pulled, your experience is completely different than when you are pushed.
It can be demonstrated by a rope: you can pull it and it goes with you. You can push it, and it bends out of the way…
Avoidance is one of the strategies most of us use most of the time. It is not direct confrontation, it doesn’t ask you to tell the truth, to show your distaste… you just bend out of the way.
Now, most of the things I do, I love to do… I experience being pulled to do, it’s fun, it is self-expression.
But there are things that I do, or better said, I am supposed to do, and I am avoiding doing those.
They are actually things that would supposedly help business, supposedly every website owner should do it… and I have spent oodles of YOUR MONEY on it… really my money, but I never benefited, I just passed it on to software creators that create tools to promote websites… lol.
And I am avoiding…
Now I have a different way of looking at it… I was not inspired to do the work… ultimately, if I could have it my way, I would never think about promoting my site… I would just do what I do best, write, teach, talk, think, experiment, talk to you, and the results will be what the results will be.
But this darn “supposed to” has put in its big foot, and instead of just doing what I do best, I now have to figure out a way to be inspired to do the things I don’t like to do, I don’t want to do, I couldn’t care less if I do or not.
Hm.
Would, surrendering to these tasks, work as I suggested in my previous article? Or should I just do the things that “call me” to do them (that’s another way to express “pull”)?
I know this is a short article, and it leaves it open.
I don’t have an answer for you. I am going to ponder it, experiment with it, and we’ll see. OK?
If you want to add your 2 cents worth, feel free. Do it in the comments below.
Get your Starting Point MeasurementsIn today’s footstep I am going to answer a question I had in a few days ago regarding motivation. I was asked what motivates me to make me to achieve my dreams.
To cover it I am going to take a section from the 2nd part of the Process Using A Bug Free Mind (Chapter 18 – Taking The Red Pill).
It comes from the point when I’ve laid out the tools to go and find your purpose and create the life of your dreams.
As I’ve covered here in these footsteps knowledge can be very dangerous and at the point you have the tools your ego decides to attack again and keep you stuck… It does all sorts of things to keep you from applying the wisdom you’ve discovered…
So I added this section to keep people focused on what they wanted, it’s called: (the sections in brackets I’ve added for your understanding).
Are You Going To Take The Blue Pill Or The Red Pill?
You take the blue pill and the story ends; you go back to living your life by accident (you go back to the waking sleep, forget about having A Bug Free Mind and begin searching again for an answer, or accept failure). You convince yourself that luck obviously does exist and rules your destiny. You decide I am obviously a loon who only thinks he can perform real magic.
You can go on with your life and ignore what I have written here – trust me it won’t take long to forget – You’ll be happy, well sort of and you’ll be content to settle for less. It’s not so bad – maybe you’ll retain some of the wisdom and your life will improve a bit. Still laziness and a lack of inspiration pay off now.
Or you take the red pill… and you stay in wonderland and you show yourself how deep the rabbit hole goes.
By taking the red pill you can give some serious thought to the amount of your life, the amount of your mind energy you are going to desire to use to really create the life you desire. This is the path which involves effort in the attainment of inspiration.
In your process of defining your desires you will uncover your inspiration without effort. My job with this process is to inspire you enough to choose the red pill… To start defining what you desire from life, as I know you will obtain your inspiration there which will fuel you enough for the rest of your life. You will never need motivation again.
Inspiration is an abundant fuel source which requires no new supply. One drop has been enough to power some of the greatest achievements we as humans have made so far. It is the perfect fuel for us! It is the fuel we were designed for.
You can travel to places no-one has ever been before when you are fueled by inspiration. This is the fuel that taking the red pill will shortly deliver for you, and you will then begin to live an inspired life again.
However… motivation is like petrol, you have to always consider how much you have of it. You effectively limp from one fuel station to another, never being able to venture out to wondrous undiscovered lands because no-one has gone there first and put a petrol station up! So I state again, when you are inspired, who needs motivation?
Anyone who speaks or writes about being, staying, or getting motivated, doesn’t understand the difference in power and do you really think a teacher like that is who you should be listening to?
It doesn’t matter how much of a luminary they are, basically anyone who speaks about motivation doesn’t know how to teach you what you need to know. They are in effect trying to stick the wrong type of fuel in your car. How far do you think your car will go when you stick the wrong fuel in it?
You do not need motivation – any books or courses which tell you that you do are teaching you incorrectly… Is it any wonder they have a less than 1% success rate! Use the word motivation as a signpost pointing to a bad teacher! This does not mean they cannot change, just currently their teaching method is not good enough.
