Motivation Made Easy – Lesson 3

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Lesson 3

Find Inspiration In What Surrounds You

In the last chapter, you learned how to set goals that interest you based on what factors motivate and inspire you to do more and reach more for your goals. In this chapter, you will learn how to find inspiration in the environment around you so you can have an easier time being and staying motivated to achieve the goals you want to achieve.

As mentioned in the Introduction, we all will experience periods of lower motivation, especially if we are experiencing less success than we anticipated or moving more slowly toward our goals than we anticipated, etc. The key is to keep the motivation high, as it’s really our “fuel” to attain the goals we want to achieve. One good way to keep our motivation high is to find inspiration in the environment that surrounds us.

Inspiration is defined by Dictionary.com as “a thing or person that inspires.” This means that a person or thing can lead us to increase our effort and motivate us to strive more for our goals.

For instance, if we are really motivated to improve our education and our skills, but are dismayed by the difficulty of a course we have to take to get our degree, we may find inspiration in an older person obtaining his/her college degree in the same field. We can be inspired by the fact that the older person likely had more challenges to getting his/her degree, such as not having been in class for several decades and perhaps not being as mentally sharp as he/she was when he/she was younger. This can inspire us to raise our effort and focus to overcome the difficulty we are having in class and obtaining our degree.

Similarly, if we want to preserve the environment, but are dismayed by our lack of progress in helping it because of other people’s actions, we may be inspired by a child having a bake sale to raise money to help the environment. We can be inspired by the fact that the child has less means to help the environment because he/she doesn’t hold a job and can’t transport himself/herself to various destinations, yet was able to do his/her part to help the environment. This can inspire us to raise our effort and focus to do more to help the environment.

Essentially, we need to look around at our environment and see who or what can inspire to keep our motivation and enthusiasm up to attain our goals. Maybe it’s a co-worker who is dealing with a disability or has lost a loved one recently, yet he/she continues to come into work, remains focused and productive in his/her occupation, and does it all with a smile and without complaining. Such an example can lead us to raise our effort, since we aren’t dealing with the same challenges he/she is facing; we can think, “If he/she can do this, why can’t I?”

Therefore, we need to look at things and people in our environment to help us overcome those periods when our motivation and enthusiasm is down to completing the tasks we need to complete to achieve our goals. There are often many examples that can help us improve our performance. If, by chance, there isn’t, or if these examples aren’t helping enough, that may indicate you need to change your environment (i.e. change your job, move to a new location, etc.). However, in most cases, we are already in an environment that can inspire us to work harder, focus more, and achieve more of our goals; we just have to look for those examples and be inspired by them.

In this chapter, you have learned how to find inspiration in the environment that surrounds you. In the next chapter, you will learn how to establish a successful mindset so you can be continuously motivated and achieve more of your goals.

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