We made our Estonian version of 50 people 1 question – in full HD and with English subtitles (press “play” and then button “cc” on the Youtube player to enable subtitles).

We received many answers and left many people pondering. What would be your answer to the question “What inspires you to take action?”

An awesome composition of wisdom to start the day. Here´s some of my favorite concepts:

Give to receive

“It is more blessed to give than to receive, because in giving, although it doesn´t seem so, you receive.”

Desmond Tutu

Stay young

“You don´t stop doing things because you get old. You get old because you stop doing things.”

Rosamude Pilcher

You know who you are

“Nobody can teach me who I am. Who can describe perhaps of me. But who I am and what I need. These are things I have to find out myself.”

Chinua Achebe

You create your own success

“If I give you a recipe and I will give 5 people the same recipe, I will have 5 different dish on the table.”

Jacques Pepin

Keep learning

“One of the reasons I haven´t slipped into some sort of retirement, is that I always feel like I´m learning something new all the time. “

Clint Eastwood

Be willing to offer your life for it

“You don´t have to be rich and you don´t have to be an army. If you find yourself in a situation that needs to be changed, if you´re willing to offer your life for it, you might actually get something done.”

Bernice Johnson Reagon

I´ll take both, thanks

“Life is not perfect, it never will be. You just have to make the very best of it. You have to open your heart for what the world can show you. Sometimes it´s terrifying, sometimes it´s incredibly beautiful. And I`ll take both, thanks.”

Graham Nash

Which ones were the most insightful for you?

Knowing what you want makes it easier to get it. Pursue your passion and dream big time for this stirs your blood and makes you feel alive.

“The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach for.

It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream.

It is not a disgrace to not reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for.

Not failure, but low aim, is a sin.”

Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays

This is your decade, make it rock. Here´s some practical instructions and a printable worksheet to get it started.

1. Find yourself a peaceful and calming place to be with yourself.
Grab some paper and pencils, switch off your phone. Put your favorite music on and take in a comfortable position.

2. Visualize your past events.
Close your eyes, breathe deeply and let your imagination flow. Imagine all the great moments you have experienced. Live them again in your minds eye. Make those great moments brighter, bigger and bring them closer to yourself.

3. Note down the best moments.
Write or draw down the keywords that describe the best moments, events, activities and quotes from the past years. All the good stuff your are proud of and what made those years really great.

4. Select the important areas in your life.
These areas can be for example: personal development, relationships, education, career, material needs, health and vacation (feel free to add or replace some of these areas of life).

5. Think of your big goals and think of your needs for this year.
Print out the worksheet (the link is in the end of this article), mark your big goals for each area and your goals for the upcoming year. The yearly goals help you achieve the big goals.

Visualize yourself achieving those goals very brightly and feel how it feels when you have achieved them. To spark ideas for setting your goals I will provide you with some helping questions for each area of life.

Relax, take your time.

Personal development – What do you want to be as a person? What do you want to be remembered by? What is your talent? What kind of skills and abilities would you want to develop further?

 What would you consider as your ideal daily regime – how early do you want to wake up, what kind of habits do you need to get rid off and what kind of new habits you need to develop?

Relationships – What is your ideal partner (someone to grow old with)? How many kids you want to have and when do you want to have them? What can you do to make your relationship truly enjoyable? What kind of friends do you want to have around you? What do you prefer to do with them?

Are you satisfied with the depth of your current relationships? Do you want to have more friends and to devote your time for being with them? What do you need to change or do this year to create these circumstances?

Education – Do you need to get a degree or extensive training in some field? Should you go to study in a university, take part in some specific courses or trainings? How are you going to freshen up your knowledge in your key areas?

Career – Imagine your dream job (or business). What kind of positive impact does your work have to pose on the society? Do you need to take your focus on some specific fields or perhaps even to switch your current job to do that?

Material needs – How much do you need to earn each month to live your life with the quality you deserve? What kind of devices, services or facilities do you need to achieve that quality of life? How to make your assets produce those financial means.

Health – Perhaps you want to play football with your grand children when you turn 70? Do you need to change your habits for eating, thinking, resting and physical exercise to make it possible? If yes, then what kind of actions do you need to take?

Vacation – How do you want to spend (invest) your free time? What kind of hobbies you want to take up? Where do you want to travel and what to experience?

6. Make sure that your goals are:
1) Specific - good goal clearly describes what needs to happen, what is the expected outcome. 
2) Measurable - good goal can be objectively evaluated – was it or was it not achieved. 
3) Time bound - good goal has specific dates as deadlines (“in 1 year”  is bad, “achieved by 14th of April 2011″ is better).
4) Realistic, yet exciting – good goal is something you believe that you are able to do. Better goal is something that also stretches you by taking you out from your comfort zone.

Ask yourself:

• Why is this goal important for me?
• What am I willing to do to achieve that goal?
• Who could help me to achieve that goal?
• What happens if I do not achieve that goal?
• What do I need to change in myself to achieve that goal?

The more action you take towards achieving your goals, the more likely they are achieved. Achievement comes from taking action.

