Hey folks, welcome to episode 11 of a Pebble in a Pond podcast.
We're going to talk about inspiration today.
What is inspiration?
Well, it's a kind of a nebulous idea for some, but for most people I think that it can be
defined just like it is in the dictionary.
It is the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do
something creative.
That is the dictionary definition of inspiration.
Well, why are we having an episode about inspiration?
Well, because I think that at the heart of what we want to do here with this channel
and the TikTok and everything else that we're doing is we want to inspire people.
We want to affect change in people and we want people to understand exactly where and
how the energy that you are going to use to make these changes is coming from.
A lot of it is being inspired towards change.
I can say, oh, well, the world would be a better place if you do this or the world would be
a better place if we do that.
But if people aren't inspired to make that change, if you don't feel the drive inside
of you to do that, if it's just something that you're doing rationally and there's no
emotional stimulation, then it becomes difficult to maintain the effort and the focus that
you need to continue to make the changes in your life.
These changes aren't always going to be easy.
Changing your mindset, changing your worldview, these aren't always going to be things that
people can do easily.
And so it's important to try to understand where our inspiration comes from, what it
is we're trying to do and how we can continue to move forward when things get difficult.
Inspiration is oftentimes the beginning of something, the middle of something when things
start to get hard and the end of something.
Because what will happen is you will start your journey with inspiration.
You will be inspired to movement.
Things will begin to be difficult and you will need to rely and lay back on that inspiration
to keep going through the difficulties.
And then once you have achieved what you want to achieve, you will be reinvigorated.
You will be re-inspired by the fact that you have been able to accomplish whatever it is
you set out to do.
And now you feel stronger, you feel more capable, you feel better about your next challenge.
And that alone will open up other inspiration for you and make you want to do more and see
more and be more as you go.
So what we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk about some very simple
ideas that we can use to inspire ourselves when we're not feeling great, when we're feeling
down, when we're feeling unmotivated.
This motivation and inspiration aren't quite the same thing, but they are very close.
So some of this will be self-motivation techniques, if you want to put it that way, but they're
also more geared towards really affecting you on an emotional level and that's really
key for this.
Motivation can be a psychological thing.
You can motivate yourself mentally, but you might not feel it.
Like when you know you need to go to the gym, so you mentally, but it's not the same thing
as inspiring yourself to go to the gym.
I hope that people understand that difference.
Before we start the episode and we get to the music, I want to make sure that everybody
understands that this episode is releasing on the 15th, which is also Martin Luther King
Jr's day.
And in light of that, I'd like to start this episode with a quote that completely and totally
summarizes everything that I'm trying to do with this podcast and with my TikTok channel
and all my social media.
Everything I am trying to do stems from this quote and honestly is inspired by this quote,
which makes it just perfect for today.
MLK once said, life's most persistent and urgent question is what are you doing for
others?
He said that in Montgomery, Alabama in 1957.
And unfortunately, it's one of those quotes that you don't always see pop up when people
talk about him or when people really start to focus on all the different things that
he said and what he meant in his life to so many people.
But the idea of living your life, understanding that your purpose is the betterment of yourself
so that you can help others.
What are you doing for others?
How do you push the needle forward for others?
How are you going to make an impact on this world?
That is key to everything we're doing here.
And one point I want to make with this before we start the music is that the reason this
question is persistent and urgent is because if you're not looking for the answer, if you're
not trying to figure out what you are doing for others, what you may fail to understand
is that you are actively hurting people if you're not helping people.
And to illustrate that, I'll use one more MLK quote.
He said, our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
So remember that if you're not actively trying to be a good and positive force and you're
just remaining silent or even worse, being an actual negative drain on the people around
you, you have to change that.
We have to be better.
We're trying to create the change that many years ago MLK thought about.
We are all, no matter the color of your skin, no matter the religion that you follow, no
matter who you are or where you come from, we are all trying to see his dream become
a reality.
And that doesn't start with a movement of millions of people.
That starts with each one of us as individuals pushing forward and being aware, alert, and
conscious of the decisions that we make and the effect that they have on the people around
us.
So please, no matter when you hear this, no matter when you listen to this, do yourself
a favor and just take a few moments.
You can Google quotes from MLK.
You can look up a story of his life.
You can do anything you want to do, but spend a few moments reflecting on who he was as
a man and what he did to push the needle forward and how you can pick up the baton and run
with it.
This episode is about inspiration and I can't think of anyone better than MLK to start an
episode about inspiration.
And now let's cue the music.
So, inspiration, huh?
Well, I think that we're going to really get into this in really the best way I can think,
which is to explain why you're listening.
Because this all came from inspiration, this podcast and everything else that I'm doing
right now to try to get this message out, these messages of love and light and positivity
that I'm trying to bring into the world all came from inspiration really.
For those of you that follow the TikTok channel, you'll know that I have spoken a few times
about where this idea for the podcast came from.
And I don't want to continue to tell the same story over and over again.
So I think that it's just important to understand that at my absolute worst, at the absolute
lowest point you can possibly get to where ending yourself is on the table and you're
actively in discussions with yourself, that's where, the very bottom is where this idea
came from.
And the purpose of it, the inspiration behind it was to try to find a bridge between myself
and my friend who we had grown so far apart that I just didn't know if we were ever going
to ever be able to do anything together again.
We worked very well together when we had worked together and our lives had just taken us in
separate directions so much so that we had become different people.
I had seen that this was a person that I wanted to have in my life for a long time.
