I Am My Own Inspiration.

Inspiration is a crazy concept, artists, musicians, writers and even the rest of us are in a chase with it. To begin, I believe that inspiration and motivation go hand in hand. For most of us, for all of us really, before we are motivated to do something, we have to be inspired by something else first.

As a gym girl, sometimes I lack the motivation to go work out, but since I have a vision and an inspiration of how I know my body can look and feel, I get my motivation from my inspiration. Inspiration and motivation cuts across all aspects of our lives and not just the gym. The problem however, comes in when most of us have to wait for the inspiration before we get the motivation, which is just being human I guess.

Most of us aspire to be like or look like someone we know or some celebrity online, which is all good and dandy, I mean the inspiration has got to come from somewhere right? However, I am actively trying to find the inspiration about myself from myself, rather than from a concoction of a reflection of different people. Sure, I could get it from muscle mommies on TikTok or Pilates princesses on Pinterest, but all I know about them is what I see or rather what they let me see. I don’t know their genetic compositions, skeletal structures, eating or sleeping habits, heck and some with their surgical modifications. So, to solely base my body goals on someone else’s body would be utterly ignorant of me. I would most likely fail to look like them since it was a doomed chase from the very start anyway. Then I’d grow some very unnecessary bitterness and frustrations. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate other peoples bodies or get inspired to work on mine, I do, what I’m saying is I find the balance between being inspired and knowing my body and what works for me. Drawing inspiration from someone is a good way to evolve your own, provided you adapt it to fit your unique self and not just mirror someone else.

Gym aside since I’m starting to sound like i’m a gym trainer lol, but just like it, I am consciously trying to find inspiration of more aspects of my life from myself. Inspiration and motivation does not have to solely come from an external source. Deep inside each and every one of us, is a self efficacy enough to inspire and motivate our own selves. This could sound somewhat pessimistic, but it’s a fact, apart from our own individual selves and God, no one else knows us better than we do. Our parents, spouses, siblings or friends could love us and we them to the core of our beings but, there is a depth of us that is reserved just for the individual being and its maker.

In the degree of that same depth, lies an unshakable and undeniable inspiration of who we are and where we are meant to go or do. The chances that the motivation which comes from this level of inspiration is propitious or advantageous compared to the motivation from external sources is quite high.

The question that naturally follows is, how then, do I tap into the inspiration deep inside me? Well, the more I study psychology the more patterns I see that point towards the unimaginable power that lies in our subconscious mind. This is the part of the brain that acts automatically without our focal awareness. It stores our memories, emotions, beliefs and habits. It runs up to 95 % of our brains. Now with this knowledge, think about how most of us have never tried to tap or reach our subconscious mind. Meaning our entire life has been lived based on our conscious mind, which consists of only 5% of our brains!

I am going to introduce two interesting words, hypnagogia and hypnopompia. These are heavy words but with quite simple meanings. Hypnagogia is the transition between wakefulness and sleep, while hypnopompia is the transition between sleep and wakefulness. During these brief windows, our brains drop into Alfa and theta brainwave frequencies, which means they are in deep relaxation mode, making the subconscious mind highly impressionable.( Shout out to Dr. Joe for the book “Becoming Supernatural”)

Now let’s talk about how to actually tap into it. You have to be open to a new morning and night routine. We have established that when our minds are deeply relaxed as they tend to be when we are falling asleep or walking up, our window of opportunity opens up. So as you drift to sleep, visualize your goals, how you want your life to be and even specific solutions, instead of drowning in social media or reviewing your worries and shortcomings. In the morning, before rushing to your phone or to the to do lists of the day, take the first five or more minutes envisioning or conjuring up your ideas, dreams and future.

Sensory visualization is also one of the practical techniques to access the subconscious. Imagine a desired outcome with all of your 5 senses. Let’s use traveling for example, visualize your eyes seeing all the new places, hear the sounds of the cities or the waves of the ocean, feel the warmth of the sun, the cold of the snow and the breeze of the wind touching against your skin. Visualize the taste of all the different cuisines you will eat. The subconscious cannot distinguish between a real event or a vividly imagined experience. The power of imagination, am I right? I guess clichés are clichés for a reason. So even when you are currently not living that life, your subconscious will find a way for you to live the life you imagined, hence inspiration and motivation.

Mindfulness meditation is another technique. Sit quietly and observe passing thoughts without analyzing or judging them. This shifts your internal programming, let your thoughts come and go without holding on to them or editing them. Letting your mind work out your thoughts might reveal things you forgot about, things you did not even know you knew, solutions to things you have been dealing with or new ideas all together. So create time for yourself to just sit and let your mind think about whatever it wants to think about, sit back and be an observer of your thoughts, you might be surprised what you come up with. ( these are just a few techniques, you can look more of them up)

As the saying goes, we already have the answers inside of us. We just need to trust ourselves enough and allow our big beautiful brains to customize our inspirations according to our complex individual lives. We are all different in our own unique ways and measuring or looking at our lives through the lenses of other people’s lives is neithervery smart nor effective.

My conclusion is we are fully equipped to dream and actualize our dreams. We are children of the greatest creator of all time, why then, would we let ourselves believe that creating our lives, dreams and futures is out of our reach or a shaft in the wind? You are the only one who truly knows who you are, where you want to go and what you want your life to be. So lift your head high, take back your God given power and be your own inspiration and motivation.