7 shortcuts to get short-term inspiration
Tags: Mood, Motivation, Inspiration, Self Development, Daily Works

The mood scale is normally running up and down during the day. We are either on top of our energy and motivation or fall below all our limits and are not interested in doing anything. It can happen multiple times a day. We are getting lazy and feeling flabby. It’s even harder when we need to accomplish our duties at work or home. So what can we do in this case?

Please don’t think we will solve here all the personal problems with a lack of motivation, especially when they turn out to be a regular state. I’d like to talk about how to pump yourself up in a short-term way. I’m going to show you some shortcuts to get some inspiration and to keep yourself upon the wave during a day.

First of all, stop fighting your laziness, your listlessness, or apathy. You cannot force yourself to suddenly change your condition and perception. The first step would be just to accept the way you feel mentally and physically. Accept your mediocrity, it’s human and absolutely OK.

MINDFULNESS — BREATHING…

The next step lies in mindfulness. For this you need to wake up: the whole day we unconsciously keep ourselves in tension due to the problems and worries surrounding us. We behave more like robots just executing what we need to execute. Our thoughts about tomorrow don’t let us breathe. Did you ever notice how you’re breathing during the day? Being in tension we have short breaths in a shallow way. The body muscles are normally tense, especially on the upper back. The thoughts are busy with the next steps of our big plan for the day. Being on vacation fully relaxed we are breathing deeply and more slowly. The body and head are free at this moment. It’s important to remind yourself during the day to stop and to breathe deeply and slowly for some moments just to give your body a short break and to relax your muscles. At this point, you relieve your body and thoughts. And this is exactly the moment where the inspiration finds a window to you and your activities. So forget about all your duties and worries for one moment and just breathe.

2. AWARENESS…

Mindfulness is however much more than the physical aspect. Being in a routine flow we act instinctively, sluggishly, without a lot of thinking. If we eat, we don’t ask ourselves what we eat or how much we eat. We just do what we feel to do. In the moments of inspiration lack, we are on the lowest level of awareness. If we start to ask ourselves:

Where am I?

What am I?

What am I doing right now?

How will it help me with my goals?

Do I have goals? Hmmm…

What do I really want today/tomorrow

The whole picture is getting clearer and things start to sort out in our heads. When we ask ourselves these questions, we normally don’t like all the answers and we are not really satisfied with our mental state at this moment. We suddenly want some changes and our brain is getting activated for some action.

This is one of the most powerful sources for inspiration — physical and mental mindfulness.

3. ENVIRONMENT HELPS YOU…

The next simple thing to get a little bit more inspired is to change the environment. I’m not talking about movements on a geographical level — to buy a ticket to Seychelles and fly away. If you cannot manage yourself in the given environment, I don’t think some islands will ever help you.

What I’m talking about are the minimal changes: some people like to work with music or TV sounds in the background. Some people love working in the kitchen. Some need to have physical activities or being in nature to get some concentration. And other people just need to clean everything around before working. You know yourself and you know exactly what helps you in the best way.

4. TRICKING YOURSELF OUT…

The next life hack is to trick yourself out. Let’s say you are watching a movie: normally we intend to finish it before we start with “important” tasks! Even if we know exactly it probably will never happen, because right after this movie we’ll find another one :)

So you don’t wait until the end of the movie: You interrupt it for just 10 min to start your “important” task. Just for 10 min!!! When you have started, you keep in your head, that in 10–15 min you’ll carry on with the movie anyway. In some time, after you have started with the task, you will see, you keep doing this much longer than this. In this moment, you’re slowly and certainly getting deeper and deeper into the topic. You are not forcing yourself to get more motivated to finish it or at least to bring it to some proper progress level. This time it’s happening by itself!

Sometimes you keep yourself busy even for hours on this way! An this time it’s the movie, which is waiting ;)

This is a very strong trick: the inspiration is coming in the process when you’re not expecting any progress.

5. RELEASE BLOCKING THINKING…

One of the strongest obstacles to pump yourself up is the negative thoughts blocking us:

We very often feel frustrated about something,

We feel unsure about our abilities and success

We feel lack of self-esteem

We feel like we can also start tomorrow — there is no difference anyway

We feel like being useless etc.

Such thoughts can appear unconsciously. They block happiness, motivation, and inspiration. So it’s very important to screen yourself regularly and to identify

Where am I in my thoughts and feelings right now?

Why do I feel like this?

What could be the first (smallest) step to feel better and to move in the positive direction?

Answering these questions, be aware that you can be trapped again in your negativity and over-thinking. To neutralize those stay objective, positive, conscious and solution-oriented on one side AND carry on with your duties and daily job on the other side. Doing is distracting you from losing yourself in thinking.

6. DIVIDE AND EXECUTE…

When you need inspiration for a bigger task, supposed to be done in multiple days, dont’t wait until the deadline! Start as soon as possible, however executing just a little piece of it. The next day you can do another little piece etc. The most important thing here is not to lose the flow. If you lose it, you will need weeks to start again. Executing small parts of the bigger job you don’t really notice the effort needed for this, but approaching your deadline you will suddenly see, that the task is actually almost done, you only need to finalize it.

An additional benefit of such a way of working is that you stretch your progress over a longer time and more easily see the mistakes and potential for improvement in the already executed work.

Of course, some people prefer to invest the whole day at once to complete the work, but here we are talking about easier ways to execute work without forcing yourself.

7. TALK TO A RIGHT PERSON…

And last but not least what I’d like to mention, that one of the most powerful tools for getting inspired is to talk to the right person. It can be your mother or your best friend, maybe it’s your boss who is your role model, or you listen to someone’s talk on youtube who you admire the most. It can be anyone who truly believes in you or gives you a feeling of being big and powerful.

Right people make you reflect on your way of thinking and perception. They help you to understand obvious things and turn on your ambitions again! And ambitions are one of the best engines to start moving forward!

We can find a countless number of methods and tools to pump us up for more motivation and inspiration, however, we need to start at the beginning or at the core of this problem which I tried to reflect on. Unfortunately, there is no magic solution to find an eternal source of motivation — we have to be working on us steadily tackling the challenges and climbing from one level to another — this means also to go deeper into yourself and build yourself up to be able to take the next steps in life.