When you start to try to feel that loss and understand what the next chapter will bring
if you suffer that loss, you start looking for ways to pull that person back, to bring
that union back together and that's where this came from.
But it wasn't just that.
There has been a quote from one of the most important people in my entire life that has
rung in my head since the moment I first heard it and I remember hearing it in a movie theater.
And I'm going to say the quote and you'll know where it's from, I mean almost everybody
knows what it's from, but I can't say it.
I can't say it the way that he said it and I'm not going to do it justice.
In the movie Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams' character says, no matter what people tell
you, words and ideas can change the world.
When I had this inspiration to start a podcast, which is kind of the silly thing to say when
you think about it, it was really more about trying to find a way to truly help people.
I had spent so many years lost in depression and really selfishness that I just couldn't
understand what had happened to me.
When I was younger, I had done so many things to try to help people.
I had been a guardian angel.
I had been a mentor to people.
I was a leader among the people that knew me.
I was always trying to push people forward and to try to be not necessarily an example
because I've always been a bit of a brigand, a bit of a rogue if you will, but to try to
serve examples, to try to give people inspiration, to try to push people into being good people.
I'm not really talking necessarily about true morality here as much as I'm talking about
just trying to inspire people to not hurt people, to not be negative, to not be the
bad influence that so many people become in life.
The reality was is that as I slipped further into this depression, which really did take
place over the course of probably five years until I cemented it and that just became who
I was, it took me some time to really descend.
I lost the ability to inspire people.
I lost the ability to...
When I say inspire people, I mean in a positive way, to really move people.
Now I could always...
I have the ability to inspire fear and things like that.
I've always had the ability to be influential among people, but to truly inspire people
to greatness and to be the person that gives them the motivation and the direction that
they need to accomplish their dreams.
That's something that I lost in that period of depression.
It's something that I'm going to regret because you will always wonder what could have happened,
who could I have made a difference with, whose life could I have altered in that time when
I was just lost?
How much better could the world be if I hadn't lost myself in a mind numbing depression for
so many years?
I can't really think like that.
I can't really pull myself back like that, but at the same time, it's always there.
It always lingers.
But I'm back now.
That's the whole point of what I'm trying to say here now is that I'm not stuck.
I'm not mired in that depression anymore.
I still feel it.
I'm still depressed.
It's still part of me, but in the moment that I had this inspiration for this podcast and
for the TikTok channel and everything, it really truly was a moment of inspiration.
Just like you read about in the books, it was a eureka moment.
It was one minute I was laying in my bed crying, contemplating suicide, and the next minute
I was moved.
I was shaken.
I had to do something.
I had to change.
I had to make a difference.
It really honestly was instantaneous.
Now I can't really speak to where that inspiration came from.
I don't know what energy transference happened there.
I don't know exactly how it worked, but I can't deny the results.
I can't deny that I could not be here sitting here recording this episode if I hadn't been
inspired.
Would I have done the unthinkable?
I don't know.
It was definitely on the table.
So I don't know if I could have done it.
I don't know if I would have done it, but it was there and I was facing it.
In light of that, I happened upon something that inspired this.
At the heart of that is that quote, no matter what people tell you, words and ideas can
change the world.
I've lived 48 years on this planet and I have been told over and over again how powerful
one person can be.
It's almost trite.
It's almost like a meme at this point in time.
You don't even believe it anymore, but I have to.
I have to believe that one person can make a difference.
I have to believe in what I'm doing because when I tell you that this is true inspiration,
that this is coming from something outside of me, I know I sound like a crazy person
and maybe I am.
Maybe I am completely and totally bat shit crazy, but if I'm doing it to help people
and I'm doing it in a positive way and I'm doing it in a way that I know is having a
positive effect on people's lives, I can't second guess it.
I can't sit here and tell you that it's not a good inspiration.
I wanted to make sure that I talked about that as briefly as I could, which obviously
was not that brief, but I wanted to talk about it because inspiration, the concept of inspiration,
the idea of inspiration is quite literally the reason that you're hearing my voice right
now and it means a lot to me.
It means a lot.
It changed the course of my life.
It changed the fact that I have a life possibly.
In doing that, it changes the course of my family's life.
It changes the course of the people that I come in contact with, all of the people that
I've been able to talk with and help and make a difference in their lives with these short
videos I'm making and stuff.
They're all tied to this one moment of inspiration.
So remember this.
You don't have to remember anything else, but remember this.
I know for a fact that the actions that I have taken since my one moment of inspiration
have changed multiple people's lives for the better.
You can do that.
You can take this moment right now that you're hearing my voice as your inspiration because
I can prove to you that it works.
I have helped multiple people.
I have talked people down from their own suicide attempts.
I have talked people into better relationships with their parents.
I have talked with those parents to try to reach an understanding with their children.
I have helped people on TikTok that were dealing with severe depression and regret and pain
and people that were, they just needed a friend.
They just needed somebody to talk to.
They were alone.
There are actually multiple people that are living in really bad situations that I've
talked to that even though it was just really quick words, I know that I've helped them.
I know that they feel as if I've helped them.
And none of that happens if I don't sink as low as I possibly can and find that one moment
of inspiration that changes me and creates this platform literally in one single moment.
So if you're hearing this and you're looking for something to inspire you, understand it
is there.
The inspiration is there.
It is inside of you.
I may not be the voice that sparks it.
My actions may not be enough to move you, but I promise you it is there and it will
awaken.
