Tag Archives: #Motivation

Moti­va­tion vs Inspiration

Moti­va­tion and inspi­ra­tion are two words that are often used inter­change­ably. How­ever, there is a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence, and under­stand­ing this dif­fer­ence makes a whole lot dif­fer­ence in the qual­ity of your life.

Moti­va­tion is based on lack

Moti­va­tion is what you feel when you hit the bot­tom. Or when you hear a moti­va­tional speaker talk about how he dou­bled his income by prac­tic­ing his suc­cess prin­ci­ples. It’s based on lack. You seek out some­thing you don’t pos­sess. That is, your think­ing mind seeks out what it thinks miss­ing in you.

So when you are moti­vated, you are dri­ven to work hard. For a while, this is great. But soon, you run out of gas. The stress of pres­sur­ing your­self to be some­one you are not wears you out. This is why few peo­ple suc­ceed with moti­va­tion in the long run.

It doesn’t mean your willpower is weak. Moti­va­tion has innate prob­lems. If you intu­itively felt weary or even depressed at moti­va­tional arts (you know, like the photo of a climber with the word “Suc­cess” or “Per­sis­tence”) or felt uncom­fort­able with moti­va­tion speeches and slo­gans, you are not alone and you are quite keen at sens­ing some lies.

Moti­va­tion is more or less manip­u­la­tive. Many orga­ni­za­tions and their man­agers use moti­va­tion to push peo­ple to their goals, not their own.

Inspi­ra­tion is based on who you really are

Inspi­ra­tion, on the other hand, is what you feel when you read some­thing that deeply res­onates within you. You might also feel inspired with music, arts, or being in nature. I’m talk­ing about the kind of writ­ing, music, and arts that remind you who you really are on the soul level. Or you may be inspired when you are in love.

We are essen­tially the soul in the body. But we often for­get this. This phys­i­cal world is full of dis­trac­tions, and there are var­i­ous peer pres­sures to stay in the social cir­cles based on mate­ri­al­ism. Deep down, how­ever, we never for­get who we really are. And this sense of self real­iza­tion comes to sur­face when we expe­ri­ence some­thing as beau­ti­ful as we knew in the spir­i­tual world. This is inspiration.

When you are inspired, you are empow­ered. You are becom­ing who you really are, so there is no manip­u­la­tive pres­sure. Instead there is expan­sive joy. This soul level joy con­tin­ues as long as you stay inspired, and los­ing this inspi­ra­tion is the last thing you want. Unfor­tu­nately, we still do lose our inspi­ra­tion — again, this phys­i­cal world is very dis­tract­ing — but even when you do, the expe­ri­ence leaves you feel­ing warm inside.

Moti­va­tion and inspi­ra­tion in the real world

Not many peo­ple use these two words with clear con­scious­ness, so you need to be your own author­ity to tell which is which. Just because a book says it’s “inspi­ra­tional” doesn’t mean it is — it may be motivational.

For instance, I hap­pened to see an “inspi­ra­tional” web­site that said, “This is your sec­ond act…your chance to live large so that you don’t wake up one morn­ing, decades too late, won­der­ing what the hell just hap­pened.” Do you see how it uses the fear tac­tic and sense of lack to get peo­ple to action? I call this moti­va­tional. A bad one at that — I don’t like the age dis­crim­i­na­tion it’s based on.

The exam­ple of inspi­ra­tional resource is hard to quote because each per­son is dif­fer­ent so each per­son finds dif­fer­ent things to be inspir­ing. For me, Mar­i­anne Williamson’s fol­low­ing quote has been super inspi­ra­tional. As I wrote in my eBook, it changed my life:

“Our deep­est fear is not that we are inad­e­quate.
Our deep­est fear is that we are pow­er­ful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our dark­ness that most fright­ens us.
We ask our­selves, Who am I to be bril­liant, gor­geous, tal­ented, fabulous?

Actu­ally, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your play­ing small does not serve the world.
There is noth­ing enlight­en­ing about shrink­ing so that other peo­ple won’t feel inse­cure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as chil­dren do.
We were born to make man­i­fest the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in every­one.
And as we let our own light shine, we uncon­sciously give other peo­ple per­mis­sion to do the same.
As we are lib­er­ated from our own fear, our pres­ence auto­mat­i­cally lib­er­ates others.”

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