This week Helen and Sarah tackle the subject of inspiration. Where it comes from, why it’s so important for our work and how we can cultivate it. They share their own experiences of getting and staying inspired and dig into the research to learn from the experts! Listen to hear their top 5 ideas to increase your inspiration. For all links and resources, head over to amazingif.com
About this week’s episode:
This week, we’re talking all things inspiration! Did you know that inspiration at work can help you to achieve your goals and increase your wellbeing? It’s your secret source to being your best at work! We’ve found some great resources for you and also pulled all of our experience and insights into 5 tips to help you cultivate your inspiration. You’ll find these and a transcript of this week’s podcast below.
Our top 5 tips for cultivating inspiration at work:
Learn more about inspiration here:
Episode Transcript (please excuse any mistakes – we’re trialling different transcription services and they pick up some words incorrectly)
Helen: [00:00:02] Hello and welcome to this week’s squiggly careers podcast. I am Helen. I am one of the hosts of the podcast and I’m here with Sarah.
Sarah: [00:00:10] Hi everybody. I’m back from holiday with Sarah is refreshed from a lovely lovely break with amazing weather.
Sarah: [00:00:17] I realize that we probably didn’t even say that I was going on holiday, but I think I’m just so thrilled to have been on holiday and had a week of sunshine in Wales today. That doesn’t happen in March every year. And I actually I got sunburnt so I’m sitting here slightly lobster like actually with some quite noisy planes going overhead. So if you do hear some planes during the podcast it’s not because I’m still on holiday or at the airport it’s because I live on a flight path quite near Heathrow.
Helen: [00:00:46] On the point of holidays it is probably an admin thing that people on the podcast don’t need to hear, but just heads up I am going away for two whole weeks in May Sarah, so we do need to get thinking about podcast.
Sarah: [00:00:57] So you know I’m not worried about the podcast, I’m more terrified by the fact that anyone who follows on Instagram you know that Helen does a daily career step on Instagram Stories which has a really loyal following lets people watch her every day. People love it. And for those two weeks I will be deputizing for her and I like say deputizing because that sounds like I’m sort of learning and it makes me anxious just thinking about it. So we should focus on the podcast and at some point we need some ideas. .
Helen: [00:01:27] I was thinking maybe we could ask for a volunteer to do like squiggly careers tips Like squiggly careers takeover of two weeks maybe.
Sarah: [00:01:41] So I mean that sounds really appealing to make. That means that I have to do it. I feel like I should do some of them because you know it’s not very growth mindset is to go it’s not going to do it someone else can do it for me.
Helen: [00:01:52] That is also true.
Helen: [00:01:58] Anyway, this week’s podcast is all around inspiration at work. Where it comes from, what the science behind inspiration is and what practical actions that we can all take to have a bit more inspiration in our work and kind of connect that to the work that we do. And I think in the context of squiggly careers, where we often can be working out quite long hours and got lots of information. I talk to so many people that just spend a lot of their time going from meeting to meeting from email to email. Whilst work can be quite exciting that can also be a bit monotonous. I think in the context of all of that busyness and the demands of our always on work actually connecting to how to stay inspired at work I think becomes really really important in that kind of squiggly context.
Sarah: [00:02:49] And I think it’s really interesting. I started to think about. So what does actually inspiration mean? Because it’s one of those words that gets bandied around a lot. And actually I looked back at a book I really like that’s written by a guy called Andy Bird which is called the inspired leader and will include a link to that in our resources and the way that he defines it which I think is quite useful. And he talks about inspiration always takes place in a unique way for each of us. So we all have our own kind of individual take on inspiration but it does tend to happen when three things come together.
Sarah: [00:03:21] One – Something’s triggered from the external world and that might be a situation an event people say something happens around us. So that’s number one.
Sarah: [00:03:32] Two – mindsets. So the mindset that we bring to those experiences and how we relate to them ourselves.