You will find it.
And when you do, what I want to do here in this next segment we're going to get into
is make sure that you understand it and that you're able to act on it as quickly as you
possibly can.
I saw a TED talk once.
I don't remember who was giving the TED talk, but I remember this one point.
She said, almost every single idea that we ever have is gone in five seconds.
Every moment that you have this moment where you're, you know, you have a great idea and
you don't do anything about it.
You don't write it down.
So many of the world's greatest ideas have gone to the wayside because somebody couldn't
find a piece of paper in a pen because somebody couldn't type it in as a note on their phone
because they had this great idea and they just kind of let it evaporate.
So when you find your inspiration, no matter how crazy it may seem, write it down, tell
it to somebody, you know, workshop it right away.
Don't wait.
Just get up and do something about it.
Make sure that you have a concrete piece of reminder of what your inspiration was.
It is so important because you don't want to lose these things as they come to you.
I have taken to just always having something near me.
And if I don't have something near me that I can literally write with, then I have my
phone.
I will always, and I will just pick up my phone.
I actually downloaded a voice recorder specifically so that I could just pick it up.
The problem is, and this is kind of funny, I found out that the voice recorder that I
downloaded has a limit in time.
So I actually had been out driving and I had this great idea and I start talking into the
voice recorder and I'm just talking and talking and talking.
I had to have been 15, 20 minutes in and I come and I look and the thing stopped at five
minutes.
I lost everything.
So things like that you want to be careful of because you can easily lose a lot of progress
in your inspiration if you're not careful about the technology that you're using.
Another really important aspect of trying to keep a way of keeping notes or write something
down or record something is that a lot of times your inspiration or your, I guess, vision
that you're going to have is not going to come in one whole piece.
A lot of times you're not going to experience these things as a full fleshed out everything
is in it kind of moment.
It's just going to be little flashes of this and that as you're moving through your life
and you're doing other things.
And if you are able to capture those little things and write them down, then you can go
back and piece them together later.
And I can't impress upon you how important that is.
Some of the greatest writers, some of the greatest orators, some of the greatest, just
when you think about screenwriters and directors and things like that, these people, they just
keep little notepads with them and they jot down ideas as they come to them.
This is how many, many, many authors work.
I think Roald Dahl, the author, children book author, he actually, people would talk about
all the time how he had one of those little handheld notepads and he would just, they
were just ideas that he had and then he would take them and as he would write a book, he
would go through his notepads and he would scratch off the ones that he had used and
then he would have more ideas.
So just remember that your inspiration and the things that you are imagining and kind
of going through, they're not always going to be complete ideas.
You're not always going to have to write down your PowerPoint presentation for why you want
to open up this business or whatever.
Sometimes it's just a simple matter of, you know, I want to help people.
I want to tell the story of this.
I want to, you know, and it doesn't even have to be that fleshed out.
You can literally be like a big, big monster guy with horns that's really nice.
You know, just something simple like that.
It doesn't have to be a fully fleshed out idea.
Just write down or record or whatever.
Keep your notes of what's going through your head.
Here's an important part of this.
You're the only one doing this.
Now we can all go and do exactly what I'm saying here.
Everybody on the planet can go do exactly what they're saying.
And yeah, you're going to end up having a few people that have the same idea, probably
a couple hundred thousand people, maybe even a million people that all have the same general
idea, which is fine because we all have influences and backgrounds and things like that that
will contribute to the creation of those things in our heads.
But at the end of the day, there's going to be differences.
You're the only one that has your thoughts and your voice.
And that's what makes you important.
What is the true tragedy of all of our lives is think about how many people you know, think
about how many people have come through your life.
Think about how many people that you have, you have seen come and go through this their
entire life and they had so much beauty, so much grace, so much wonderful things, so many
wonderful things about them.
And yet it's all gone now.
It's all gone.
They had they had, and I'm not trying to be, you know, self-important here, but had they
had this advice, had they been able to take these moments, then some of the things that
you know about them, the things that you often will think about when you remember them, the
beautiful, wonderful moments that you had with them, they could have lived on in a real
tangible way.
They could have brought their beauty into the world had they been truly inspired and
had they understood how to capture that moment and how to make it theirs and how to make
it special.
That's the problem.
We're not taught at any point how to really, truly capitalize on our inspiration.
No one tells us that.
Like from the time we're born until the time we leave high school, it's very rare that
you have a teacher or, you know, some sort of administrator or even parents, honestly,
at some point that will tell you, capture this.
Don't don't let this slip.
You know, stay right, ride whatever you're you're on here.
Write it down.
Do something with it.
Like very rarely does anybody actually, you know, say follow your inspiration.
Now people will put it on postcards and they'll, you know, they have t-shirts and things like
that.
But that means a lot less when you see it out in the wild like that than it does when
somebody is literally telling you, you know what, you have this moment, you have this
thing that's coming out of you.
You have this, you're the only one that has it.
So make sure that you're getting it and just capture it as it comes.
And then you'll be able to put it all together later.
You see what I mean?
And it really is a tragedy because the amount of beauty and amazing things that we've all
missed out on because we just, nobody knew, nobody understood.
So let's not let that happen anymore.
Right?
Like let's do what we can to try to encourage people and to try to make people understand
just how beautiful and wonderful and powerful they can be.
Let them help them bring their beauty and their magic into the world.
That's all I'm asking.
And I don't think it's asking too much.
