LIT Podcast

Episode #25: using Inspiration to Drive You

Ready Welcome to episode 25 of LIT! My name is Ravi Toor, and I’m your host. What’s up!? Happy hump day!

Thanks for joining me again on another episode of LIT. Much like last week, today I’ll be breaking down a couple of the topics my past guests talked about in their interviews.

Last week, we covered: self-awareness, acceptance, and belief. Today, I’m covering inspiration and challenging yourself.

Let’s start with inspiration.

Many of my guests who came on LIT talked about creating their dream life, and working towards bigger goals but each of them had one thing in common. They didn’t do it alone. Ok, for the most part, they probably did the work alone or with limited help, but I’m not talking about the doing of the work instead, I’m talking about the mental help to get the work done.

I’m talking about inspiration, yo.

When you’re trying to achieve a goal, especially if it’s a pretty huge one, you’re going to end up with good times and you’re gonna end up with bad times. That’s just part of the process.

During the good times, it’s easy to keep doing without blinking an eye. You’re on cloud 9. Shit’s going fantastically. But it’s those harder times where you need the help. Those are the times when shit seems rough. It feels like you’re never going to see the other side of the tunnel.

You ask yourself questions like: “is this worth it?”, “am I crazy?”, “do I even know what I’m doing?”, “is this just a pipe-dream?”.

Or, you ask yourself the most common question every person asks themselves when dealing with difficulty during the process: “should I give up?”.

Now, at this stage, you have 3 options: keep going, give up or do absolutely nothing and continue to see the same results.

The last 2 options are pretty easy to do but super hard on your psyche. Let me clarify. The action in the moment to give up or to do nothing is really easy – you just give the fuck up or don’t do shit. But the aftermath or the effects on your psyche are pretty huge and very negative.

When you give up, or when you do nothing different, you’re opening yourself up to terrible self-talk that withstands the test of time. You weaken your ability to maintain resilience when tested with struggle of any type after the initial give up or doing nothing, and you maintain negative conditioning.

Now, I could stay here with all the negative effects you can experience when giving up or staying the same, but that’s not what this episode is about, so let’s move to what happens when you do keep going.

When you decide to keep going, you create massive impact in your life but more so, for your psyche. When you choose to keep going even when faced with struggle, you build up your leadership skills, strengthen your resilience, become more creative, especially when it comes to problem-solving, and, the best part, you maintain your goal and continue to get closer and closer to achieving it. Those are just some examples of the simplest benefits you experience when you keep going.  

But how the fuck does someone keep going when everything is stacked against them?

That’s where inspiration comes in. Just like my past guests, and you, I too have come up against struggle, hard times, times of doubt and challenges that I didn’t expect while changing careers, starting my business, and while trying to create a social impact.

All of these changes or times of growth and challenges required something a little bit more than just head down, nose to the grindstone. This type of growth requires some inspo, yo. 

That means, you need something, a lil umph to help you get through the tough times. You need some inspiration to spark creativity so you can get resourceful with your options.

You need to know someone’s been in your shoes before and they’ve made it out of the shit with more than just the shirt on their back. 

Inspiration is oxygen for your psyche.

Inspiration is fuel for your motivation.

Inspiration is an asset to your goal-achievement.

When you look at people who’ve achieved success, you can see lots of commonalities amongst all of them. One of them is none other than inspiration. Every single person who creates a path for themselves, who tries to achieve a goal, who challenges themselves, who’ve pursued their passion, who… basically lives and breathes, uses inspiration to help them through different stages of their goal-achievement. 

Inspiration comes in different forms. It can be 1:1 work with a paid professional, it can be seminars, events, speeches, right? Those are some of the basics we all think about but there are other sources of inspo out there too.

Music! Music is a fucking huge inspiration bank. Think about all the songs you’ve listened to in the past or even in the last 24 hours. Which songs do you play when you need a little more pep in your step? What do you play when you’re feeling down and need some turnaround? What do you play when you’re having a shitty day and you just need a break? Everyone has a song or a few that are part of their unconscious resource bank. That means you unconsciously gravitate to these songs when you need specific emotions satisfied in your life.

Now, in that same context, think about how music can impact your goal-achievement. If you’re feeling shitty, you’re probably in a low state. When you’re in a low state, you’re less creative, you’re less willing, and your perception is skewed. You’re focused on the negative and so, opportunity is less obvious. In sum, you’re less likely to get closer to goal achievement. In this time, you have to make a choice… do nothing, give up or… do something about it.  

To create change, and to heighten your physical and emotional state, throw on something that’s got inspirational words and rad beats. When you do this, you in the moment create change – change your mindset, emotional state and, by default, your physical state. When you play inspirational music with badass lyrics, you’re most apt to keep going vs giving up. Music is basic food for your soul. 

Ok, but maybe music isn’t your thing. Movies, though… movies! Holy fuck, movies and series really are a huge resources of inspiration. I mean, fuck man, think of The Pursuit of Happiness or the series Escape at Dannemora. Those 2 are totally different types of media. One’s a movie, the other’s a series.

Two completely different storylines. The Pursuit of Happiness shows the life struggles of a father and son as they encounter different issues in life and how they maintain progression towards the ultimate goal of freedom and goal-achievement. Escape at Dannemora is about 2 inmates who show creativity, thought, action and persistence towards a goal – even if the goal was to break out of jail.

All the characters mentioned for both, show, in different ways, resilience, creativity, passion, and determination. I mean, just those 2 medias have a wealth of inspriation that’ll get you feeling like you can do just about any fucking thing.

But that’s not your only bank. LIT is a resource, right? Sometimes it’s just shits and giggles but other times, you’re listening for a purpose. You’re hoping to gain insight, inspiration, clarity, direction, right? Podcasts are a huge resource of inspiration. Now, you’ve got real people talking about real things. There’s really no status-quo when it comes to podcasting. So, you’re getting real inspiration from real people.

The other sources of inspiration are books, other people, community, kids, nature, YouTube, and inspiring Instagram accounts to name a few.

So what’s the point? The point is this… there’s inspiration all around you. You don’t have to pay to be inspired, instead, you have to be open to different sources. That means … queue topic 2… challenge yourself and your mindset.

Being stuck in a fixed mindset is a dangerous place. A fixed mindset is a fixed perception of yourself and your abilities. When you’re in this mindset, you’re typically focused on your problems, and the eventual failures of life. That means you’re limited to what you open yourself up to. When you come from a place of a growth mindset, you open your perception. You literally change your reality because all of a sudden there’s more opportunities. You’re open to more things. You have the ability to grow. So when you challenge yourself where you’re at, you’re operating from a growth mindset, knowing you can do better or accomplish more.

Coupling that mindset with inspiration derived from various types of sources, you have the ability to learn, grow and excel in different areas of your life.

So, today, I challenge you to challenge yourself. Look at an area of your life where you feel like it’s impossible to change. Look at your mindset surrounding that particular subject matter. Now, we know change is constant so it’s impossible not to change. Therefore, when you challenge your perception or your reality on a particular subject matter, you automatically open up the doors to receiving greater knowledge. And that source of knowledge, growth, and expansion will most definitely come from the next movie you watch, or the next song you listen to, the next book you read or the next LIT episode you listen to.

Remember, the more you challenge yourself, just like the guests I’ve had the show, the more you grow.

You don’t have to go at it alone, your world is full of inspiration if you’re willing and able to see it.

So, let the inspiration flow on tap today.