This is a continuation from this short 3 part series on inspiration.  My original guest post called, “8 Steps to Inspire Others ” and my last article, “8 Methods to Find Inspiration ”. I hope this helps you find ways to spin your inspirations into action.

Research and Learn the Subject

Obviously I’m a big proponent to learning and so learning more about any subject or person that inspires you is a great starting point for activating your mind on the subject.  Once you activate your mind by learning more about the subject and by thinking more about it, it will more easily lead into action in your life.  If you can excite your mind and generate more and more interest in doing something, then the actions come much easier later on.

There is a definite balance here to maintain between too little time before action and too much.  That point will not be equal for everyone and I think it needs experimentation to realize.  If you spend all your time learning about a subject and don’t take any action, then the learning can be more of the inspiration than the action and when it does come time to take actions, then the learning component is greatly reduced.  On the other hand, if you take action without knowing anything about the subject, it’s possible to cause more harm than good by either frustrating yourself or in some cases causing emotional, physical or relational pain because of the actions you took without understanding them well.  Balance this by knowing at least enough about what new things you are getting into and find the right people to help or guide you and you can make the learning experience align with the actions you take keeping the inspiration that drives it satisfied and in balance.

Connect with Others

A great way to act on inspiration is to look to share and connect with others that have similar interests and activities.  As I outlined in the finding inspiration article, this strengthens the inspiration and gives you people to talk with and share more experiences about the events that drive this.

These connections can easily develop into closer relationships and friendships and these will give you friends and colleagues to act out your inspiration with.  You can use each other and work together to achieve the results you want in this related area.

Ask For and Accept Help

Connecting with others is great when perfectly aligned as your energy and synergy can be very motivating, but that is not enough with inspiration.  Inspiration is about change and new things, so there are always areas you will face that will be a challenge to act on.  This is where these connections come in as you now have people to ask for help when you need it.  They can guide you in areas they are stronger at and they can encourage you to drive through challenge far more than you could tackle on your own.  Don’t be afraid to ask for help already , and then be willing to accept it.  Accepting it is the part that means action and there is no exception with that here.

Do the same for others by helping where you can you will continue to promote your inspiration not only in yourself, but also in those learning from you.

Take Action Soon

Don’t wait too long to take action towards something that inspires you.  I already mentioned the item of learning and researching a subject, but there’s more than that.  Often people are afraid to do something because it is so grand or noble or simply outside their comfort zone.  It can be the simple things that as an action, shift from from a wisher on inspiration to an actor on inspiration.

Look at the things that inspire you from the first section on finding your inspiration and pick some action to do more of that or to begin implementing one of these items in this article to make it real.  A small step today that gets you closer just lets you take a bigger one tomorrow and it will send you down the path towards the results you hope to achieve from whatever inspired you in the first place.  If it is a person that inspires you, then contact them.  You’d be surprised how easy this can be, even if they are busy people, famous or in some other way, hard to reach.  People who inspire others, do so because of connections and they know this, so will generally be happy to talk to you, to help or to at least give you some direction to get you started.

The sooner you start doing something real with your inspirations the sooner you will gain the results hoped for.  This enables you to then move on to new inspirations or to grow the original one with more intensity, more importance and dedication in your life.

Visualize Results

Action is definitely more important to take than this step, but this one can give you nearly all the same benefits when the action is simply not possible yet or because of where you are.  The imagination of the mind is a wondrous thing, it simply doesn’t know the difference between what is imagined and what is real.  This gives you a fantastic ability to experience achieving what you want from these inspirations even when you are not doing an real actions on them.  There have been countless studies and brain research conducted about how the mind’s imagination can be used to become stronger, more creative, confident and even better at actions when they are finally performed for real either the first time or after many repetitions.

If you add visualizing your results into your steps for acting on inspiration, you will see the benefits without the practice.  Beyond this, it also helps you to realize what your true desired outcomes are as you can imagine it before it happens.  This visualized results can be a strong motivator to take even more action!