Give people the support and the encouragement they deserve and that they need to feel like
they can actually push the needle forward, that they can make a difference, that they
can inspire others.
That is the greatest gift you can give someone is believing in them and standing by them
as they accomplish their dreams.
No one ever forgets that and they shouldn't.
So we have notes and things like that.
Some people even go so far as to call it vision boards.
I mean, that's a good way of looking at it.
If you know anything about making vision boards, I don't know much about vision boards because
I've never really done one.
My vision board is like the inside of my forehead.
I kind of just, and that's where I imagine I put all my ideas.
But it's definitely something that I should probably do, especially considering this episode.
So maybe I'll look into it.
I don't really know what goes into it, so I can't speak to it.
But my understanding is that this is kind of the same idea.
You know, you take quotes and images and things like that, which we're going to get into that
in just a minute.
So what other things can you do to really help you with inspiration?
Now, keep in mind that for a lot of people, inspiration will take on the form of a creative
approach, right?
Like people want to draw or they want to write or they want to, you know, whatever it may
be.
They want to sing, whatever it is.
So one of the kind of low tech and relatively easy things you can do if you're trying to
be creative and you're trying to inspire yourself is quite literally just do that thing.
And that doesn't mean that, you know, you're not sitting down and like searching for perfection
every time.
It means that, you know, you keep a pad and a pencil or pen or whatever.
And you know, if you want to do art, you want to be an artist, start doodling, start drawing.
It doesn't have to be a Rembrandt every time you do it, but you just sit down and you,
you know, draw some lines, doodle.
Just let the creative juices flow.
And oftentimes, you know, people do that and they get discouraged by what comes out.
But the whole point is that, that is missed on most of those people is that something's
coming out, right?
Like not everybody can do that.
That is not something that everybody can do.
And so most of the time, many of us will, you know, we'll put our efforts into a creative
moment, or, you know, we'll have these small little, you know, desires or inclinations
to doodle or write something quickly.
And then we immediately discard it because, you know, we're worried about how other people
will see it or it's not up to our own standards.
But what you don't understand and what most of us just fail to understand, I know I do
all the time, is that not everybody can do that.
You're looking past the fact that not everybody can do it.
And while it may not be up to your standards, for some of those people, it may be one of
the greatest things they've ever seen in their entire life.
When you did it without, you know, sight unseen, without even really paying attention to it,
it was quite literally a doodle or just an idea that you jotted down really fast.
And it's, you know, you think of it, you're like, who would ever want this?
And one of them will see it and be like, this is the greatest piece of literature I've ever
read in my entire life.
So just keep in mind that, you know, we are always our harshest critics.
So when you have those doodles or you have those ideas that you're jotting down or you
have these little things that you just kind of are, you know, free flowing with, don't
judge yourself in those moments.
There's not time for that.
You don't need that in your life.
We will always be our harshest critic.
Don't let yourself judge yourself in that moment.
Like you have to stop it.
And I know that's difficult.
It's difficult for all of us.
We're always afraid of rejection, so we oftentimes will reject ourselves first so that no one
else can do it for us.
Well, stop that.
It's just that simple.
You just have to start saying, no, no, I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to do this.
I'm not going to throw away my work.
I'm not going to look past what I've done.
Even if it's just something very simple, even if it's literally just a squirrely line, a
swirly, not a squirrely line, a swirly line on a piece of paper.
Something that you did while you were sitting there being creative.
Save it.
Keep it.
Look at it later.
There might be something there that you don't understand yet.
There might be something there that will inspire something else later.
There might be an emotion that you're capturing.
There might be a thought that you had that you can attribute to that little swirly line.
And then when you look at it later, you'll be like, oh, hey, that was a good idea.
Don't look past how you express yourself and don't second guess what's coming out of you.
Even in moments when you're not like consciously aware of it.
Always, always, always give yourself the credit to understand that there is a reason why you
do that, why you're a creative, why you have that outlet because not everybody does.
So just keep that in mind as you, you know, you're, you're trying to continue to find
inspiration.
Sometimes that inspiration is happening and you just don't see it because you're judging
yourself.
Something else that I know for me has helped a lot is, especially with the podcast and
things like that is try to learn something you don't know.
Try to, try to think of things in a different way.
This really does help with inspiration quite a bit.
Actually, I can speak to this because every episode of the podcast, I spend a day or two,
at least researching the topic of that podcast.
And while not every, every episode requires a lot of research, there is a lot that goes
into it as far as just sitting and reading and trying to understand different takes on
different subjects and things like that.
And so you have to read, there's all sorts of, it's crazy how many scientific papers
have been written and all of these things about all the different things that go on
inside of our heads.
And so once we start to read about those and we start to understand those things, it becomes
a little bit clearer exactly how important some of these topics are and how, you know,
actual legitimate scientists have gone and spent millions of dollars researching these
things.
And I'm just sitting here talking about it on a podcast, right?
But more to the point, if you spend your time learning, whether it be like an actual skill
or just learning about something, there's all sorts of inspiration that can be found
in that.
If you're actually going out and you're learning like a new language or reading about a different
culture or reading about history or things like that, that's a double whammy there.
You're getting, you're not just acquiring knowledge, but you're going to find inspiration
in the process of acquiring that knowledge.
And that is, not only are you making yourself better in terms of just worldly knowledge,
but you're also going to push yourself further and find more ways and more things to inspire
you.
And a good example of that is my actually in my own life.
It was some time ago when I had spent my whole life.