Sarah: [00:03:39] Three – motivation. So what actually motivates us internally so things like our values interests and talents that we’ve got the most passion for. So when these triggers and mindsets and motivations when they say three things simultaneously come together in a way that’s meaningful for us in whatever that looks like for you. That’s when you kind of feel that kind of magic alchemy of inspiration and two people could be experiencing exactly the same thing and one person could find it really inspirational for the other person. It might not kind of trigger these things because it does depend on your own kind of unique take. So though it’s individual to all of us I think it’s important for everyone.
Helen: [00:04:18] But there are also some things that we can do to work out how do we make this happen for ourselves and we’ll talk a little bit about the ways in which we stay inspired. Before we kind of go into our practical tips to help you. But before we do that I think it’s useful just to think about why inspiration is good. I taught a little bit about in the context of squiggly careers it’s useful but just to get into the detail of a little bit more. There’s a couple of useful art course from Harvard Business Review on inspiration that we’re putting the resources on the website about a couple of things I took away from those articles were three main benefits have been inspired and really focusing on it at work. The first is that it can help with goal achievement so there is an idea that some some research on this with some other colleagues. But her name is Marina Miller.
Helen: [00:05:11] she looks that people who were inspired set inspired goals and that they were more likely to achieve them. And then when they were more likely to achieve them they were more likely to be inspired. And so there was almost this reciprocal relationship between being inspired and setting inspirational goals and then being more likely to achieve them. Which then makes you more inspired. So I thought that was quite interesting that actually being inspired helps you to achieve your goals. The second thing was that actually people who are inspired in the research they show evidence of having more purpose in their life and also higher levels of gratitude.
Helen: [00:05:47] And I think that is then linked to the third benefit of being inspired which is that there is a link between inspiration and well-being. When I was thinking okay if people are they’ve got more purpose ant they’re demonstrating more gratitude that probably links the well-being piece but there are effectively there are significant benefits in a goal achievement and well-being. If you can actually connect to what helps you to be more inspired so you’re focusing on bringing that into your work and also when I was digging around stuff. There seems to be two people who have done loads of research like most their careers research seems to be an inspiration which is quite cool called Todd thrush and Andrew Elliot. Yeah most of their career has been on inspiration and doing lots of research and one of the things that I liked from their work was they talked about the personality traits that are required to remain inspired and they they did loads and loads of research on different personality traits and how they can linked inspiration. They found that there are three main traits that make the biggest difference in being inspired and remaining inspired.
Helen: [00:06:47] And the first personality trait is being open to new experiences. The second personality trait is having high levels of self-esteem and the third personality trait is having creative enjoyment and there is something called like some inspiration scale that again will put the link to it. But you can kind of measure it answer a series of questions which are based on these kind of personality traits that help you see how open to inspiration you are for example or how inspired you are right now. But even without doing that I think it’s an interesting thing to reflect on. To what extent are you open to new experiences. To what extent do you think you’ve got positive self-esteem. To what extent do you actually get enjoyment from creativity.
Sarah: [00:07:27] What’s interesting about at least two out of those three is it probably takes you to be slightly out of your comfort zone. Is the assumption that I start to get to is just listening to you talk then and as I was thinking through my examples because these personality traits suggest the ability to kind of take yourself away from kind of the known and what you may be normally d say when it is open to experience you assume it means like kind of new things you need to get creative enjoyment usually means kind of trying needs to fail believing in yourself and believing maybe you can do more going back to your point about goals. So there’s probably also something about we often talk about how much time you spend in your comfort zone your stretch zone and your scary zone maybe think about how much time he’s spending in that stretch. So I would assume and it’s that kind of presumption without the 20 30 years of research but actually the more time you spend in your stretch though and probably the more open you are to inspiration the more likely you are to find inspiration through your work and actually if you’re at work in your scary zone that’s probably overwhelming and too intimidating if that’s where you are all the time or if you’re in your comfort zone. Probably just feels a bit to day to day and you’re not getting those kind of sparks of inspiration that probably we would all want.
