Changing lanes and Twisting Turns

Douglas Clark
-Head writer, The Inspiration Engine

What do you do when life makes you change directions?  We all have plans, or at least we should.  Dreams and goals motivate us and drive us forward; otherwise we’d all be sitting on the couch watching TV.  And if we’re smart, we take that motivation fostered by our dreams and goals and work toward success.  Sometimes it takes a lifetime to achieve, and sometimes we never quite actually get there, but part of the value of the whole endeavor is the experience we gain along the way.  But what happens when those dreams and goals become unattainable?  What if after you’ve put forth so much effort, time, and energy you realize it will never happen? 

You have to change lanes.  The old saying is ‘life’s a journey, not a destination’ but it’s really easy to use the analogy of a life being like a highway.  Sometimes, while driving down that highway of life, you have to change lanes just to keep going.  It might be unpleasant, and it might certainly be not what you wanted, but changing direction, focus, your goal, you might just realize you were headed in the wrong direction all that time before.  My greatest fear is that I won’t live up to my potential.  It bothers me sometimes and I worry that my choices have all been wrong and I’m wasting my time in life.  But then there are some shining examples in my life of greatness (not trying to toot my own horn here) and I realize that it isn’t all bad, some of it is pretty great. 

But how do we know what direct to take if our purpose in life is now different, changed or even gone?  That can be a hard question to ask and answer.  Remember that your life is the sum of all your experiences.  If you take a look at them and realize those experiences are negative, it’s time to reevaluate yourself, your choices and your motivations.  That new path could finally lead you to a more positive life.  If your experiences are overwhelmingly positive, yet you feel lost because your goals are now unattainable, remember that you are the master of your own life.  You can choose a new path, one that matters to you, has meaning and depth.  Now it might take a while for that path to reveal itself, but keeping an open mind is an absolute necessity. 

If you’re not paying attention to exit signs, you might just blow past your next great adventure without even realizing it!

Thanks for reading!

Perseverance Pays Off

What keeps you going?  How do you go on when you know it may never get any better than this? 

Hope.  As corny as that sounds, it’s true.  It’s very rare that you find a person who’s life is absolutely nothing but despair, or total happiness.  Life has a way of fluctuating and changing without you even lifting a finger to help it.  But if you don’t even try to direct it on a course that you can live with, it will become oppressive.  That attempt at driving your life forward can be hard, but it can also be rewarding. 

Those clichés about ‘giving it your all’ or ‘never giving up’ and the like are clichés because people have used those thoughts and ideas to persist, strive, endure.  The mere act of living through hard times is an act of perseverance.  Now, I’m not talking about continuing on a path you know will lead to failure.  I’m not suggesting that you take on an endeavor you know to be fool-hearty and just shlog through hoping it will all work out in the end.  No, what I’m talking about is staying focused on your dreams, accepting your limitations, learning to deal with them and exploring new ways to achieve your goals. 

Remember, life can and does change if you change the way you look at it.  Striving for the ideal is motivational, comparing your success to the past is logical, and driving yourself to not give in to despair will help in your longevity.  Perseverance isn’t just about not giving up, it’s about doing better with what you have, even if what you have is less than yesterday.  Tomorrow can be better, you just have to give it your all.

  

You gotta believe you’re awesome to Be awesome.

Dreaming Should Lead To Doing

I sometimes let my imagination run wild.  To some that’s a good thing; to some that’s a bad thing.  There are times when letting your mind wander to far off places is perfectly fine, healthy even.  But there are also times when staying focused and getting the job done is just as important.  You’ve probably heard the old saying “you’ve got your head in the clouds” or “all work and no play makes you a dull person”, well if you’ve ever heard those being applied to yourself, you’ve probably taken the dreaming or doing way too far.

It’s all about balance (aren’t most things…?).  There are times when I know I should be Doing something, working hard at finishing a task or a goal I’ve set for myself.  An excellent point is my writing.  For years I’ve written short stories and dreamed of being a published author.  But I never submitted anything.  Dreaming far outweighed the Doing in that case.  So finally, I submitted several of my stories because it became important to have that balance between Dreaming and Doing.  I felt a sense of accomplishment I could never have gotten by just writing alone.  But see, that’s where the balance comes from.  Experiencing both is far more rewarding and enriching than either on its own.

I say, let your imagination run wild, but keep your nose to the grind stone.  They both have their merits, you just need to balance them out.   Case in point, in my effort to be artistic and creative, but also productive, I designed a shirt that I very much like.  Check it out on this link:

  (   Mystic Face  )

If you’re lacking inspiration, concentrate on being imaginative, when the spark hits you let it flow.  Just remember to make time to actually Do the work involved in making your dream a reality too.  Trust me, it will be worth it.