Basically, the only thing that I could prepare was the occasional box of rice-aroni and some
cereal.
Like when I was cooking, that's all I could do.
And when my store closed and I went out of business, I was now all of a sudden thrust
into this life of kind of just sitting around and looking for the next thing.
I was looking for inspiration.
And while I don't think I really found it, and that's one of the reasons why I slipped
further into depression, one thing I did do, one thing that helped me a lot was I started
to learn how to cook.
And I'm not a world-class chef or anything, but I can cook.
I can now cook, and I can cook with pretty good results.
I had never done anything with smoked meat.
It started actually for me.
It started with wanting to make my own jerky.
And we got a dehydrator, and I was like, okay, I'm going to start learning how to do this.
And I'm not joking with you when I tell you I could barely heat up a can of soup.
I would have a hard time turning the stove on.
I was really, really helpless.
And then I started to figure out how to make jerky, and then I was like, oh, well, maybe
I can make steaks or I'll do this.
I started to learn how to cook all these different meats and things like that.
And then I started to use the smoker.
And there was all these different steps that I took.
Without really thinking of them as steps, I was just on my journey towards learning
how to cook.
And then I was like, oh, well, I need to be able to make this sauce.
So I had to learn how to make this sauce, and I need to be able to do this.
And all of these things are really, really simple to me now.
And I think about it, and I'm like, why didn't I know how to do that?
But I know there was a point in time when I could not have done it.
And so I took inspiration from all around me.
I would talk to my friend who was a chef.
I would read.
I had never really been big on recipes, but I would read recipe books and see the techniques
that they used in their cooking and things like that.
So I even started watching Top Chef and things like that.
All of these things helped me, helped move me through part of my depression.
Those were the inspirations that I needed as I was learning these new skills.
It really did become something that I completely threw myself into.
And it's kind of weird because I wasn't making any money at it, but I know now that the appreciation
that I garnered from my family and even from my friends that would come over and eat, it
really did, it really moves the needle for me personally.
Like I now, when my friend comes in from out of town, I know I can just, you know, I can
make whatever I can, I can make a dish and I can, I can serve it.
And it brings me so much joy to know that I have learned a skill that can bring happiness
and joy to other people in a way that I definitely could not have done before.
And that in and of itself is inspirational, but the process of learning all of these things,
I felt inspiration throughout that process.
And so something like that, where you really do kind of plunge into a new topic, a new,
a whole new way of thinking, a whole new, you know, it really, you want to, not to get
too sciency on you, but you really want to prompt your neuroplasticity.
You want to start to form, you know, grow new neurons and create new connections inside
of your brain.
And all of those things will lead to greater and greater points and moments of inspiration
for you.
I know for a lot of people, this next part will be, you know, something that is kind
of a no brainer, but a lot of people find their inspiration in traveling.
You know, a lot of people will say, Oh, I want to go here or I want to go there.
And while I don't really have that travel bug, because when I was younger, I traveled
all over the country.
So I would, you know, I have seen my fair share of traveling.
Now I would, at some point I'm going to end up going to Europe and all that stuff.
But for now, I'm pretty good.
I'm good.
But I understand that people have the travel bug and I know that they want to get out and
they want to see the world and they want to do these things.
And those are all, all of them are amazing when it comes to finding inspiration and finding
ways to be inspired, I guess is the best way of putting that.
Because the reality is, is that we spend, most people spend every day just kind of going
through the same routine.
They, you know, you go to work, you come home, you make dinner, you watch whatever, you go
to bed, you get up, you go to work.
And that's just kind of the cycle that everybody kind of lives on.
And you know, you're okay, it's Friday or Saturday, you go out and your friends, you
do this, you do whatever, you know, you, you, you go and you have this time.
You play a video game, you do whatever you do, but it's all kind of repetitive and it's
all kind of the same.
And so when you are like, okay, I'm going on vacation in two months, what you find is
that every day as you move towards that vacation builds that anticipation, builds that excitement.
And then you get to go on vacation.
And when you're on vacation, you see new things, you experience new things, you eat new things,
you hear new things, you smell new things.
It's a sensory overload of all new things.
And that always leads to some sort of inspiration.
The problem with vacations is that you're so caught up in the vacation that oftentimes
that inspiration falls on deaf ears.
You're so caught up in, you know, going on safari or sitting by the pool or doing all
these things.
And you're just, you're, you're trying to escape the moment, the moments of your life
that you are normally in.
And so for you, inspiration doesn't necessarily hit the same way that it would if you were
in the doldrums of your normal life.
You know what I mean?
So a lot of times when we go on vacation and things like that, the best way to do or to
think about the vacation is you go and you have your vacation with the same intent of
I'm going to find inspiration in this.
You take your notepad, you take your phone to record ideas and you do it.
You break up your vacation with your inspiration if you need to.
And if you can't do that, then when you get back, you literally debrief yourself.
You get back and you think about all of the moments of the vacation.
You look at all the pictures you go through.
How many times do you go on?
Have you seen people or have you yourself gone on vacation?
Gone to whatever park, gone to wherever.
And you took 153,000 photos and those photos sit on your phone for 89 years and you never
once look at them.
And then one day you're just like, oh, I got to clean my phone out because I'm running
out of room.
So you take an entire file of all of these pictures that are basically the same exact
thing that you just took 853,000 pictures of that one thing from two different angles
and then you just have it now.
You just have that picture and you never look at it.