Helen: [00:08:40] So where does your inspiration come from Sarah.
Sarah: [00:08:43] I was thinking this I think is a mixture of what I’m spending my time doing and then some of the things kind of around me. So the first in terms of what I’m spending my time doing when I start to think about when have I felt most inspired at work. It’s usually because I’m working on a project where I get to kind of use my strengths live my values all the things that we talk about being really important particularly launching stuff creating new ideas building things from scratch. Those are when I’m kind of in flow and we’ve talked before about this thing of being in flow and that’s often when you just got this kind of positive momentum and you’re really just enjoying the work that you’re doing and you’re feeling kind of inspired to push yourself to push the people around you. It was in the pursuit of something that you really believe in and you’re really passionate about it that’s kind of the work that I’m doing and I think simultaneously and I think they are slightly different things. I draw inspiration certainly from people I’ve worked with and people I’ve worked for from places from places that you spend your time and I think sometimes just from doing different and kind of interesting things. But they feel quite different things to me. I almost feel like the first is when I’m feeling inspired kind of in my work and the second feels to almost like shots of inspiration. You know you spend time with a person how you fuel it. Yeah it’s kind of these little mini kind of injections of inspiration that you get that often you’ve either facilitated activity you know you’ve decided to spend time in an interesting place or do to me a bit different and we’ll talk about some of those things in our ideas about how to stay inspired. You’re lucky enough to happen to work for or with some people who you know that every time you spend time with them you come away feeling that little bit more inspired than you did before. So I sort of would divide them into the kind of inspiration from the day to day work and then those kind of little mini injections I think.
Helen: [00:10:38] So if I do the same I think about my inspiration from my day to day work out of flexing as well career wise on when or when I feel when I feel most inspired.
Helen: [00:10:47] Well I think for me it’s when I’ve got loads of freedom so I’ve got the ability to shape and dream and determine the direction of something without kind of feeling constrained when I believe in some things I if I’m like Oh I believe amazing if I can achieve this or I believe this new product can give this benefit to somebody I’ve got freedom and I’ve got belief and then there’s something for me about potential so I can see opportunity. You know if you give me loads of space I’ve got something that I really believe in and I can see how it can grow for me. They’re like the ingredients of me to be like at my most inspired you’re going to get like full on Halloween. So if you’re in that mode and if I think about my inspiration shots. So that’s the like almost like the environmental factors that would make me feel inspired. And if I was then going to like more consciously feed that inspiration this was actually interesting when I reflected on it. I think when I read or when I listen it was almost like quiet time. So when I’m reading on my own or I’m like listen to podcasts when I’m driving that is sometimes when I feel most inspired and I come up with ideas and the reason I say it was interesting is because I’m an extrovert and they are actually quite solo activities I don’t I don’t get my inspiration that much through conversation with other people like I loved time with people and I find that energizing. But I don’t. That’s not where I get my inspiration from my inspiration comes much more from listening and learning and reading and reflecting. And that’s that’s where I connect different concepts and come up with ideas and it’s that learning new stuff. I think from solo reflection or engagement with something that really inspires me yeah.
Sarah: [00:12:27] And I think it is interesting to reflect on. Is there an introvert extrovert almost personality trait here. Because as an introvert I would say I do get really inspired by spending time with people but it is interesting but it’s pretty much.
Sarah: [00:12:39] Yeah it is opposite but it’s pretty much always want to own. I would say there’s not kind of with big groups of people but I definitely would say I feel at my most inspired if I think about four amazing if when I feel most inspired it’s usually when I’ve shared something an idea that maybe we’ve had together with somebody else and they’ve built on it or are some really intriguing questions or it’s helped me to see kind of our potential and then I kind of go Oh I feel really inspired by that or if we’re chatting about something and I I share a thought that I’ve gotten then we chat about that together I come away from that feeling really inspired whereas actually the reading listening more kind of reflecting things I don’t think I would use the word inspired I think I’d be more in the kind of it’s making me thoughtful and considered in a kind of slower I’d want to kind of move things over I think I satiate kind of inspiration with just feeling like this kind of energy surge.