Be Persistent

I’ve touched on persistence before in my productivity series, and it is just as valuable here.  Persistence is about being headed in the right direction , making progress in that direction and consistently steering your actions toward your goals.  Since taking action on inspiration will always be in some way challenging, it’s important to accept setbacks and failures along the way.  If you learn from those, get back up and be persistent by trying again, you will make great progress and eventually be where you want to be.  You can’t let a setback stop you!

Set Goals

All of this is based on getting somewhere new with inspiration and so you can’t do that without some goals in mind.  It may be some new ability to learn, material possessions, or a special talent or ability, no matter what it is, you won’t easily get their without setting some goals for guidance.  Goals are a brilliant tool if used well and typically abysmal failures if not understood well or planned properly.

Your goals must connect to something with meaning in your life.  Luckily this topic of inspiration largely addresses this as inspirational expectations are usually seated in something already important to a person.

Goals must also be measureable.  This inherently makes them something you need to consider and be realistic with as you will have to have a way to measure it.  Something to count, to see or specifically identify and recognize.  Go ahead and set audacious goals but if you do, ensure you can easily recognize progress and keep driving forward.  If you struggle with goals, be a little less aggressive and set easier goals to train yourself and gain some ground with accomplishment while acting on your inspirations.

Also, ensure your goals are time based with specific dates so that you can focus on them and know when they need to be checked, changed and rewritten.  Don’t leave your goals to be static.  Taking on a challenge with something that inspires you will be new, and so will the goals so you can’t expect to set them early and never need to adjust them along the way.  Go ahead and drive towards them, work hard to reach them but don’t worry if they need to be adjusted along the way.

Be Enthusiastic

I just love this one!  It is so powerful and yet so under used by people who want to act on something that inspires them.  Even more of a crime is when people are inspired by another person, and that person is extremely enthusiastic yet that doesn’t seem obvious to the person looking to then act on that enthusiasm.  Well, I can tell you, if you put more enthusiasm into your actions, you will make much faster progress.  Enthusiasm will build confidence as well and it automatically attracts others and inspires them to find out more. Wouldn’t that be impressive to act on an inspiration and take it full circle, by inspiring someone else with the same thing!  I think so!

Not only will enthusiasm drive even more inspiration but it will help to engrain deeper beliefs in your mind.  Energy and excitement in the mind build stronger neural connections with new activities and things you learn so that enthusiasm can slowly turn into a deeper passion or conviction.  This will ensure you lock in place the beliefs needed to act on that inspiration at any time.  The passion will become stronger and in turn, that will continue to then be something you express, where once again you’ve come full circle as you begin to inspire others with it.

Posted by Mike King under Success | 15 Comments »

Tim @ Mini Life Hacks suggested I write a following up article from my guest post about 8 Steps to Inspire Others . Thanks for that suggestion Tim, I’ll first cover the methods to find inspiration in this article and my next one will cover how to take action on that inspiration.

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Search Out New Experiences

Inspiration comes about because of change or seeing the possibility of change.  If you always do the same things, this will be either minimal or non-existent.  You must search out and have new experiences in order to find inspiration.  This works by seeing new places or people that can inspire you.  There are many ways to find and the inspiring moments and things will different for everyone.  They might include some of these which I often find inspirational:

• Nature and God’s creations
• Creative art and writing
• Stylish music and sound
• Innovation and brain science
• Life impact stories (Arswino always has great examples of that at his blog )
• Underdog stories.  Check out Lance’s example here at Jungle of Life: So Much More Than A Football Game
• Overcoming crisis and trauma

These are just a few and everyone will have their own personal favorites that interest and inspire them.  If you don’t go searching for this material to inspire you however, don’t expect it to simply come knocking on your door.  You must search for it!

Keep An Open Mind

Once you do find new experiences, the unknown often drives fear or a defensive attitude towards it.  The change that inspiration is generated from will only be held back by those initial worries or reactions so you must keep an open mind in these situations to see them from new perspectives.  You want to let it shape you thoughts, change your initial response and give yourself some time to ponder the new things before denying any possible acceptance or further exploration of the subject.  You never know what you could be missing if you close your mind to new ideas.

