I hope you are having a good week and feeling both inspired and motivated!

We often group these words together, but they are in fact very different.

Definitions

Here are some example definitions:

Inspiration – Someone or something that gives you ideas for doing something.

Motivation – Enthusiasm for doing something.

The difference was something I had not appreciated in the past. We need inspiration to bring new ideas and motivation to see them through.

When an idea takes you

One way of describing this is to see inspiration as when an idea ‘takes you’ and motivation as when you then have to ‘take the idea’.

You may be very inspired with new ideas but not motivated to see them through. You may have lots of motivation to move things forward but lacking fresh ideas to make a change. 

The most important thing is how we fuel both of these areas to increase our success and fulfilment.

How can you heighten inspiration and motivation?

Let’s first start with inspiration. To be inspired we need to tap into our inner wisdom and we can’t do this when we are busy doing the do.

So an exercise I use and recommend to my clients is to:

1. Find a quiet place and ideally somewhere you don’t normally work.
2. Take out a blank piece of paper – I like to use A3 for this.
3. Sit quietly and see what thoughts come to your mind and capture these as you go along.
4. A variation of this is to either have one big question or problem, write it at the top and allow the quiet to stimulate your ideas to flow.
5. Another is to have some ‘bubbles’ on the page with key areas of your life, work or business to help start the process.
6. Don’t edit too soon, simply capture.
7. You can use mind mapping techniques to capture thoughts as they come through as most of us think visually.
8. Then take the ideas and transform into an action plan.

This is where motivation comes in!

Set yourself a plan or build these ideas into your existing planning. Get a clear idea of what seeing through these ideas will do for you and others and keep this front of mind as you work on these actions day to day.

We posted a 3 part blog on being organised that may help you:
Part 1 – Planning
Part 2 – Systems
Part 3 – Habits and behaviours

Most importantly, recognise the progress on the way, acknowledge and show appreciation for others’ part in completing actions and celebrate key milestones.

If you are a leader, you also need to consider how you inspire and motivate others and that will be the subject of a future blog!

Please feel free to call us on 0115 903 3133 or email at lead@theleadershiptrainingworkshop.com and we can discuss how we can help you in any way.