Your Mission, If you Choose to Accept it…

Douglas Clark

-Head writer, The Inspiration Engine

Have you ever thought or felt like you were wandering through life and things were just happening to you?  Have you ever felt as if you had no power to direct the course you were heading toward?   Ever feel as if you had no choice in the events and scenery in your field of view?  Ever just feel totally directionless?

I have and I hated it.

There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re a spectator in your own life.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Not at all!  What you need is a mission.  Something that drives you and fills you with motivation and passion, something that spurs you forward, regardless of the financial gains or losses, regardless of the snickering or derision of others.  Something you’d do for free, or something you’d do even if YOU had to pay to do it.  That’s a passion.  Making your passion your mission in life gives you direction and focus. 

But how do you find your mission?  For me, it took a long, long time to recognize something that was right in front of me the whole time.  I love to be creative and artistic, mostly with writing, but self-expression has been a growing passion of mine for a long time.  I only recognized it when I seriously examined my life, my desires, my longings, and even the things that I hated and detested.  After meditating and contemplating on all of those things it hit me that self-expression was what I wanted.  Some way, somehow I needed to make that my mission.

So now I write, I create, I express.  That’s my mission.  If you have a mission you know it drives you and you can draw strength from it.  If you are searching for a mission, you need to really look at what you like, care about, gets your blood pumping, makes you tingle and excited.  Follow those feelings and your mission will present itself.  After that, the rest is up to you. 

Choose your mission!

How Do You Stir Up The Doldrums?

Douglas Clark

-Head writer, The Inspiration Engine

Sometimes I get stuck in a rut.  I hate to admit it, but it’s true.  For all of my own self-motivation and determined fortitude, I sometimes slack off.  Actually I probably do it a whole lot more than I am willing to admit to you or myself.  I’m not proud of that though.  In fact, sometimes I’ve actually sat down and calculated all the ‘wasted time’ during a week I could have used for something productive.  Yeah, that number can sometimes be staggering.  So what is it about life and responsibilities that fosters procrastination and the blasé feeling of the Doldrums?  Could it be disinterest? Or stress?  Possibly anxiety and lack of ability?  I think any one of those or a combination is definitely possible. However, I also think that the major cause is Overload. 

Think of all the things you have to do during just one single week.  For me, well, I work full time, I’m a single parent, I’m writing a master’s thesis, I’ve started my own small business, I write a blog, I’m writing a novel, I’m attempting to have a social life and engage in fun activities and hobbies.  Okay, I must be nuts!  Overload is a very real and likely possibility pretty much every day.  So with all that pressure, self-imposed and otherwise, it makes sense that even for just a little while during the day, you might just not want to ‘care’, even if it’s for a few minutes staring off into outer space.  It happens.  But what do you do when you’re so overloaded, you seem to get nothing done?  I realized recently that I was overloaded to the point of distraction.  In fact I was even getting distracted from my distractions.  It was disconcerting to say the least.  How did I fix it? 

Well, the first thing I did was admit I was overloaded and was wasting time in the doldrums.  I then picked ONE project that I knew was a major commitment and mental drain.  For me it is/was my thesis.  I committed all my free time to actually getting it finished and ready for submission.  Except for my daughter, I didn’t worry about all the rest (even though I knew they were all very important).  I now stand 99% ready to send it in to my review board.  As I committed all my ‘doldrums’ time to completing that literary monster I felt a relief, not because I was working hard, but because I could see the end coming up fast.  It let me know I would soon have a large chunk of my mind back to allocate to other things, or just give everything else a little wiggle room in my mind. Anxiety and stress immediately leveled off.

So, I learned the time old adage is true, ‘if you want something done, give it to a busy person’, but I also learned that wasting time and procrastinating only makes long projects longer.  And who wants that?

Thanks for reading.

Questions and comments are welcome.

You Gotta Have Fun

Sometimes there’s just no substitute for a good time.  No matter how focused, determined, motivated, or dedicated you are, you have to put it aside and just do it.  Fun means different things to different people, obviously, but there’s a difference between ‘FUN’ activities and ‘Relaxing’ activities.  Sitting at the park or on the beach is relaxing but how fun is that compared to riding on a wicked cool roller coaster, or going down a water slide, or even riding your bike?  Okay, I’ll admit that ‘what is fun’ can be very subjective.  I’m sure some people would even argue doing algebra equations is ‘fun’ but I think the majority of us would disagree with that little bit of logic.  I think fun should be a heart racing, laugher inducing, or wide-eyed wondering activity.

For some people, fun is a bit of an elusive creature.  Social awkwardness and timidness can get in the way.  Fear of embarrassment also makes it hard.  One major thing I’ve noticed is the fall back excuse of “I didn’t have anyone to go with”.  That’s the worst isn’t it?  Ever go to the movies by yourself?  I have and you know what, it’s great.  Movies are meant to be watched, so if you had someone with you there, you ‘d basically have to ignore them the whole time.  That’s why a movie is a terrible ‘date’ idea.  Anyway, doing things alone can be daunting, scary even.  Sometimes it might seem damn near impossible.  If you have trouble trying things all by yourself, invite someone to come along, even if they probably won’t be interested.  At least you tried.