Once again, they are using the incorrect word to educate their readers, and little words make an immense difference. As in that word they are teaching you that you need perpetual torment in your life…
They don’t intend that of course, as to them (a successful person) the word motivated simply means inspired… Successful people don’t know that as they haven’t looked at it for long enough. They are naturally motivated and therefore do not need to consider motivation.
In other words they are using the law of least effort on autopilot (they only need to consider their words if they are attempting to teach what they know, and this is where they have gone wrong). But what they state to their subconscious mind when they use the word motivated in the form of a feeling is, ‘Inspired to fulfil my dream, until completion.’
So if you are not in the less than 1% of successful people, you get educated that you need perpetual torment, and if you are in the less than 1% who are successful then you learn that you need inspiration.
So I suggest until you are in the 0.001% and KNOW you have your natural success mindset back, that you avoid reading, and definitely using, the word motivated. As the last thing you need to attain your dreams is perpetual torment.
***END***
If you feel you are looking for motivation then the chances are you haven’t yet found your reason why. This is the reason why you must do this, your reason why is ‘your magic fuel’, it is your inspiration.
As Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
Anything you want to do in your life that will impress others comes from you discovering your inspiration to do it… Anything you’ve taken to the top of the game in your life came from finding your inspiration…
Anything you’ve ever used motivation to start never amounted to much… Inspiration therefore is the magical ingredient for getting you the life of your dreams…
I’d like to share with you a short story of my sons inspiration…
My son David loves Scooting, in 2009 he asked me to look at some YouTube videos of children doing all sorts of aerobatics on their push scooters.
He asked me if he could ever be as good as them, and I was very present at the time and said, “Sure you can. All you need to do is decide to make that your purpose and give up at least 10,000 hours and you’ll achieve it.”
I didn’t do what most parents do and mistakenly shoot their children’s dreams in the foot by saying it would be hard work, or they would miss out on other things. Instead I told him it was possible and told him how he could do it, how he would have to choose one thing over another to be able to do it.
I didn’t put my thoughts into him, I kept out of the way and let him find his inspiration if it was there…
Sure enough he found his inspiration in desiring to be able to do those tricks. As I write this today he has talked his mother into getting up early to take him to a skate park.
He surrounds himself with his passion, and regularly drops everything for a chance to go to another skate park. I have never attempted to motivate him one little bit in the attainment of his dream. I have just aided him when asked and occasionally made it a little difficult for him on purpose (just to test how inspired he was, but don’t tell him that).
Every week he just gets on with it, he has seen months and even years with only limited progress, but still progress… He has taken this to a very high level now and is probably in the top 1% of all riders.
Over the next few years he will be in the top 100 in the world… How far he’ll go, I have no idea…
He will go as far as his inspiration takes him, and because he is inspired he requires zero motivation. In fact if he ever needs motivation, then it will probably be time to quit.
Now to complete his school work and do well in his exams he is not inspired and requires A LOT of motivation. Fortunately he has me and his mother there as coaches motivating him through the things in life he is not inspired to do… Like homework, cleaning his bedroom, eating at least one piece of fruit a day etc…
If you wish to do something big, then you will need inspiration not motivation. If you wish to achieve something that you want but are not inspired to do, then you will need careful timing and regular motivation. Otherwise known as perpetual torment…
However, by discovering your reason why to do something, or your reason not to do something (which is equally as important), then you are able to just do it, or just not do it… Discovering either a lack of or a stack of inspiration is applying the law of least effort and is going the natural way.
Having a reason why which is not yours, or weak will require a stack of motivation and this is going against the flow of life… Can you feel how seeking motivation for massive projects is doomed to fail?
Sure you can use motivation to do stuff you don’t like, like filling in your tax return, or cleaning out the garage… But motivation should never be used for the big stuff…
So you must find your reason why to do something, and it must be your reason why. Not something your Mum or Dad said you should do, or your teachers, or your friends…
Consider this, everything you have achieved in your life came about through finding your reason why which inspired you… or by having someone coaching you to achieve it.
If I want to do something big then I have to bring coaches into it as I’m far to lazy to keep going all by myself.
So now consider… this thing you want to do…
What reason why could inspire you to do it… Can you find inspiration, or will you require motivation… The secret to progress is to know your limitations and structure your way around them… Or to accept them and choose a different path…
If you think to yourself I need motivation, then the chances are you actually need inspiration.