Watch Your Emotions

Emotions are often tied to that initial response but they also relate so closely to your past experiences they are often limiting or blinding what we dare to see or believe. A story that might be inspiring to one person can easily make another upset or angry based on how they relate their own experiences to that.  Pay attention to your emotions, watch them carefully and try to control them.  They can hide many subtle things that lead to inspiration at the wrong time or place.  Keeping them under control and always trying to change the perspective you experience things in can help with getting past a negative emotional response.

Your emotions could just as easily be signals to find inspiration as often you feel deeply connected to something or you care a great deal about specific topics so you naturally gravitate and have interest their.  Use this when it ties in well with the types of inspiration you want in your life.

Share the Experience

Finding inspiration comes a whole lot easier when you are actually talking about it doing that and talking with other people.  This is where inspiration feeds inspiration in many cases as simply sharing one inspiring story with a friend or colleague can spark them to think of their own inspiring messages and it often waterfalls into a deeper relationship as you discuss important things between you.  Each of those items shared also reveals something that has meaning to a person and knowing that thing is meaningful to them will automatically add importance to it in your life, especially if you already valued it.

Sharing stories of meaning and value are also a great way to discover new things and inspiration as well.  The first step about searching for inspiration is made a whole lot simpler when other people bring those stories to you directly in conversation.  Of course you will never feel the same hear about a story then experiencing it directly but often it inspires you enough to go make a similar experience yourself and get over your fears of leaving your comfort zone.  Offering that same to others by sharing your experiences builds a stronger relationship where you can continue to share the inspiration and drive each other to find more of it.

Seek Out Solitude

While sharing your experience with others has it’s set of advantages and methods to find more inspiration, so does solitude at the opposite end of the spectrum.  Solitude offers a way to focus your mind and body, which can allow you to tune in to your surroundings, your thoughts and your life.  It lets you notice some of the things that inspire subtly and that you would have missed if stuck in a hectic noisy environment.

Solitude is also a place where we can find time for reflection and deep thinking.  It helps a person link their actions and experiences to their thoughts, their hopes and their faith.  Spending time in solitude can relax the mind and sharpen your senses which makes the impact of inspiration often more intense and lasting.  Solitude will be different for different people, some may enjoy that time to think and study, others may meditate to relax the mind and body, and some may spend the time connecting spiritually through prayer and their internal connection to God.  All these things help calm the emotions, alert the senses and help to make points of inspiration more obvious in your life, an important way to find more of the inspiration you are looking for.

Keep in Mind Your Role Models

Role models come about because they either inspire a person or make them jealous.  Ask yourself what does your role model do that you like about them.  Don’t look for what they have or can offer you, but only in what they do.  Is it how they handle a situation, the steps they take to overcome hardship, their ability to lead and accomplish great things or perhaps it’s the methods they use to build and encourage strong relationship. Whatever it is, you can draw on that not only for seeing the inspiration but also to seek out more.

Do your role models align with the areas in your life you are passionate about? In other words, are they the source of inspiration that is most important to you?   It’s worth looking at how your role models steer you as often people have role models that steer them away from the important areas of their life and do so more because of social influence than heartfelt inspiration.  I’m not suggesting you carve out your role models only from what is important to you right now, as that would limit finding new inspiration, however, it is important to ensure your role models are truly impacting you with inspiration that matters to you and not just because of social influence.

Align Your Actions

While most of this step will be broken out in my next article about taking action on inspiration, I think some alignment of your actions with what inspires you will also help you find more inspiration.  Taking action towards something reinforces in our minds that action and it can quickly build the neural connections in your brain to learn that new action and associated inspiration that led to it.  This makes inspiration last and grow in value in your mind so putting attention to something that inspires you along with specific actions will only strengthen that.  This stronger connection will drive you to seek out even more, as the value you have towards that grows stronger and stronger.  If you continue to take action on new inspirations, they will develop easier, strengthen themselves and associations with other inspirations and lead to developing new beliefs and passions .