What I'm asking you to do is look at it.
What I'm asking you to do is actually think about it, put some thought into it and try
to remember what it was like to sit there.
Try to remember what it was like to take that picture.
Try to remember the voices that you heard, the smells that you had.
Try to put yourself back into that moment.
Try to imagine it again and then try to bring back any of the inspiration that you may have
felt in those moments.
It's going to be different.
It's going to be changed.
It's going to not be as strong, but if you can bring back some of it, you might be able
to capture some of it.
And that's really important.
Something else that I think is extremely important when you're trying to find inspiration is
and this is going to take a couple of different forms, I guess, depending upon the things
that you do in your daily life.
And I can't, I really can't put enough emphasis on this.
Sometimes you just need to quiet your mind.
Now what does that mean?
Does it mean meditation?
Well, sure.
Meditation for those of you that don't actually practice meditation, oftentimes will be seen
as you'll always see in the movies and things like that.
Well, they'll say, clear your mind.
Well, that's not really what meditation is.
You're not really clearing your mind and you really shouldn't try to.
You can try to not actively think of things, but you're never, the whole point of meditation
is to limit active thinking, conscious thought.
But you're still going to have things come into your head and those things oftentimes
are inspiration, those thoughts, those moments, those feelings.
Now meditation is kind of a tricky one because you don't want to break your meditation, right?
Like you want to try to stay in that moment.
But if you're having moments of inspiration while you're meditating, then you need to
do that.
You need to get up and or whatever, have your notepad, have your thing there with you and
meditate with intention.
There's nothing wrong with that.
There's not that you're not like breaking any sort of rule.
Meditation can take on many different forms, but the whole point is if even if you don't
meditate, take a moment, take, you know, give yourself the five minutes of your day to sit,
close your eyes and just, just, you know, not, not focus on anything.
Just kind of let your mind wander.
Just go wherever it goes.
Don't try to control where your mind goes.
And what you're going to find is I snuck up on you and gave you meditation anyway, because
that's really what meditation is.
So even if you have a problem with meditation, the word for whatever reason, understand that
the concept is pretty, pretty simple.
You're just going to sit and be quiet.
Try to quiet your mind a little bit.
Try to not think of anything.
Don't think about work.
Don't think about your girlfriend, your boyfriend.
Don't think about the wrongs that have been done to you.
Don't think about the pain that you're in.
Just let yourself go.
Let your mind wander.
And you know, if you start to think of purple elephants flying in rainbows and clouds, then
that's what you think of.
But that's, you know, and then you can kind of allow yourself to feel it, allow yourself
to think it.
And if you find that that's inspiring to you, write that down, like do it.
It's not going to hurt anybody.
You're not, you're not doing anything by making these notes.
You're not, you're not taking away from the meditation experience by capitalizing on what
your mind is trying to tell you.
Because like I said before, you're the only one that's going to have this.
You're the only one that's going to be able to create this.
So give yourself that moment.
Give yourself that grace to say, okay, well, if I have to stop my meditation for a minute
and to write this down, then that's what I'm going to do.
And then I'll go back into it and we'll, we'll figure it out.
If you got to give yourself 10 minutes, give yourself 10 minutes.
You got to give yourself 20 minutes, give yourself 20 minutes.
And a lot of people do this when they like get up in the morning and they go make their
coffee and you know, for a lot of people they'll sit and they'll, you know, look at their phone
or whatever, but there are plenty of people out there that will just sit and drink their
coffee and just let their mind wander.
And that is perhaps one of the healthiest things that you can do with your life.
Let go of your phone, let go of the TV, just sit and let your mind do what your mind does
and be okay with whatever comes out of it.
That's really, really important.
And honestly, one of the greatest sources of inspiration that you could possibly find.
Another another great source of inspiration that I personally know is extremely powerful
and unfortunately I can never really truly capitalize on is sleep.
Now I don't sleep much.
Anybody that knows me knows that it is a challenge.
It always has been a challenge.
I can't remember a time when I've ever slept well.
That being said, I do know that I have had ground shaking dreams.
I have had moments of understanding and inspiration in my dreams that have literally changed my
life.
As a matter of fact, the inspiration for this podcast that I spoke of earlier may have been
me nodding off.
I was laying in bed crying and like I said, contemplating.
And I can't really say for sure that I didn't nod off for a few minutes and then had this
dream and that's where it all came from.
That's very, very possible.
So it is one of those things where oftentimes, think about it like this.
How many times have you had that dream where whatever may happen in the dream but you wake
up like you're falling?
Think about that.
Everybody has had that happen.
It is universal.
Now you don't know, like some people is, your foot falls off the pedal of the bike and some
people is you're falling off a stage or you're falling off of a curb or whatever it is but
there's always that moment where you catch yourself.
And think about that.
You know it's not real.
You know that it didn't happen.
At the moment you wake up, there's not even a moment where you think you're falling.
Most people go, oh, why did I do that?
Because they're upset that they woke themselves up for that.
But that's a limited form of the kind of power that your mind has and the amount of inspiration
and movement that you can get out of a dream.
That's literally just like a split second thing that happens and it moves your entire
body in that moment.
So what do you think is going to happen to your spirit, your emotions, your mind if you
can really start to harness that, if you can really start to, you know, like there's a
lot of people out there that keep dream journals.
There's a lot of people out there that keep something right by their bed because they
know that when they wake up, whatever dream they had is powerful.