Helen: [00:13:32] That’s so funny because I get the energy surge but I get Often from a podcast when I’m driving. I hear all these different concepts when I’m like listen to podcasts and then I come up with ideas I feel it’s like I’m driving and I can’t do anything about it so I end up having to like speak to Siri and I’m like Siri can you save this idea and then it ends up like because the voice recognition is not particularly great in my car there’s like gobbledygook messages in my life I find notes about some inspiration idea I had when I was driving so yeah I think it’s really interesting that yours is with people and you’re an introvert and I’m an extrovert and once more on my own when I’m connecting ideas and things yeah.
Sarah: [00:14:29] So I just think about it for yourself so if you’re listening to us talking now answer that question for yourself. Like where do you get your inspiration from. Would you divide it in the same way that we’ve ended up naturally dividing in terms of kind of the work that we do and the inspiration shots that we get from kind of external factors or do you see it differently there’s kind of no right answer here back to what Andy says around how you define inspiration it has to be unique to you which is whenever these kind of different elements are coming together and you can just sense what inspiration looks like one of the really good exercises that Andy has in his book. In one of the early chapters he actually encourages you to do an inspiration chart and I think we be a really good exercise to people to do so whether you do it over the last year or the last month actually just plot almost like if you’re on an even keel day today which moments do you have these kind of feelings of inspiration being really high. And when do you feel the least inspired and then think about what’s happening at those moments. What’s happening at those points of inspiration. Cause I think if you did that and even if you think oh I’m not sure I find it hard to think back even if did it from now until Easter. I did it for four or five six weeks at that quite quickly you’d start to spot some patterns of gay. Oh okay I am. So when he gets inspiration from when I’m with the people or actually it’s about spending time by myself. Is it about the work that I’m doing. Which days do I end up feeling really inspired. What was I doing on that day. So that might be a practical thing to do if you’re thinking I’m not quite sure yet when I felt the most inspired is sometimes doesn’t always come top of mind. And often we think about these things a bit before we do the podcast.
Sarah: [00:16:07] So you’re getting if you want to reflect on it that might be just a useful exercise today.
Sarah: [00:16:18] So how can you find more inspiration at work. We’ve come up with five ideas of things that we’ve done from the different resources that we’ve read. Things have been recommended that we think are really useful. The readers I would say a lovely article I found from tiny Buddha. And he does this brilliant blog where she’s put 50 ways to find inspiration create explore and expand your thinking. And it’s just 50 really interesting different things today some of which we’ll talk about and some which will be more relevant here than others. If you’re thinking about very practical things you can do. Well I really liked but that list was everything felt very like OK I could do that tomorrow or next week. So that is a particularly good one for this section if you want kind of more than five ideas if you want 50 you could commit to doing one a week for the next year.
Sarah: [00:17:03] So number one in ideas is to learn something new. I think if you’re looking for inspiration. We talked before about the brain and the neuroplasticity of our brain so our brain’s ability to expand and to kind of grow in the fact that we all have that but to do that you’ve got to give it something to grow and kind of fuel from. So my example of this would be at the start of the year I trained to be a mental health first aider. It’s something I’ve mentioned previously on the podcast. And what’s really interesting about that two day experience was there was part of that. That was about learning the content of what it took to be a mental health first aid. But actually I came away from those two days feeling incredibly inspired. I was inspired by the people are spending time with by the person who is facilitating the program by some of the stories that I heard during those two days. And actually it’s not necessarily something that you would have I would have put together in terms of being a Mental Health First Aid I’m feeling inspired because you know the tough topics and it’s a tough subject and you’re talking about things where people are struggling and having really significant problems at times but through that experience I did come away feeling very inspired. It kind of gave me that real sense of energy and responsibility and almost like thirst to do even more. And I think that’s probably one of the things is when you learn something new it propels you further forward in terms of goals. Well it gives you the confidence that perhaps you could do something that you couldn’t do before and then maybe you can go even further. And I think that’s the thing that you’ve got to. There’s an action that you’ve got to take there in terms of identifying something to learn and actually going away and kind of making that happen.