Follow Your Faith

Finding inspiration is not easy, especially in our hectic world with so many false social influences and media bombardment.  Connecting what is really important to you with what you encounter is something that you must learn to do to separate the noise from the inspiration in your life.  This comes as no small tasks and while the steps above might all help in that, it’s going to come down to you trusting yourself and your beliefs to actually recognize what is inspirational to you.  You must learn to trust your own judgment here, no matter the source.  That source of judgment is founded in the faith you have towards knowing what matters, knowing what is right and knowing you will recognize the differences as you encounter them.  This faith, whether you consider it spiritual or not, is one to be followed when seeking out inspiration.

Please add your comments about this article, your inspirations and your own methods of finding them.  I’d love to know what drives you and how you find it!

Posted by Mike King under Success | 32 Comments »

I’ve certainly written my share of productivity tips in my previous series and other articles on that topic.  Procrastination is one I’ve not written on yet.  Most articles and guides suggest learning to avoid procrastination, overcome the habits of procrastination and find ways to simply take things one without delay.  Now, while those ideas have their own merit, I also think that there is another side to procrastination that can be quite useful as well.  That is to use what you have already mastered about procrastination for the right things.

Procrastinating Waste

Everyone has things they would consider waste and other things on that dreaded to do list that seem like they must get done.  That list however, contains things on it that you probably don’t want to be doing and leaves you with one choice, either do it, or procrastinate it.

To change that list and make the choice a little easier, but the things you want to avoid on your list.  Perhaps they are bad habits or activities you are looking to eliminate since they get in the way of work you need to do.  Well, think about those more attractive activities and write them instead as the enjoyable activity, an activity that leads to more pain because of the procrastination.  Perhaps a few examples would help here:

Initial Tasks
Mow the lawn
Do the dishes
Exercise for 30 minutes

Add to the List New Tasks
Neglect the lawn so it takes an extra hour to mow next week and looks terrible for visitors
See what’s on TV and waste the night being lazy so I’ll regret it tomorrow wishing otherwise

Now, if you look just at the initial list, the tasks all seem quite average but you don’t want to do any of them.  There is no clear winner or best choice and none of them might make you feel like getting started, so you procrastinate.  However, if you combine these lists and are looking at the tasks, the new items look significantly more varied and that works well for a procrastinator since the priorities don’t help them.  So, now there is a task to make yourself feel bad the next day and is exactly what you might have done if it wasn’t on the list, but since there are much easier choices there with little impact, any good procrastinator will pick the easier ones to do so they can now simply get to do those dishes or perhaps go for a jog.

Mowing the lawn as a task will contrast strongly with leaving it for a week and then having to deal with those consequences that are much worse.  This may or may not help depending on how a person feels about leaving it, but the contrast, and difference between tasks on a list help a procrastinator since they tend to pick the easier tasks and not the most important or prioritized tasks.  Putting more of your common time wasters but written with an intense impact that makes it seem painful, will ensure a procrastinator will avoid it, as that is what they do best so why not take advantage of that yourself.

Putting these tasks that are far worse, make the initial tasks seems quite a lot easier so you end up using your skills to procrastinate the waste.

Motivated by Procrastination

So the self deception that is carried on by procrastinating waste can be taken a bit further.  Having many things on your to do list with a few important ones you really don’t want to do, let a good procrastinator to accomplish a great many things in order to avoid those few important ones.  The trick is that the top tasks seem most important and are likely the ones most dreaded so they get procrastinated by lower listed items.  This can be a useful way as a procrastinator to get a lot of things done and even though you are still procrastinating, it is time well spent!