For me, and this is, I know that I'm going to run a little bit over because of this but
I want to, I still have a recurring dream.
And this is, maybe this is going to be upsetting for some folks.
I don't know.
But when I was younger, I started to have dreams of myself being a werewolf.
And what I found is that when I have these dreams, it's at points where I am feeling
the most lost, the most angry, the most fearful, the most, like all of these really negative
emotions.
When I'm feeling, when I'm in those moments and I fall asleep, I have these dreams of
myself becoming a werewolf.
And in my dreams, it's never good.
It's never a good thing.
I destroy, I rip, I claw, I bite, I shred.
And there's always like an underlying thing.
Like there's always a person that drives it or there's always a moment.
And in my dream, I'll always wake up and I'll be drenched in sweat and I'll be, I'll, you
know, I'll have this like, it's weird.
I'll even feel like I've got, you know, stuff under my nails or I'll have a weird taste
in my mouth.
And these are all remnants of those dreams.
And to this day, I can tell you that every single time I have that dream, it scares the
living hell out of me because I realized that it's kind of the incarnation of what would
happen if I let myself lose control.
If I let myself really go into those emotions, if I gave in to those darker emotions and
really let myself be what they are driving me to be, then I would turn in.
I'm obviously not going to be a real werewolf, but I would turn into that kind of monster
where I would just indiscriminately destroy.
And I, you know, it's kind of serves as a warning to me because I know that at some
level that that's really honestly how I would be.
And that's a reminder.
And that's that, that is an inspiration for me to try to control myself and try to keep
those things, you know, try to only let out enough anger to, so I don't explode, try to
only let out enough, you know, fear or rage so that I don't, you know, have to have to
break like that.
So that's a, that's a, one of those things that, you know, your dreams can be exceedingly
powerful and sometimes inspiration isn't always to, you know, create the next Star Wars.
Sometimes it's literally inspiration to keep yourself sane.
And that's, I think that's what those dreams are for me is, is they allow me to kind of
ground myself and keep myself level headed and not lose complete control at all times.
We're going to, we're going to hit two more things here that I think are really, really
important ways of inspiring yourself.
And then I think we'll wrap it up right after that because I am running a little bit over
time.
I mean, for me, and I know many people that this is 100% the best way to inspire themselves.
I unfortunately don't do this enough and I need to do it more.
The pursuit of, I don't want to say pursuit, the power, the power that is inherent in nature
when it comes to inspiration is unrivaled.
It is, it is unmatched.
If you ever need to feel inspired, go outside, walk in the woods, walk down a path, walk
off wherever you need to go to feel inspired, to be surrounded by nature.
That's that's what you should do.
Go be in nature.
Watch the grass as they say.
But for me, it's always been about, for me, nature, the definition for me is always seeing
animals in the wild.
I am, I am always inspired when I can look up in the, and oftentimes, and this happens
and this is literally happening today, I'll go make a TikTok video and I'll sit in the
car to make the video and I just will sit and I'll just stare up at the birds that are
flying and oftentimes I won't have any idea of what I'm going to talk about in those videos.
I'll just be sitting there, I'll look at the birds and something will come to me and then
I'll start recording.
That is true inspiration because I have nothing, I look at the birds, I watch them and I smile
and I record.
It's quite simple.
That's literally what happens and it happens over and over and over again.
But it doesn't have to necessarily be a bird, right?
Like it can be a flower, it can be a butterfly, it can be a spider, it can be whatever it
is that you find inspiration in.
Henry David Thoreau has an entire chapter of his book, Walden, you know, a very famous
book called Brute Neighbors.
The entire chapter is about him sitting on a stump watching a fight between black ants
and red ants and it's easily one of my favorite moments in literary history.
I have read that chapter word for word, like side to side, probably 300 times.
I love the idea of this now acclaimed author and transcendentalist sitting on a stump watching
these things and finding so much beauty and so much poetry and so many amazing deep thoughts
that came out of this one moment.
He describes all these different things in detail.
He talks about how the black ants are not as big as the red ants and so there's multiples
that need to team up and you wouldn't think that they had a chance of winning but they're
able to do this and this and he goes through and he talks about so many different things
in this chapter.
When I was younger and I first read that it changed my connection to nature.
You want to talk about a connection to nature and nature being inspirational?
Go walk around Walden Pond.
My mother and I did that when we were younger and to say that that trip changed my life
would be doing a grand disservice to the idea of life changing events.
It was everything to me.
It changed everything about the direction of mine and my mother's relationship.
It changed everything about the direction of my life.
I immediately after that trip began to understand things in an entirely different way.
Honestly it was almost as transformative as the moment of inspiration that created this
podcast.
I'm somebody who has been, I guess the word would be blessed, blessed enough to have multiple
points like this and be able to recognize them, these moments of inspiration, these
moments of emotional inflection that I was able to take and appreciate in the moment
and then use them as the catalyst for change in my life.
That's really what we're trying to do here.
That's what I'm talking about is using these moments of inspiration to change your life
and to make you more capable and ready to change the world.
That's where we're at.
The last thing is the last little moment, or not moment, the last movement that you
can make, the last thing you can do that I really want to bring up to really help inspire
yourself.
It kind of goes with the nature thing if you think about it, is exercise.
Now understand that I'm not somebody who historically speaking has been in the best shape.
I am in pretty good shape now.
I've lost a decent amount of weight and I'm near where I was in high school now.
A lot of that was from anxiety and depression, but that's good.
It's gone, right?