Helen: [00:18:44] So number two in terms of the ideas that we’ve got is to spend time with someone else who’s got a different perspective and a really practical thing to do at work for this can often be to spend time with customers.
Helen: [00:18:57] So if you want to get more inspired about your work it’s very easy to get a bit internally focused. Often I’ve seen this a lot in the organizations that I’ve visited. And actually any opportunity that I have had to spend time with customers they’re sort of on the other side of the fence has always given me inspiration about what we could do differently and to give you some practical examples of this. And I guess because of my background and I’ve done a few different customer insight roles I have it’s potentially been a bit easier for me to do this but I think we could all do it. But when I as you two have come to him I worked in an innovation team for a period of time. We used to do these things called consumer safaris where we would basically go shopping with our customers because capital was a credit card company still is a credit card company. And so going shopping enabled us to see how people use their credit card. And I remember I was in a cafe enough to go and I sat down with a woman and we were going through her wallet and we were looking at what you know which card she’d got where and because there was something about being you know top of wallet or front of wallet and where they from cards were. Anyway her comfortable credit card was not in her wallet. And I was like was it just income we were on a shopping trip and on from Gap to one. And I was like Oh wait your credit card. And then she said it was in my freezer. OK. This was very interesting why is there a credit card in your freezer and you said All right you know because I sometimes get a bit scared about my spending. So I used to put my credit card in water and freeze it and put it in my freezer and then it would take like 24 hours to defrost before I could use it. I was like okay which then I sighed. I was like okay. And I said I always used to used to do that. So yeah I realized that I could see through the ice and I could see the number so I could still shop online. So she says so now I freeze it in orange juice.
Helen: [00:20:39] You know It was really really extreme example.
Helen: [00:20:41] But basically that led on to a whole load of inspiration for ideas for credit cards you could freeze. And I don’t mean literally I mean a bit more conceptually say like for example a credit card product that you could take out that might allow you to freeze your debt for two months for example so that you wouldn’t get charges in that period.
Sarah: [00:21:00] You control your spending essentially.
Helen: [00:21:02] Exactly. And so and I had a similar example when I was at E.On Working in an innovation team and we were looking at solar panels on roofs and how we made solar panels a bit more mass market. A lot of the people that been getting them were like these very super super green people basically or other people were having them because it would save them money and so it was a very financially driven decision. And I was talking to this woman and I said you know why do you like solar panels and I was in her house and she said I remember the statement is like oh because it’s like bathing in sunlight because the solar panels heated her water for her bath and she’s like whenever I have a bath it feels like I’m bathing in sunlight. And whilst we didn’t use that in the marketing it opened our eyes up to a whole load of more emotional language that we could use to appeal to different customer segments. And it’s just you know I’ve got multiple stories like that where when you look at something from a particular customer’s perspective in a work environment it just fuels a whole load of different ideas because you’re just in a completely different perspective of how you’re thinking about things.
Sarah: [00:22:04] Yeah I think I’ve had something similar when I worked at Sainsbury’s.
Sarah: [00:22:07] Spending time with other colleagues so lots of time things like Easter or Christmas you can spend time working in-store like you doing lots of retailers. We both did it when we were at Boots. And again you realise just the different perspectives of people all working the same company as you. And you know you’re often sitting there in both of our cases thinking about the marketing and that’s the bit that you really care about that time. But sometimes it’s so good to then go and see the reality of that marketing when you know if you’re in-store and they’ve got a massive long list of the folks to deal with and one of those things is putting up your marketing in-store and they’ve got 20 minutes to do it. Just bearing in mind when you’re creating something so that is as easy as possible and the instructions are clear you know the things that be so easy to overlook I think because you’ve not been in their shoes and we talked about empathy there the week and I think this is a perfect example of where it will build your empathy. But I think it will also build your inspiration.