Sometimes inviting someone to go have ‘fun’ can lead to interesting conversations and suggestions.  For a long time I always wanted to go surfing but never actually went because I’d have to go by myself.  One day I was talking about it with a friend and he invited me to go with him.  I had a blast.  Now, surfing is hard, and I still suck, but I went and had fun.  Now I can go by myself and still enjoy it!  Right now I’m thinking of learning how to fly a plane.  I think it will be hard, but really Fun.  But I won’t know until I try. 

An Extraordinary Life

Are you living the life you always dreamed of?  Probably not, and at the risk of sounding like some kind of salesman, I say that you could.  You just need to learn how.  But unlike that sleazy salesman, I’m not offering a quick and easy trick to get that extraordinary life.  Unfortunately, it will take a lot of hard work.  Think about that phrase for a moment, ‘An Extraordinary Life.’  Extra-ordinary, as in more than ordinary, meaning more than the same old same old. Well it’s that ‘extra’ that is the real trick isn’t it (no pun intended)?  Extra hard work, extra dedication, extra attention, extra drive, extra effort, extra need, extra want, and extra motivation; these are just a few of the elements necessary to achieve that Extraordinary life.  Do you have what it takes?  You probably won’t know unless you try.

Making the attempt is the first step.  However, whoever said the first step was the hardest might not have been completely accurate.  It gets harder the farther you go, but guess what, if you really try, if you really learn from your experience, you get better as you go along.  So even though the steps are more difficult, you’re better from the experiences and you will be up for the challenge. 

Sitting in your office chair, standing in front of a burger grill, hauling trash, folding laundry; are these extraordinary jobs, careers that will propel you to new heights?  Probably not, and if they don’t sound like pulse-pounding, heart-throbbing events, you might want to find that motivation to excel.  I’m not talking about quitting a job you hate for the hell of it.  I am saying you should find a calling that means something to you and pursue it.  You might find that it isn’t even your job you need to change, just your hobby.  I’ve known for a while there is so much more to life than I’m experiencing.  What I’m starting to learn is how to go after those experiences.  I’m learning how to reach out and grab the world and earn that special something that continually spurs me on for even grander and greater experiences so that in the end, I lived an Extraordinary Life. 

If you boil it down and really examine life, the only one really truly standing in your way is you.  So get out of your own way and lead yourself to a life less ordinary.  It only takes a little bit Extra ;-)

The Book of Life

From a very young age I’ve always thought of my life as like a book.  Events and experiences filled the pages as life goes on, eventually creating chapters, some better than others, some funny or sad, meaningful or boring, but all part of me.  I started reading a lot when I was about 12 so I’m sure that had a lot to do with this mindset.  I was fascinated by the whole process of writing and it almost boggled my mind that a writer could actually put together a coherent story, sometimes spanning hundreds of pages and make it entertaining.  I thought that it would be cool to try that too.  I first put pen to paper to tell an original story when I was about 16.  I haven’t stopped since.  Granted, I’ve procrastinated and went years without writing an original work.  For that I have excuses, but no good reasons. 

Okay, so why is this important and how does it relate to life?  For a while I listlessly meandered though my life, the chapters I was ‘writing’ were boring, uninspiring and sometimes even destructive.  I came to the realization that if I didn’t change things, the rest of my ‘Life Book’ would be akin to a horror story.  Not one of ghoulish monsters and cheap theater scare tactics, but one of failure, waste of potential, minimal effort, and loss.  That horror jolted me into action.  People talk about awakenings and how they see things with new clarity; that’s exactly what it was like for me.  I learned to crave the new, desire experiences to help me grow and evolve as a person.  Writing those ‘chapters’ became inspiring, motivating, cathartic.  By filling those pages of my life with valuable and positive experiences I knew I was living a life worth living. 

Like many people, I hope my Book of Life is a long, awe-inspiring masterpiece that provides me with a margin of immortality.  I don’t have to be ultra-famous (but it would be nice), I don’t have to be ultra-rich (but it would help) but I do want to be the best I can be.  I know that sounds cliché, but if one day, I looked back on my life, and ‘read’ through my book and saw that those pages were left blank, or filled with apathy, despair, and waste, I think that would be the true horror.  At least making the attempt, I know I tried.  If I live up to my own potential, I can be the greatest asset in my own life.  That is true for anyone!  

Own the Moment!

