Raise your hand if you’ve ever wanted to be inspiring. Even just a little bit. Sometimes we’re fooled into thinking only ‘great’ people can inspire, whatever great means to you.
I dug around and found out that inspiring someone, like having charisma, is totally do-able, even for us ordinary folk. Here are 11 awesome things you can do to inspire others – if the motivation takes you:
- Be inspired yourself. Look for ideas, environments and knowledge that you find inspiring. Fill your own well.
- Then share it. Share your wisdom from your own unique point of view. People love to learn about what inspires their inspirer. You can do this through:
- Blog posts
- Video posts
- Social media posts
- Media interviews
- Mastering your craft
- Developing new products
- Be vulnerable. Be willing to share your failures as well as your successes. Not only will others relate to you better, but also vulnerability will increase your own sense of worthiness and authenticity. Some guidelines on sharing your vulnerability:
- Before you begin, be clear on your own boundaries. Very NB.
- Determine what you would like your friends, fans and family to know: your creative process? what keeps you up at night? what it’s really like in your business? the pressures of running a home? what it’s like to have a short attention span? #random
- Remind yourself that it’s healthy to accept help from others.
- Speak up. People need to know two things: where you stand on a given topic, and where they stand with you. Share your opinion. Be willing to make mistakes.
- Challenge people. When you challenge others to do their best, they will be better for it. Gently try it with your staff, your clients…, even your spouse.
- Read. Stay informed. Share what you read with others. Do this through conversation with colleagues, clients and through social media. Perhaps write a review of something that inspired you and publish it on your blog or your YouTube channel.
- Care. As the saying goes, people don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care. Corny but true.
- Develop your own guidelines for donating to charities you genuinely connect with so that you’re able to confidently evaluate requests for donations (in either time or resources).
- Treat everyone equally and acknowledge their contributions.
- Reach for the stars. No-one will really be inspired by a person who resigns themselves to ‘reality’. What do you want to become famous for? Aim high.
- Build your resilience. Displaying just how much you can handle – physically, mentally, emotionally – can be awe-inspiring to others. Don’t let life stop you.
- Stay true to who you are. There’s no need to surrender to media pressure or other people’s (or your) idea of who you should be. Your achievements are because of who you are, not who you believe you must become.
- Keep your promises. Enough said.
Do you have any ideas you’d like to add to the list? What inspires you? I love your responses. Even more than I love Godiva chocolate.
Okay…
I love your responses.