Helen: [00:23:00] I was thinking actually my little girl had this dress on today. I swear I had not been designed by somebody here any time with others like it had like twelve buttons down the back. And she was like writhing about I think whoever does hold this dress needed to have spent some time with like a parent tried to put a dress on a child because there was a really good example.
Sarah: [00:23:20] It’s a bit like dungarees Max.
Sarah: [00:23:22] Max my little boy Max got some beautiful dungarees but I quite enjoy sometimes this is quite mean putting them on when he goes to nursery because I think he looks really cute.
Sarah: [00:23:30] But then I have to have I don’t love affair with consequences. Far I hope they don’t listen. Moving on.
Sarah: [00:23:38] Moving on to number three. number three is to find inspiration by doing something you haven’t done before. And this is I guess linked to the first two ideas but really taking yourself out of your work industry your work environment. Spending time with people you don’t work with. To just do something that perhaps you just would never typically do. And my example of this recently was a friend invited me to an event called Letters that changed the world. And the event was in a massive auditorium. It was actually packed like hundreds injured people there and they’d invited actors to come and read these letters as if they were the people who’d written them. And the author a guy called him and try and pronounce his name Simon see back Monty for I think probably said with a slight of an accent that I think and he was that he was talking about the book that he’d written and then the actors got up and actually read these letters out loud and it was so inspiring. You were learning something completely new that’s kind of the first idea but also just to spend time in a completely different environment. It’s not something that I would have discovered myself. My friend probably is more culturally curious than I am and it would also have been really easy to say no to you know these things where you just think oh they’re kind of nice today but you know busy and you want to try and do some exercise you want to see your family and all the things you’re trying to fit in. It’s so easy to not do these things. But every time I do I always come away it is in any way like really buzzing. And I think these are for me definitely the inspiration shots and sometimes they’re better than others and you never quite know but it’s almost like this thing of saying yes I know you often we’re encouraging people to be very thoughtful about their time. It’s okay to say no but sometimes I think you also have got to go. I am actually going to do that. It might be a little bit inconvenient it might not be easy how I spend my evening or I’m going to have to change my plans around kind to make it happen. But I certainly know that I’ve never regretted it and I’ve taken some inspiration from these things where I’ve just done something that I wouldn’t normally do. And I think to find these things and often it’s about finding somebody who’s naturally very curious always doing interesting stuff. They always seem to be ahead of the game. Following all the latest trends they know what’s going on and get them to invite you to things because often once they invite you to one thing that same friend as invite meets somebody else that also sounds really interesting. Tina she’s just got her kind of finger on the pulse of stuff that I just wouldn’t naturally come across during the course of my day to day. And again so yes again. Let just so would you know her curation so far has been very good. So I’m going to go with it.
Helen: [00:26:23] Well I think that saying yes you know earlier when I was talking about those three personality traits and that first one being called variants that is the saying yes thing isn’t it. So I think you are you are a case in point.
