Inspiration vs Aspiration

The inspirational Emily

Tonight I had a coaching call with one of my amazing clients, Emily, and she said, “I’ve stopped following anyone on social media who is aspirational. I only follow inspirational people now.”

BAM. That hit me like tonne of bricks. I had never even thought about the difference between the two because people so often use them interchangeably. But it is the insatiable desire to have more and achieve something that won’t actually make us happy – that makes us unhappy! Whereas inspiration is an inner feeling that can produce happiness on its own.

Google’s definitions:

Inspiration: the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.

Aspiration: characterized by wanting to achieve social prestige and material success.

My definitions:

Aspiration appeals to the ego, while inspiration appeals to the intuition.

Social media is a brilliant place to start cutting aspiration out and editing inspiration in.

I’m going to take a leaf from Emily’s book and do a bit of an inspiration audit on my online consumption.
Is that person inspiring? Are they inspiring me to be a better me? To push my limits? Or are they aspirational? A hollow symbol of success, wealth, fame, beauty? Causing me to believe I’d rather be cool than happy?

I think we confuse the two because we admire both kinds of people.

Here’s my litmus test to tell the two apart:

When you consume their content, do you feel:

a) motivated and encouraged?
b) envious and dissatisfied with your life?

Be. Honest.

I can already think of a few Instagram personalities I need to unfollow once I’ve finished writing this!

Thank you Emily for the inspiration to write this post!

Push your limits

Last night I set a brilliant, impossible goal. I went to bed excited, and then this morning I awoke feeling sick to my stomach about it. It wasn’t my impossible goal. I realised I was putting immense pressure on myself to do another ‘impossible’ thing, but I didn’t actually want to do this one. Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE setting impossible goals. But only if I’m setting them for me. The moment that it feels like I’m doing it for someone else, I feel totally off.

This realisation made me have a deep think about my message as a content creator. I don’t ever want to make anyone feel like they have to set an impossible goal just for the sake of it, including myself.

I realised that the core of my message isn’t really about achieving impossible goals. It’s about pushing your own limits, whatever that means. Setting impossible goals might be part of that for you (it certainly is for me) – but pushing your limits is more than that, it’s a way to grow. Achieving an impossible goal is an outcome. Pushing your limits is the action.

Pushing my limits feels so authentic to me. I do it every day. I’m attempting to achieve 100 push ups in a row. I moved to the other side of the world without a clue where I was going to live. I followed a career path (the personal development industry) that my friends and family weren’t so sure about. I’ve committed to writing this blog every day for 2 years. I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. I committed to 365 days of meditation in a row. I push the limits of what I can achieve in my career, in my relationships, in my health and fitness, and in my whole life. I believe that’s what makes life fulfilling – growing into your highest potential so you can serve this world as best as possible.

I don't want to achieve my dreams yet

I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and find out all my dreams and impossible goals have come are true. What? Am I crazy?

Take marriage. Imagine waking up tomorrow, married to the ideal person, with your ideal children all grown up, with the perfectly designed house and garden and country club.

You’d miss out on all the excitement!

Instad, you want to meet the person, anticipate your first date, experience the magic falling in love, creating a vision of your life together, choosing the table decorations for the wedding, finding out you’re having a baby, seeing your baby on the ultrasound for the first time… and so on.

How awful would it be to wake up, married to the ideal partner with the ideal kids and never experienced any of it?

Sounds like my idea of a nightmare.

I don’t want to have my Impossible Goals given to me. I want to work for them. I don’t want to have the success I dream of today. I don’t want my dream life right now. Anticipation and working for it make the success so much sweeter. It’s the dance along the way.

Remember this the next time you’re feeling impatient. Patience is sweeter deal than you think.

Dress for the job you want

Ever heard that old saying, ‘Dress for the job you want, not for the job you have’?

I love this philosophy. You have to be “on the level” of the things you want, in order for them to happen. I’d take it even take it further: Show up for the life you want, not for the life you have.

It goes so much further than dressing. As entrepreneur Jim Fortin says, If you want to get from A to B, you have to be the person at B.

How does that person dress?

How do they act?

What do they eat for lunch?

What do they do every morning?

How often do they call their mum?

You’ve got to act like your ideal self if you want to BE your ideal self. It will transform you, and one day you will wake up and realise you’re no longer acting.

If it’s too hard to figure out how your ideal self would act, pick a person you aspire to be like, and do some method acting. Be that person in every way.

Gratitude cake with guilt frosting

One of my favourite daily practices is to do a gratitude journal in the morning. Just asking 3 things I’m grateful for, and being super specific (not just “food” but “the delicious avocado on toast I ate this morning”).

However, I was talking with my cousin’s girlfriend this week, and she mentioned something I thought was quite profound: being grateful for something doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it.

There is a stigma – especially for women – that they should be grateful to some external source for what they have because they are just lucky to have it, and none of the gratitude is for themselves. That we should be grateful for what we have, but at the same time, feel guilty about it, because we don’t deserve it. We’ve been icing our gratitude cake with a thick layer of guilt frosting.

And while there is almost always an element of luck involved with the things, experiences, resources and people you have in your life, gratitude is mutually exclusive to luck and deservedness and worthiness. Being grateful is only about being grateful. It’s got nothing to do with anything else.

In fact, the whole notion of “deserving” something has, in my opinion, gotten completely out of hand. In our society, we talk about “deserving a break” or “deserving a cup of tea”. If you think about it, it’s preposterous. You don’t need to justify a certain level of effort has been exerted before you can give your body and mind the things it needs. You would never ask a baby to do anything. It’s deserving of everything it needs (and wants) because it just exists. You being right here, that’s enough. You’re enough.