Some questions to stimulate your ideation:

• If you only had one year to live, what would you do?
• If you won a lottery, how would you invest the money?
• What was it that you wanted to do when you were a child?
• What kind of stories do you want to tell to your grand children about your life?

7. Once you have finished goal-setting, then thank yourself and take action.
Give yourself recognition – praise yourself by doing something you really enjoy (eat some chocolate, listen to some good music, dance, call a friend). Do some specific step (even if it is a small one)  immediately towards your goals.

“What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it. ”
Alexander Graham Bell - scientist, inventor, teacher.

I wish you great inspiration and moments of flow for the fresh year. Enjoy making your dreams come true!

Cheers!

Harald

BestJobs.ro interviewed me about creativity and motivation – here´s some of the insights.

Tell us about a project you were involved in and you really enjoyed.

Recently we had an international seminar with 130 young participants and we got all of them to build big models of 12 future villages out of everything that was available in nature and stuff we got from office supplies. We video-interviewed their presentations and used it as visionary input for county development organization´s strategy.

In the beginning it felt impossible to have it all organized, yet actually it was fantastic to see, how we got the team working and how this form of conversational activity opened young people to share their vision. Great success for the client and for the participants.

I just love when my clients stretch me, it makes me feel alive. How can you inspire your clients to positively stretch you more?

Can you please define “Inspiring Creativity Trainer”? Why is creativity important in leadership or entrepreneurship?

The way I see it:

1. Inspiring is about making the positive impact.
2. Creativity is about the ability to produce novel and useful solutions.
3. Trainer is about creating an environment where people can learn and grow.

So Inspiring Creativity Trainer is a person who creates an inspiring environment where people could tap their creative potential.

In leadership and entrepreneurship creativity enables you to connect resources and challenges to create opportunities. In entrepreneurship it enables you to create something great out of “nothing”. In leadership it enables you to connect the dreams of your team-members with the current assignments in hand.

Imagine having this belief:”Whatever happens, I will find a way out.” – what would you really do if you had this belief? That´s the value of creativity.

What qualities do you feel a successful manager should have?

In my opinion, the most important role of a manager is creating and keeping the big picture – systems thinking. By using this big picture one needs to figure out what needs to be done and manage talents of team-members to do it.

Good tool for keeping this big picture is for example mind mapping – it enables you to connect and categorize ideas and opportunities.

Who is your role model? What motivates you?

When I was on my second year at the university, studying economics, I took an academic relief for one year to figure out who I am and what I´m good at. I started working through all kinds of personal development materials and took courses in psychology. My favourite back then was Anthony Robbins, because he made important things simple.

Nowadays I only take some specific elements from great people. I have my list of “superheroes” – people who are really great in some specific things. I lend their brains for tackling problems by asking myself “How would x solve this situation?”.

My main motivator: curiosity and hunger for being better. Asking myself: “Can I get a little better today?” and getting the “Yes, I can!” answer.

How should one keep each member of the team involved and motivated?

Coaching. Asking the right questions to direct the team-member to figure out what they really want and how to get it from this project.

For example:

What do you want to be remembered by after finishing this project? How do you want to feel after finishing this task? What do you need to do to achieve this result? What is the first step you need to take today to get it going?

How do you decide which tasks take priority when organizing a complete
project?

I figure out what are the pre-conditions for right things to happen – usually there are some specific things that catalyze other processes. I ask myself how can I apply my best talents and strengths to start those pre-conditional processes.

If it is a project with volunteer team members, then I usually ask what is currently important in their work-life and which part of our project is related to their other activities. If it is full time employees, then I focus on their talents and strengths + areas they want to grow in.

To be honest, sometimes I simply do what I would love to do instead of doing the “right thing”. The funny thing is that sometimes doing what you love to do turns out to be the right thing. But not always.

How would you react if this was a job interview and we would tell you that you are you got the job as a manager of a team that lacks motivation?

I´d probably do as follows:

1. Figure out what is my personal passion about this business (clarifying the related pleasure and pain).
2. Through coaching I would clarify what do the team members really dream of (what they would like to feel and how they can get that feeling).
3. I ´d involve all members into conversation about creating a compelling vision of where we would want to be and how to get there (using for example world cafe method).
4. I´d use creative thinking to connect our dreams with the expected outcomes of the company (for example “forced connections ” creativity technique).

In other words – I´d create an environment where team-members connect things they´re good at, what they love to do and what the world needs. For mapping those 3 key elements for yourself find out more from a video instruction.

Be Better!

Meet Harald.

You can download a worksheet for writing down the things you´re good at, things you love and what the world needs. By combining these elements you will be able to develop the understanding of what your purpose is.

It’s never too late to be who you might have been.

George Eliot

I got some inspiration from Anthony Robbins´ foundation of success and decided to enrich this model with my own tips and ideas on how to manifest more success in your life. This is how the 4 step success model looks like:

The concept is simple:

Your beliefs determine your understanding of your potential. This potential determines whether you dare to take action. By taking action you get resultsand by interpreting these results you form your beliefs. The circle of success where each link plays vital role in creating success of failure. Which one would you choose?

If you prefer success, then take a look on these ideas I generated for making sure that each link would empower your success.

How to tap your hidden potential?