Helen: [00:26:33] If that person living the dream living means literally to number four then is about the icon idea for you and to cultivate your inspiration is about spending time in inspiring surroundings and I think this again goes back to the point that Sarah made from Andy Byrd’s book about that is going to look very different for different people say for some people and inspiring surrounding is going to be being in the outdoors. I remember coaching somebody for an organization a couple of months ago and they talked about they were from New Zealand and they were now in this office environment which they hated and they said they used to be a personal trainer and being outdoors was so important to them and that day for them it was about the way that they got inspired by was just like spending time outdoors in any kind of weather that is not necessarily me. For other people it might be spending time and maybe more of like a cultural in inverted commas but like galleries or arts kind of spaces and it’s not necessarily going to events there. It might just be like work and maybe there’s a coffee shop or something in that area and just that being in that kind of vibe inspires you. For me that light’s quite important to me. I guess for me to be inspired. I’ve got to be in like an area where there’s lots of light a quality to be some kind of buzz. I don’t have to be talking to the people but there’s something for me about lack of light hair. It’s very specific isn’t it. Lots of light. A bit of buzz and then just like time on my own you know I talked about earlier I think how I get inspired is by learning and connecting and coming up with ideas. And so if I’m in a really nice light space or there’s a bit of buzz and energy but no one’s actually talking to me that’s kind of like my environment for inspiration. What’s yours. I was just thinking actually I I actually.
Sarah: [00:28:14] For somebody who does really care about their environment where they work. I don’t think I mind as much in terms of my inspiration at work as long as I’ve got variety. So I just I think I probably get inspiration from Variety. I just like not being in the same place for too long. So I don’t like sitting at my desk for too long or being in a meeting for too long or I just I like moving as in I may actually like walking within my day if I can ever ever choose to get from one meeting to another or one place to do that by walking. I always will. And if that is as long as that walk is probably under a mile and a half I will avoid. I work in Central and and I will I will avoid the cheap just because I find that that kind of act of moving and going and seeing different spaces and the kind of transient nature of that again helps to kind of free my thinking for where I get to. Yeah and I do think probably slightly separately I do get some kind of inspiration shots from the kind of nature thing I really enjoy walking generally being outside spending time by the sea. You know the kind of real classic you’re like staring at the sea.
Helen: [00:29:18] I find that relaxing just not inspiring. I love to do it in front of you know family walk today but it’s just not like an inspiration space for me it’s a relaxation space. Yeah it’s interesting. But that’s the thing is this is just very personal so I think the action for people listening is to just reflect on what are those environments in which you feel most inspired and how much time are you actually spending in them. Because if you think you’ve lost some of that ability to spend time in those might want to think about how you can fit into your your agenda a bit more on a weekly basis or monthly if that’s not possible.
Sarah: [00:29:52] I think the other action from that and just thinking about it as we’re going through it is to be really specific about is it inspiration because I think your comment there about oh you know it’s not I don’t like being in these spaces I just I find it relaxing rather than inspiring is actually a really important distinction. So just make sure you’re being really clear for yourself you might enjoy something enjoying something is not the same as it being inspiring or it might be relaxing. But again that’s different to inspiring. So again noticing when you feel specifically inspired in kind of whatever the unique way that looks like for you and then thinking about everything that’s happening the work that you’re doing the environment that you’re in and being really clear that it is inspiration and not something else that can also be a good thing it is really important.
Helen: [00:30:34] And so I last idea then which brings everything together is about taking action. I don’t think inspiration is one of those like bolts of lightning that you wait for it to strike. I think that can happen sometimes you happen to just meet someone and you like wow I just I felt really inspired by that and perhaps you weren’t expecting it but if you look at things like CBT so cognitive behavioural therapy what that shows is that our behaviour has a massive impact on how we then think and feel and going back to the definitions we talked about the mindset that you take to anything the values that you have how open you are to different things to allow as much inspiration to see pain in kind of the right way for you and you can let that happen spontaneously but I always feel like that would only get you so far. And that really kind of optimize your inspiration. You need to kind of take conscious action so whether it is finding that curious friend can DV You’ve not done before. Whether we’re thinking about what’s the new thing that you can learn this year you know dedicating the time to spending time with your customers or your people you work with who work in a different area. All those things require you to kind of take a step out of the day today and do something different. And that’s actually really hard when we’ve all got think think at the start of the podcast. We’ve all got full inboxes lots of meetings to go to to proactively get to take the accountability to go in like a luxury just like I’m going to take some time out to be inspired.