Everyone has fear.  Everyone has doubts and trepidation of the unknown.  Trying new things, going through a routine or situation totally unfamiliar can be unsettling and unpleasant.  Many people shy away from the new, the ‘out of the ordinary’ for that very reason.  I know; I was one of them.  I used to be the perennial wall flower.  I used to be so shy it was crippling.  The fear of failure, the anxiety of not knowing the outcome, the inexperience of dealing with things ‘on the fly’ all got in the way of my quest to tackle life and make it not only one worth living, but one worth telling about too.  As a writer, I feel I need experiences to enrich and enliven my stories, my characters, narrative, plot, and as an aside and a bit selfishly, broaden my own personal horizons too.  But how can you broaden your horizons if you’re afraid to reach for the edge of the world?  You can’t.

            So what do you do?  Socialization was an agonizing mystery to me for the longest time, but I really wanted to get to know people.  I used to think to myself, “It would be so easy to talk to people, if only they’d start the conversation…”  And that’s when it hit me!  What if everyone else felt that way too?  What if I could take that burden away from them?  It would all be so much easier.  But how would I, a cripplingly shy person start a conversation?  The answer is simple.  I would have to Own the Moment!  For just one minute, when I said “Hi”, “How’s it going?”, or “What’s going on?” I could be that socially competent, confident guy everyone likes to be around.  And if I failed, who cares.  That attempt would count as my victory and I’d try again. 

            That one moment where I committed to my goal, focused, determined, unafraid, would drive me.  That brief but intense feeling of living, experiencing every ounce of vitality and life would be my inspiration.  I forced myself to try and interact with whoever I was near, simply for the practice, and the experience.  And those times where I least felt like putting myself on the line, possibly making a fool of myself or screwing up, that’s the time I committed to Owning the Moment even more.  It’s that damned Comfort Zone again, if you don’t push on it, it shrinks.  It’s relentless that way.  But so must we! 

            There’s an old saying: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away”.  It’s true and I think it means that the experiences you have can and will affect you deeply if you let it.  But there’s one thing I’ve learned about life.  It doesn’t just happen to you; you have to make it happen.  Motivate yourself.  Be the Breathtaker and Own the Moment!

Join In!

What does it mean to get involved?  Do you have to be a group organizer or the life of the party?  Does it mean rallying a ton of your friends to get things started, or go door to door getting people motivated?  Or is it something simple?  At the very least joining in means doing something, anything other than the same old stuff.  Have you ever thought about doing something that looked fun or interesting but ‘never got around to it’?  How horrible would you feel if you spent the rest of your life thinking about it and then never did it?  Regret is so very heavy; carrying it around with you can be de-motivating, especially if it’s for regret of not having ever tried.  I’d hate that.  Joining in can simply mean getting involved with your life. 

An old girlfriend of mine, who I’m still friends with, has a self-realized joy of wanderlust.  She can’t stay in one place for very long before she needs to go explore something new.  I’m intent on learning the saxophone, even though I have no music ability whatsoever.  I’ve said many times to my friends, family and anyone who listens that often times it’s the attempt that counts, not the result.  Attempting is doing, and doing is winning.  Why, because at the end of the day, if you never even tried, you’ve already failed. 

Getting involved in your own life is probably the most rewarding thing you can do.  I’ve watched as friends followed their dreams with fierce determination and drive and succeed!  It’s an awesome thing.  I’ve also watched friends languish with inactivity and malaise, with the constant complaint that ‘life sucks’ or ‘nothing ever changes’.  It’s actually pretty sad to see.  Remember, the common denominator throughout your entire life is you.  Make that factor a force to be reckoned with!

Motivation and Desire

Have you ever noticed that sometimes, inspiration isn't enough?  Sometimes you can have that killer, awesome idea, but you just can't do anything with it.  How is that possible?  I think it has a lot to do with motivation and desire.  Having a great imagination and inspiration are key elements to the creative process, but they aren't the whole story.  Motivation and desire are the 'action' elements of creativity.  Those two things are the ones that get you off your butt and actually 'doing'.  I've had incredible ideas and then done Nothing with them. Why?  Because I wasn't motivated.  The idea was there, but nothing about my life and my situation powered the drive to actually go out and do something with it. 

To actually act upon your inspiration and creativity, you have to get to what H. Peyton Young called the 'tipping point.'  He was discussing communities and their moments of change, but the same can hold true for individuals.  You need a shock or disruption to really get you moving.  Now it's true that sometimes inspiration alone can be that shock, but many times it isn't.  I think that forces in your life, be they external, but more likely internal, are instrumental in implimenting change.  Acting upon the inspiration and creativity will change your life if you let it.  I know for myself, when I combine inspiration and creativity with motivation and drive, I get a sense of almost euphoric possibility.  That's an awesome feeling.  If you've experienced it, you know what I mean, if you haven't, challenge yourself and you might feel it too. 

Give it a shot, you've got nothing to lose...