Your potential is your understanding of what you are capable of doing.

• Set your focus - make clear what is most important for you now? Which activities would have the strongest impact on your future?
• Make a list of your resources – write down all the opportunities and resources you could use.
• Make a list of previous successes - write down all the things you have been successful in.
• Amplify your special skills – use the talents that you have been recognized for.
• Find out what your friends think about you – ask people you trust to give their opinion on what you seem to be really good at.
• Test yourself- if you are having difficulties using the previous tips, try out different personality tests to find out what your strengths and special talents are.

How to take your ideas into action?

Ideas without implementation are worthless.

• Force yourself - create an irreversible need to take action. Take yourself into a state where you just have to do it and succeed.
• Set a deadline – define a specific date by which you will have it done.
• Be an experimenter – don´t worry about failure, but test, experiment.
• Give promises you have to fulfill – tell others how you are going to do it. After promising you just have to do it, otherwise you will be embarrassed if you are asked “so, did you do it?”.
• Eliminate unimportant - get rid of things and activities that do not add value to you. What could you eliminate now?
• Slice your goal into smaller tasks – make an action plan of achievable tasks that gradually reach your final goal.
• Grab some inspiration from your role-models – look how your role-models have done great things and decide that you will perform at the same level.
• Take action immediately – never leave a place of goal-setting without taking action to IMMEDIATELY do something to move a step closer to reaching the goal.

Before diving into tips on how to get better results, check out this inspiring video with Michael Jordan:

How to achieve really good results?

Result is what you want to achieve. Then again you define what it is that you have achieved.

• Clarify your measurement criteria – how do you know that you have achieved your goal? How do you measure it?
• Set higher goals - higher goals make you do more and this way you will achieve a greater result, than you would have achieved with modest goals.
•  Decide to become the superstar in your niche field – decide to become really good in your specific domain and devote yourself to do it.
• There is no failure, there is only feedback – whatever happens, this is what happened and you received feedback about it. Learn from it and move on.
• Reject rejections – don´t let fools take you down.
• See positive in everything- see what opportunities the result offers, whatever it is. You interpret your results.

How to form positive, empowering beliefs?

Your  beliefs determine how you see the world. They form the lens through which you see the world.

• Enjoy recognition – sincerely thank everyone who have appreciated your achievements. Let the good feeling go through you and decide: “Yes, I´m really good!”
• Create positive affirmations – repeat positive affirmations about yourself out loud, make sure to add the emotion to each time you say the affirmation.
• Write you beliefs manifest – write down all the things you believe in. Define, which are your empowering and which are your dis-empowering beliefs. Brake the dis-empowering and amplify the empowering beliefs.
• Use hypnosis – let experts help you reprogram your beliefs (only use this if you have found a trustworthy therapist and you are unable to find any other option that works).

Apply these principles now and let your circle of success expand! Get yourself an inspiring coach to accelerate your success.

If you haven´t read it or you simply want to refresh your memory, then you can also read the “Little Prince” online.

Share your opinion: which book has inspired you the most?

I´ll start with some of the books and lessons that have had a great positive impact of my life:

The most important resource is not time, it is energy.
Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz: “The Power of Full Engagement”

Automate your work and live your life the way you really want to.
Timothy Ferriss: “4 Hour Workweek”

Focus your energy on what you want in your life. And that´s what you get in your life. The law of attraction.
Rhonda Byrne: “The Secret”

It´s not about what happened, it´s not about what will happen. It´s about what you are experiencing now. Being in the now - wow.
Eckhart Tolle: “The Power of Now”

Achieve the state of being totally committed to the work at hand. Let it flow.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: “Flow – The Psychology of Optimal Experience”

Back to you: peek at your bookshelf and share the name of your favorite book.

Online personal development course with motivating videos and practical tips  for bringing more inspiration into your life.

If you´re looking for inspiration, then you will find the new online course “Creating Inspiration” very useful for getting practical tips, tactics to:

• Build your self-confidence, to be completely inspired and not to worry about the small things.
• Be inspired even with a tight schedule.
• Activate yourself and fulfill your goals with inspired passion.
• Discover more inspiring moments, people and opportunities around you.
• Be the inspiration when communicating with people.

The online course consists of 5 practical lessons which you can explore whenever you feel.

Relevant

50 enterprising young persons gave their input noting what prevents them from being inspired. This course was developed with their needs in mind, systematizing the obstacles and turning them into tactics to overcome them.

Inspiring

this course is very useful for all the young leaders who need encouraging and inspiring input to recharge themselves to create a positive impact on the world.

Motivating

The course consists of 5 lessons – each packed with encouraging videos and clear, effective exercises that can bring you life-changing results as you apply them.

Are you a young leader? Then this course is free for you – take it as  a present from me.

Which topics are covered?

Click on the mindmap image to find out which hot topics and questions are covered during the course.

Why is it for free?

I´m a passionate learner and I love being in a constant state of development, but due to my busy training schedule I might not be able to reach all the people who really need this kind of inspiration through trainings. That´s why I want to share a piece of myself through this online course to all the enterprising young people, who want to create the positive impact on the world.

Get your free Creating Inspiration online course