Communication – Be the Inspiration

The final lesson of Creating Inspiration course gives you ideas on how to experience more inspiration in the process of communication.

How to find more inspiring people to communicate with?

 

“Be the change you want to see in the world”

Mahatma Gandhi

Although one really inspiring person is enough to get our ideas flowing, there´s always room for more, right? Best pearls are found when we seek from the right place and are focused enough to notice the right person.

Good way to start is by becoming part of a community of young enterprising people (AIESEC or JCI for example). This is a place for finding different interesting people, expanding your social network and reaching higher levels of yourself through collaborative action.

Another wild idea is to find yourself an inspiration pimp (sounds funky, right 🙂 ) – a person who connects you with other interesting people. Someone with a large social network and passion for actively communicating with people. Who´s your inspiration pimp?

If you want to have inspiring people around you, then make sure you also radiate inspiration.

Create value to get value.

Intentionally start noticing inspiring aspects in people – try to find at least a small detail in each person, that inspires you about him/her. Is it some dream, an interesting hobby or exciting principle of life. Remember people by that detail and find ways to learn from them,

How to turn the foolishness and critics into inspiration?

“I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.”

Arvo Pärt

The most legendary stories usually start with some very foolish incident. What makes those stories inspiring, is the way the main character is able to get out from that mess. What are your stories like?

Exercise: make a list of the embarrassing stories about you or some of your friends. Find ways to interporate this storiy on a totally different angle – one that is legendary and heroic.

Start noticing these good sides of stories.

Reframing like this keeps your mind positive and alert. But what to do, if despite your optimism, someones critical comments take you down again? Remember:

There is no good or bad – it´s just situation.

There is no failure – it´s just feedback about the decisions.

Exercise: If you find youself in a situation where someone is making critical remarks about you and that reduces your inspiration, then redefine the concept of critics. If someone is telling you what you did wrong or preaching how you should have done, then reply to him: “Thank you for your advice.” Don´t try to defend or justify yourself, because by doing that you give your energy away to the person who criticized your deeds. Take the message as an advice. Period.

Have respect for the critic, he just has different understanding of the world, than you do. Those understandings don´t neccessarily have to match.

Then ask yourself – do I need this advice? If not, then use the technique I taught you in an earlier lesson – the one where you write the worrying thought on the paper and throw it away of imagine as a balloon that flows away from you.

You decide what is right for you. Don´t let others to decide that for you.

How to switch off negative people?

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Martin Luther King

It might be that your conversation partner is annoying, negative or just boring. Try these techniques to bring more warmth and inspiration into the contact:

Exercises: Be the audience of joyful messages – let your friend know that you like to hear about things that make them happy and ask them to focus on those positive things when meeting you.

Use an inner mantra in your conversations, repeating this word silently in your mind every time you:

  • meet someone
  • have a meal
  • ponder about your life

You can use “love” as your mantra for example. This mantra tunes you to notice things you really value. you can also use your centric value as your mantra. Make sure you add the feeling to the word as well.

May every day be the birthday of your friends – when meeting a friend, sing him/her the “happy birthday to you” song silently in your mind. Look how the conversation between you transforms 🙂

With this inner peace and joy you will make the negativity of others fade away.

How to bring more chemistry and spontaneity to the conversations?

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

Carl Gustav Jung

Find out what is the centric value of your partner and find the intersection it has with your centric value – focus on this intersection in your conversations with him/her.

For true inspiration it might not be enough if you just try doing more of something.

Don´t just try to be kind, be kindness itself.

Don´t just try to be inspiring, be inspiration itself.

Be the inspiration. Just be.

How to supply your friends with the right tools for inspiration to grow?

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

John Quincy Adams

Do you share your best music, best movies, best books and best experiences with your friends? Are you doing it to the extent it really deserves to be done?

Exercise: ideas on how to co-create inspiration with your friends:

  • Organize collective movie-nights, where you watch some interesting movie and have a discussion after that – What did you like in that movie? What did this movie teach you? How is this movie related to our lives? What can we do differently now to experience more of our centric value?
    www.ted.com is one outstanding resource for thought-provoking presentations on exciting topics that can be a really good input for inspiring discussions.
  •  Create a shared library. Develop a habit to borrow your books to your friends and borrow their books for reading as well. Once you have both read the same book, then have a discussion on what new insights you got from the book. It is quite likely that each person got their own insights that may differ from others – and that´s interesting.
  • Read fairytales, learn your favorites and tell those to your friends very vividly. A good fairytale can be ten times more inspiring than a semester of educating lecture.
  • Find out what hobbies your friends have and take a weekend to try out what it feels to practice their hobby. Let your friends teach you how to snowboard, play chess, do marathon cycling… And feel what it feels to do that.
  • Make a list of three friends who may find this Creating Inspiration course useful. Let them know how they can subscribe to this course so that you could have conversations about the topics covered here.

Inspiration can be leveraged – sharing is multiplying.

Inspiration with yourself

Exercise of the week: Be inspiration itself. Be the inspiration when having conversations with others and when being with yourself. Be the inspiration.

Book of the week: Osho “Creativity” or Osho “Intuition”

Movie of the week: Ambition to Meaning – Finding Your Life´s Purpose (2009)

PS! If during this course you have felt that you would want to share your ideas to others as well, then this one is for you: I made a Facebook group called Creating Inspiration Mastermind. This is a group for having conversations with other people who took part in this course – to let us know about your ideas on how to bring more inspiration into our lives. The course is so fresh that you have the privilege to be among the first ones.

 

Be the Inspiration!

Harald