Keeping Commitments Under Control

Finally, my final tip with using procrastination is to also control your commitments you have on your plate.  If you always tackle the biggest task first and seem to always have time to take on more, others can take advantage of that, especially in a workplace, and just keep piling the work on.  New tasks are more likely to have higher importance than your simple remaining and undone tasks so the new tasks become expected more naturally.  Well, not if you procrastinate more.  If you always procrastinate the most difficult tasks, you are also always busy and have important work on the plate so it’s much easier to avoid commitments. This can be useful if you truly want to take on less without having to just say no.

Disclaimer: I only recommend doing these things if you are already a procrastinator and can’t break the habit.  There are advantages in that habit you can actually use to your advantage even if they are not ideal ways to handle a task list or work load.

Posted by Mike King under Success | 15 Comments »

I’ve got a guest post up at Marc and Angel Hack Life .  It’s called, "8 Ways to Inspire Others "

I wrote this since so many people talk about inspiration and things that in fact inspire them, but I’ve not seen much in the way of guides that actually help you put actions in place to inspire others more.  This can happen at any level of business or in life and I hope this articles helps you inspire others with your own ideas.

Please add your comments with the article for others to see, I’ve closed them here.

Posted by Mike King under Success | 1 Comment »

I heard a very interesting suggestion by a colleague at work recently about the value you suggest when selling a product or closing a deal.  The suggestion was this:

Do not thank someone for their business when you close a sale, complete your service or sell some product.  Instead congratulate them for their investment and thank them for their time they spent with you.

The reasoning behind this is that thanks often implies that you got the better end of the deal.  When someone gives you a gift, you say thanks.  When they left you go first and offer you something, you say thanks.  Doing this with a sale can subconsciously imply you got the better end of the deal.  You don’t a customer to think that so you are better off congratulating them for the investment they make.  This transfers the idea that THEY got the better end of the deal and leaves them feeling they have something now more valuable than the money in exchange for it.

When I think back now to all the things I’ve purchased and how I felt when buying them, I actually do remember several people how congratulated me on my purchase instead of thanking me and I still remember them in my mind even years later.  I never quite realized or registered why that might be so, and this simple suggestion has now brought that to light for me.  I hope you get some value from it and may also be able to use it in your transactions you make with others.  It’s a great attitude to have and really does portray more value is transferred than when you are thanked for the business.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 7 Comments »

I hear so many debates with employees and writers about how hard they work or how hard they work compared to others.  Everyone has a a different meaning for what working hard really is.  What is yours?

It is NOT Working More?

The first thing here is to explore a couple of areas that it is NOT.  Working hard to me is not about working more or longer hours.  This of course has it’s use from time to time but I don’t consider someone who works more on something necessarily working any harder.  If you work a 35 hour week or a 70 hour week, perhaps you get the same amount of work actually completed?  Who was working harder?  Many people think the person working 70 hours is working harder.  Not to me but again, depends how to look at things.  Working more hours to get the same thing done in some ways is working harder but clearly this is undesirable.  Who doesn’t want to get the same amount done in less time, after all?

Working Harder is Really Working Smarter

So, to work harder from the example above you need to work at the right things to get the same thing done in less time.  If you are still producing the same amount of output in less time, then you are working on smarter things that deliver more per hour.  This is what working harder is to me.

Less Time is Really Working Harder

Even though it often seems that more time on something is useful, it’s not.  That is just a recipe asking for waste and overwork for no good reason.  A bit of extra time spend to figure out the right things to work on and the items with the most payoffs per hour spent can make a huge impact on your time put into working.  This can enable you to actually have less time working while getting the same amount done. This is known as the 80 / 20 rule or the Pareto principle where 80% of your output comes from 20% of the actual time working at that.  Use this to your advantage and start working harder only by spending less time on the right things!

What Attitude Do You Have About Working Harder

• Do you think working harder is working longer hours?
• Do you think working harder is about working smarter in less hours?

What attitude do you portray about hard work with your friends and colleagues?  Do they know what working hard means to you?  Can you leave at the end of a 8 hour work day feeling satisfied that you truly did work hard through it?  Please share some of your attitudes about working hard, I’d love to know what others think about this topic?

Posted by Mike King under Business | 35 Comments »