I got it off and I've been able to keep it off, so I can't really be mad about it.
But exercise itself is stunningly good for inspiration.
We'll go back to the science of it.
Exercise is proven to create brain cells.
It's proven to promote neuroplasticity.
It basically, exercise literally makes your brain bigger.
It makes your brain more capable of handling inspiration and information that you can use
in your life.
Exercise is amazing as it, you know, the blood pumps and things like that.
You really start to feel inspired even if you're not thinking of anything.
Think of how many times, if you have a gym membership or you just go outside and you
go for walks or whatever it is, think of how many times you'll be out doing those things
and you'll have an epiphany moment.
You'll be like, oh, you know, I'm just walking.
It works a lot better if you're by yourself, but obviously it can happen with a friend
or whatever, whoever you're walking with or whatever you're exercising.
But a lot of times these are moments of introspection, of moments of, you know, you're on your own,
you're just kind of thinking and then all of a sudden, boom, something hits you and
you're like, oh, but a lot of times we don't stop exercising, right?
A lot of times we just keep going because we're in the middle of our set or we got five
minutes left on the treadmill or we're out in the middle of another neighborhood while
we were going on a long walk.
So a lot of times that inspiration, as great as it is, those epiphanies that hit us, as
great as they are, those enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard, their currents
turn awry and lose the name of action.
Sorry, I had a himalayan moment there.
But the whole point is that, you know, you can lose them just as quick as they come.
So if we're out exercising while it is amazing for promoting inspiration and for promoting,
you know, new thought and things like that, oftentimes you're not able to really capitalize
on it and capture it because you're in the middle of running or you're in the middle
of...
So it's important that when you are doing any of these exercises or you're doing any
of these things that I mentioned to always do them with the understanding that inspiration
can strike you at any time and you need to have a way of recording it.
You need to have a way of keeping it.
It comes and it goes so quickly and it can be the smallest little nuggets of this and
that that it is so important to get start to form the habit of recording it, marking
it down, you know, doing whatever you need to do to remind yourself of this inspiration.
Even if you...
I know this has happened with me.
I'll record things or I'll write them down and I'll go back like a day later or whatever
and I'll be like, this is just nonsense.
Why did I even do this?
Even if that's your initial reaction, hold on to it.
Hold on to it.
I promise you it is not worthless.
It is not pointless.
It is what is coming out of you and maybe it's just one small piece of what you need
to have the greater picture, but we've all put together puzzles before.
It's not easy and a lot of times you don't know where that last piece goes until you
know exactly, you know, until all the other pieces are put in place and then you can figure
it out.
I've literally put together a puzzle before, had one piece left and been like, okay, well,
I know where it goes, but what direction does it go in?
Right?
Like you understand, like it is...
Sometimes it can be that difficult and sometimes those little nuggets and those little points
in time that you capture, they can be that cryptic.
They can be that kind of odd.
And so don't immediately discard something just because you went back a day or two later
and said, oh, this is worthless.
Don't judge things like that.
They're coming out of you for a reason.
These thoughts, these emotions, these moments, they are coming out of you for a reason.
Hold on to them.
It's not going to hurt you to have an extra file on your phone.
It's not going to hurt you to have an extra piece of paper sitting on your desk.
It's not, I promise you it's not.
It may be the difference between you experiencing a life of true inspiration and you continuing
to live in a mundane doldrum that you're not happy with.
So keep that in mind.
You and what comes out of you are worth so much more than you understand.
And the power of your mind and your spirit is immeasurable.
I've said this before in other episodes and we're going to finish the podcast, this episode
of the podcast on this point.
It is scientifically proven that we are made up of the very essence of the universe.
We are the same things.
When you look up in the sky at night and you see all the stars and you imagine the black
holes and you imagine the suns that exist hundreds and millions of light years away
and you imagine all of these things, you are made of the same things as those.
You are made literally of star stuff.
What makes you think that you don't have the ability to conjure that?
That you don't have the ability to draw upon that?
You think just because your cells are in this particular orientation that they don't hold
that same kind of power?
What makes you think that?
Because that's what you've been told.
That's what you've been kind of beaten into believing.
There's no reason to believe that.
There's no proof of that.
There is more reason to believe that each of us as individuals are capable of creating
and bringing into this world moments and objects and ideas of beauty and consequence and importance.
There's no reason to think otherwise.
We have decades, hundreds of years of human history now.
We've seen the beauty that has been created.
Look up the seven wonders of the world.
Look at the pyramids.
Look at things that we don't have any idea, not really, how some of these things were
created because we can't even imagine it now.
But in ancient times, they knew how to do it.
How did we lose that knowledge?
Well, they were inspired and they created something using what they had access to.
We can do that too.
We are not less great than the ancient people.
We have just been, our minds have been subjugated and we have been told that we are not special.
We are.
Every single one of us, every person listening to this, we are powerful and we are special.
And if we focus on that and we are truly inspired by those concepts, we will, we will change
the world.
That's going to do it for this episode, folks.
We have an episode coming out next week.
We're going to continue to keep it kind of loosey goosey as I work towards deciding which
topic I want to tackle.
I have a few in mind and I need to make sure that I have the resources to study the ones
that I want to do.
So I will let people know on TikTok as soon as I finalize the schedule for the topics
for the podcast.
Going to leave you with a quote by somebody that we all know.
The Buddha once said, thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle and the
life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Take care of yourselves and take care of each other.
I will talk to you soon.