Dont punish yourself with guilt for the gifts you have received in this life. Treasure them and pay them forward.

How to solve any problem

In my first year of university, my friends and I would always talk about “The Ideal Woman”. We’d think about how The Ideal Woman would have both sparkling and still water to offer her guests, and she’d always look her best and hand in assignments before the due date. When we were out, and we’d spot someone who looked like The Ideal Woman, we’d call each other to describe why she was so ideal.

Obviously, our idea of The Ideal Woman is just a joke, and I certainly don’t subscribe to the idea that women (or anyone) should be a certain way. However, The Ideal Woman represents a wonderful idea I’ve thought about since I was old enough to conceive of a better, future version of me: Aspiring to become your ideal self. Ideal meaning YOUR ideal – not societies ideal.

What would your ideal self do? This question is possibly one of the most important questions you can ask to move forward in life – or more accurately, “Now that I am the ideal version of myself, what do I do?”

I love this question because it so simply helps us work through problems from the perspective of having solved them. The beauty of it is that you remove yourself from the struggle and the fog that comes with not knowing what to do, and you put yourself in the position where you know exactly what you need to do.

Here’s a list of the problems it can help with:

1. Everything.

Here’s a list of the times you can ask it:

1. Any time

It doesn’t necessarily mean every problem is solved on the spot, but it does mean you’ve got a direction to go in, and sometimes that’s the game-changer.

I’m off to do some more journaling on it now. “Now that I am the ideal version of me, what do I do?”

Gorgeous day

There are hundreds of pictures from my uncle’s amazing wedding, I truly don’t even know where to begin. I will write another post with all of them, but for now, I’ll just share this one picture, and leave it until I’ve got the photos ready to share a proper wedding post!

I had a really interesting conversation with my cousins, aunts and uncle’s today at the celebrations about aspirational lifestyles, and what it’s like to post things online, what’s real, what’s fake, what’s in between – and most importantly, where we stand on the morality of it all. For example, this picture above could easily be taken out of context to look like our own wedding photo. I think everyone has heard the “social media is fake” argument, so that’s not what I want to say here. I’m actually thinking more about portraying an image of oneself online. Is it possible to portray a true projection of yourself? Should you even try? Can we even do it in real life? Why do we try to make project an image of ourselves at all? I don’t have answers to these questions right now, but it’s something I’m keen to dive deeper into and share conversations with people about. All thoughts are welcome – in the comments, in a message or via email!

Why I'm not a realist

Doesn’t the world look so much better through rose coloured glasses? (Or in this case, a rose coloured lightroom filter?)

Realist: A person who believes in seeing things the way they really are, as opposed to how they would like them to be.

Optimist: a person who tends to be hopeful and confident about the future or the success of something.

I’m not a realist because while studying psychology at university, I learned all about the harmful affects of realism. Or in other words, the heath-boosting and success-inducing effects of optimism.

Studies show that positive illusions (favourable beliefs that are often exaggerated and inconsistent with reality) can actually slow down and even reverse both mental and physical illness.

One study by Taylor (2005) researched the effect of positive illusions on disease progression in men with HIV. Taylor found that the men who held onto optimistic beliefs despite a terminal diagnosis tended to live an average of nine months longer than those who accepted their terminal diagnosis.

He also found that of the men who had not yet developed symptoms of AIDS from their HIV, those who had positive beliefs regarding the future were less likely to develop the symptoms of AIDS within the next year than those without positive beliefs. He concluded that positive illusions can have a positive affect on physical health and slow the progression of some types of disease.

AND he found that even unrealistically optimistic beliefs had a protective factor for mental health.

Unrealistically optimistic beliefs. Being “unrealistic” is good for your health. Dude.

That’s why I’m determined to be totally unrealistic.

The mind is freaking POWERFUL. Don’t dull it down with realistic ideas.

Frustration is the precursor to a breakthrough

Gah. Sometimes it feels like I’m banging my head against a brick wall with my goals, struggling and struggling away with seemingly no progress. But recently while I was on a call with one of my clients, observing her do the same thing, I was able to observe an interesting pattern. The best moments in her life were always preceded by her biggest moments of terror, frustration and anxiety. That understanding helped me see: If you want to have a breakthrough, you have to have a some that needs breaking through. You can’t have a brilliant, genius breakthrough if everything is coasting along smoothly. You can’t break through thin air. You can however, break through a wall, or even a glass ceiling. I try to remind myself of that. Before each life-changing breakthrough, there’s a wall of frustration. Frustration is the precursor to a breakthrough. It’s a necessity for greatness.

If you’re feeling frustrated, stuck or exhausted, try to see it as a good sign – it’s setting you up for your biggest breakthrough yet.

I've had it!

Financial guru Dave Ramsey says that people don’t make a real change until they say this one phrase: “I’ve had it!”

Sometimes it just takes that feeling that comes with being fed up, being exhausted, having had enough, before you are truly motivated to change.

That’s what the last month was for me. I had several “I’ve had it” moments across different areas of my life and decided things were going to have to change.

Even though I’d tried to change them before (finances, aspects of my business etc), I hadn’t really committed at the level I did once I had my “I’ve had it” moment.

If you haven’t had an ‘I’ve had it!’ moment, you’ve probably experienced something similar to it.

Translations for the “I’ve had it!'“ moment:

• Enough is enough!

• That’s it!

• I’m done!

• Screw this!

• It’s over!

Although the period of change SUCKS (I really feel that at the moment as I’m doing 80 hour weeks in my business and freelancing to sort my life out), it’s a relief to be making the change. I know in the future, I’ll be on the other side of it, so grateful I pushed myself, congratulating myself like Snoop Dogg.