To you, what is inspiration? Do you think you are an inspiring people? How do you inspire people? Or maybe inspire yourself? Do you think it’s important to be inspired?
Have you ever thought of those questions? I have. I leave some of the questions for you to answer. I’ll start mine on how do you inspire others. I have 4 points I want to tell:
First and most important thing is you need to feel inspired.
It’s the basic thing. When we board into airplane, the air attendant will brief us about putting our life jacket first before helping others or kids. If we don’t feel inspired, how do we expect people to be inspired because of us.
Secondly, after we feel inspired, how we make other people inspire?
To my opinion, inspiration comes in 2 ways, active and passive. Active means we have engagement with the people we want to inspire. And two things to remember are we have to do what we want the people want to be and check our motive, we need to be honest. Even kids are able to feel whether people are really nice to them or they just pretend.
For example, have you heard about Mahatma Gandhi story about a kid, the parent and the candy? One day, a mother comes to meet him and ask him to advise his boy to stop eating candy. He didn’t say anything and the mother leave with some disappointments. Few days later, he visits the mother, gives the advice and after the boy left, he told the mother that he was eating candy at that time. How can he tell people to not eating candy while he’s eating one.
On the other hand, is more passive approach. We see someone that fit to be our role model. It can be something that they do that inspires us. For example Steve Jobs, I admire him for his passions and his visions. And I believe that I don’t think he thinks to inspire people in the first place. He does what he likes. Other will see it and feel inspired.
Each approach has its own pluses and minuses.
Third element is time.
It has to be in the right time, to have deeper impact. For example, we can’t tell our friend to look at the brightest side of life when they are so happy.
Lastly, when we are not inspired, don’t panic or depressed. It’s time for others to inspire you.