Helen: [00:32:02] But if you go back to the benefits of it actually it’s better for your well-being and it helps you to achieve your goals. It makes sense.
Sarah: [00:32:08] It’s just hard to rationalize maybe in the moment and yes actually this what occurs to me is we’re talking about this. It’s often why we encourage the people who we do workshops where the development days with to do those outside of the office environment. And you can see sometimes people really struggle with that because from an efficiency perspective cost perspective. There are lots of reasons why you know if you’ve got a dream you could use why wouldn’t you use that. I completely understand the logic of that but I do see time and time again that when you’re just spending your time in a different space with maybe different people it actually has. You can see that that has an impact on how people approach the day probably what they’re prepared to think can share and how inspired people feel. I absolutely love to do some research into going actually if you were to do without a control group of doing the same day of a workshop in somebodies office whatever their office environment was whether it was the coolest office ever or a super bland office. And then if you just did it somewhere different do people feel more inspired at the end of the day. I would if I was doing a hypothesis going into that it would be people would feel more inspired because of just being somewhere different in itself has a positive impact.
Helen: [00:33:19] Maybe one day we’ll test that.
Helen: [00:33:25] So I’ll just summarize then there are five different ideas to say inspired that we’ve talked about. So the first one is to learn something new.
Helen: [00:33:33] The second idea is to get some different perspective. The third is to do something that you haven’t done before the fourth is to spend time in inspiring surroundings and the fifth is just to act. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Just act. Act now.
Helen: [00:33:51] So hopefully that has given you a few different insights I guess into how Sarah and I say inspired and also some practical ideas for you to build your inspiration into your work. And also as ever we’ve got quite a lot of resources as we’ve gone through this we’ve mentioned some of them about the research you mentioned Annie Bird’s book one other one that I want to give a brief shout out to is a really good video about how to find your creative genius. It’s by Elizabeth Gilbert who has done Yeah and it’s just a really really compelling talks about kind of what when inspiration comes because it comes in unexpected ways and and how you capture and or it is just a really really good TED talk. Highly recommend it so we’ll put the link on for that one as well it to find all these resources if you just head over to amazing if dot com and we have podcast posts for every podcast that we do so you can find a little bit of a summary and also the all the resources that you can click onto.
Helen: [00:34:44] So that is it for this week. Thank you as ever for listening. Next week we are going to talk about the benefits of slowing down. So I think with with Sarah’s holiday and a slightly quieter week for me actually while Sarah was away as well we just thought about actually there’s so many benefits of reflecting on the rhythms of your work and how you make time for inspiration. Time to think and we recognize that work is operates at a fast pace. We just wanna talk about the benefits of slowing down and also how you can maybe proactively manage the rhythms of your work to create that space for you to think. So that’s going to be next week’s topic. And as ever yet.
Helen: [00:35:19] Thank you very much for listening and thank you for all the lovely comments. I did a post that if you saw it Sara while you were away last week we’ve had so many new reviews on the podcast on iTunes and they are both super super helpful for all the algorithm me things that help was simply seen by more people that I don’t really understand. But I know that your reviews help so thank you and they are also just genuinely lovely to read. Almost every review we have is like a paragraph long and it is so much more than nice podcasts. Thanks.
Helen: [00:35:49] They always have these lovely little messages in them to us and they’re like just so lovely to read.
Helen: [00:35:56] And we just really recognize that it takes you time to work out how to do the review let alone just write it. And they are so thoughtful and kind and they make a really big difference in us being able to reach more people. They also make a really big positive difference to Sarah and I when sometimes we think because it just goes like talking to a living thing and ever since I made my pajamas in your pajamas. Bye bye now.
Helen: [00:36:20] I’m actually going to go for a bath so at least I’ll be in my dressing gown soon.
Sarah: [00:36:24] But yeah so thank you. We will leave you to your days wherever you are whatever you’re doing and we will both be back with you next week. Take care everyone. Thanks for listening. Bye.
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