Who Has Inspired You?

Many people point to great leaders as a source of personal inspiration. Others credit revered teachers, mentors or family members for having inspired them to believe in themselves, or believe in something bigger than themselves. And influential leaders will often cite someone in their life who inspired them to become the people they are.

Inspiration is the force that connects what we believe with what we do. It is how we incorporate our sense of purpose into the thinking that drives our actions. When you are inspired, you exhibit the conscientiousness that informs the grit that is necessary to stretch the boundaries of your comfort zone and elevate your capacity accomplish the things that are most meaningful.

“Inspiration comes from within you. Others cannot inspire you – and you cannot inspire others. You can only inspire yourself.”

As a leader you can aspire to be an instrument that inspires others. You can take a deep and sincere interest in others and endeavor to be a living example of how others might choose to behave or live their lives. But ultimately what they do is their choice, not yours.

You can attempt to influence the choices people make by providing rational information that speaks to opportunities or consequences. You can project imagination onto the canvass that is the world around you with hope that people will see the world as you can. This is how leaders generate inspiration and help people accomplish things that matter. You demonstrate to others what is possible – and help them to feel that what can be done, also must be done.

Influencing others to expand their personal capacity and perform to their greatest potential requires more than just their desire to do so. People are not easily seduced away from their habits of thinking. They must get comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable.

What you feel to be and make necessary is a function of what you believe. And the only way a person changes their beliefs is when they learn something new. Unless you are willing operate in the learning mode – you will cling to their beliefs no matter what others might want you to do.

“What you believe is informed by how you feel about things. Your beliefs are a reflection of your personal values. Inspiration either resonates with those values – or changes them.”

Inspiration is always a choice.

It is what we choose to believe that causes us to be inspired. You might be persuaded to believe things simply because others do – but ultimately you choose what to believe or not. You can be shown undeniable proof and still refuse to believe what others insist is true. The self-help author, Wayne Dyer twisted the old adage of believing what you see into “you’ll see it when you believe it.” Your beliefs form a powerful force that can create a wall that will isolate you from the world around you – or give you the means to break down those walls.

No one can force you to believe anything you do not wish to believe. You may be able to force people to act in accordance with your beliefs, but that does not mean they share those beliefs. Your own beliefs can be challenged, ridiculed or even silenced, but your beliefs remain your beliefs until you allow them to be replaced with new ones.

It may be possible to manipulate the thinking of others in an attempt to forcibly alter their beliefs. Brainwashing is coercion that involves fear of violence, isolation, sensory deprivation and other psychological tools can be highly effective in getting people to break, give up their resistance and adopt beliefs that are imposed by others.

Intimidation causes people to choose to adopt installed beliefs by making any other choice seem impossible. It works because your sense of choice is hijacked by your basic survival instincts. When you are no longer fear the threat, it is possible to restore your previously held system of beliefs. Some, so called “deprogramming” techniques use counter-coercion to brainwash a person back to what is considered “normal” or their former selves. 

There are also approaches, that are recognized to be more effective, that work to restore your ability to freely exercise choice in what you believe. The objective is to either reengage the values and beliefs that you held previously – or to guide you towards what others believe is a more rational or healthier process of thinking. This is essentially the same way that inspiration works: in enables you to make choices that empower you to perform differently and hopefully better.

“Inspiration is not a function of cause-and-effect. It cannot be a forced. It tends to be something we find.”

Some people actively seek inspiration. They might look to religion or philosophy to help them mold their beliefs. Others turn to self-help books, or follow pop-culture influencers in search of the meaning they feel they need in their lives.

While the source of your own inspiration can be found in many things, effective leaders understand that it can also be cultivated. Great leaders help to prepare people to be inspired and even provide the seeds. But they cannot make them grow. Like plant seeds require water, seeds of inspiration require meaning in order to germinate.

If you have been inspired by someone’s courage, heroism, insight or by some great performance of human creative expression, it is because you have made those things meaningful to you. Your mind is a meaning-making machine. Apart from the autonomic systems of your brain, which literally keep your body alive, it is your mind that sustains life by constantly working to create meaning from the sensory perception of your environment.

You mind interprets and sorts-out sources of danger and sources of pleasure. It guides the decisions that find your sustenance, shelter and love. Physical sensations like hot and cold or hard and soft are wired through the function of your brain, but your sense of well-being, of satisfaction and joy – are products of the mind interpreting what our senses transmit. Your brain is the physical organ that controls how we function, but your mind is the invisible, weightless force that defines the world and makes you who you are.

Your mind creates thoughts from feelings – and informs beliefs from the values we install through a constant flow of input and output – or what we call experience. By evaluating action and response we form memories that serve as guidance for the decisions we are constantly making to get through life. The vast majority of our daily decisions is benign and are driven mostly by simple habits. We don’t need to give them much thought.

There are circumstances when your brain overrides your ability to think through decisions. Adrenaline triggers the limbic system in the region of the often referred to as the “reptilian” brain (or the brainstem) that controls “fight or flight” response and other functions of basic survival including hunger, thirst and sexual impulse. You act without the need to – and in extreme cases, the ability to think first.

All choice requires thinking.

When to wake-up in the morning or go to bed in the evening, what clothes to wear, what toothpaste to buy —each have some consequence, but are typically handled without much consternation. We go through the routines or habits of daily life on auto-pilot.

Your habits don't just influence the repetitive actions we take every day, they also inform the more rigorous things our minds are tasked with. Your habits of thinking are what determine your success in life.

When you encounter something new or unexpected you employ your capacity to think through situations and attempt to create a desirable outcome. The most challenging mental processes – things like solving vexing math problems or contemplating complex strategies – are all informed by your habits of thinking.

Like the simple habits such as where you place your keys when you get home – these habits of thinking inform your world-view. Your level of curiosity, the things you care about and the competencies you develop – are all guided by habit. They can empower or paralyze you by prejudging outcomes and placing your learned biases obscuring or even blocking entirely what you might otherwise see.

“Inspiration is not what changes your habits of thinking; It is what you find by creating new habits.”

You become inspired when you not only see new possibilities, but when you also recognize at the same time that you have the power to accomplish what you now believe to be possible.

Who or what inspires you? What causes you to believe in a world that is better than what we live in today? 

Inspiration can be found in powerful questions: both those we are asked and especially in those you ask yourself. Insatiable curiosity breeds inspiration and drives discovery and innovation.

Inspiration is what unlocks the door to your future. When you are inspired you lean into your fears rather than run from them. You question your answers and remain persistently unsatisfied and uncomfortable with the status quo.

Martin Luther King Jr. is credited with inspiring millions to dream and to change the world. He said, “the time is right to do what is right,” and “human progress is nether automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” Dr. King knew that his greatest struggle was to kindle the inspiration in others that might one day bring the dawn of a more just and more loving world. It was his example – more than his worlds that have created his legacy.