Inspire, and be Inspired

Find someone to emulate.  Someone who embodies everything you want to be in a certain area of your life.  Someone who lives the life you want to live.

When you find that person, learn everything about them you can.  Consume all their content.  Understand their lives.  Understand what work they’ve done, what sacrifices they’ve made, and most importantly, what the choices have cost them.  If, after doing all that, you still want to emulate them, then approach them as a mentor.  Ask them if they mentor people.  If they are interested in having someone learn from them.  If they are, then you are good to go.

But it may not be that easy.  I was rejected many times before I found my mentor.  I saw great people who inspired me at a show, or at a speech they gave, and went up to them as a complete stranger and asked if they would give up some of their time to pass on what they know.  They said no.  That was hard, but I didn’t take it personally, nor should you.  Perhaps they weren’t at the right place or time in their lives to pass on what they knew in any way other than what they were doing.  That’s OK.  I kept looking until I found my mentor, Warren Rustand.

Even then, he initially said no, but I persisted.  It took over 6 months, over two dozen emails, and a 27 page letter to get him to say yes.  The best part is all that persistent effort was worth it.  Who I am today is a result of the work I’ve put in, but it’s much easier to get where you want to go when someone who’s been there shows you the way.

This result verified a philosophy I learned a long time ago:  Find the person who is the best in the world at whatever you want to do.  Pay them whatever they ask to pass on that knowledge, because whatever it costs you in the short term is a fraction of what it would cost you in the time, effort, and energy that you would otherwise have to pay to learn it yourself.

Finding a mentor is important, but even more important is the impact that others close to us have on our results.  Stop for a moment and take a look around.  Who do you choose to spend time with?  Not just a mentor or coach, but everyone.  Who do you surround yourself with?  Who is closest to you in all areas of your life?

Write it down.  Who are the 5 people you spend the most time with in your life.  Then expand or break it down into the 5 people you spend time with each of the areas of your life – Personal/Family/Business (work)/Community.  Now coldly evaluate those people.

Are there any toxic influences there?  Is there anyone there you should spend less time with?  Anyone there you should cut out of your life?  If there are people you want to stop associating with, then who are you going to replace those people with?  Also, who are the great people you spend time with?  The people who make you strive for more, the people who help you get to the next level?  Now that you are aware who is good for you, and who isn’t, make the decision to spend more time with those who lift you higher, rather than tear you down to their level.

This takes me back to an old experiment that was conducted on social behaviour of monkeys.  There were 5 monkeys in a zoo enclosure, and in that enclosure was a flight of stairs.  At the top of that flight of stairs experimenters placed some bananas.  As you know, monkeys love bananas.  As the monkeys tried to climb the stairs, the experimenters prevented the monkeys from reaching the bananas by spraying them with a firehose of water.  This knocked them back forcefully, but didn’t injure them.  One after another, they tried to climb the stairs, until finally they gave up.  Having learned the lesson not to climb the stairs or you get sprayed in the face, they stopped trying to reach the bananas.

A few days later one of the monkeys was swapped to another enclosure, and a new monkey was introduced.  The experimenters again placed some bananas at the top of the stairs, and the new monkey immediately tried to get them.  This time, however, the other monkeys held him back.  Beating and holding him down until he learned not to climb the stairs.  It didn’t matter why, he learned that behaviour from the group.

One by one, the original monkeys were swapped out of the enclosure, until there were no more original monkeys left.  All of the monkeys now in the enclosure were introduced after the last water blast had stopped, but they had all been trained by their peers not to climb the stairs.  So even though not a single drop of water prevented them from climbing the stairs, the peer to peer influence did.

I retell this story because from my experience, you become a reflection of those you spend the most time with.  You start to take on the beliefs of your group.  This is your circle of influence.  Your happiness, your economic situation, and your other relationships will begin to either move in the right direction, or rapidly fall off a cliff.  The people you choose to spend your time with have the greatest impact on your life.

Another way to think about your circle of influence is across all of the four main buckets of life there are other people you can help, and who can help you.  Let’s keep this simple and focus on three more groups of five:  Those people on the same level as you, those people on a level above you, and those people on the level you were at not so long ago.

The five people who are at the same level as you are are your five peers.  These can be people of like mind and station in life, whom you admire and are good for you.  Then there are the five people who are above you, who are operating on another level, whom you want to become like.  These five people can show you the way, and lift you up to their level the more time you spend with them, and the more you learn from them.

But there is another five to bear in mind.  The five people who are not at your place and experience in life.  They potentially strive to be where you are.  You can reach back, invest your time, and lift them up to your station and share your experience.  You will be amazed by how much you gain, by giving back and helping others rise up.

When you find someone worthy of following, worthy of your time and effort to emulate, ask them the question of who is their inspiration.  You will be amazed to find that the person who inspired you, is also inspired by others.  Almost nothing is unique or original, and there was someone before them who lived the values you now hold in reverence.  Find out who it was who inspired them, and study your inspiration’s inspiration.  That way it will give you not only a common ground with your inspiration, but may also give you insights and something to take away that you didn’t know existed.

The good news is wisdom is a framework, and what I know of this framework I’m doing my best to share here, but I hope you only use this as a starting point.  If you take the time to teach yourself, because wisdom is seldom taught, the steps that need to be pursued to achieve some level of wisdom, you will learn there are commonalities at it’s core.

I can’t say I know all the steps in the framework, as this is my journey too, but continuous learning is one of them.  I hope to keep learning, keep striving, and learning even more.  But when you start, as I am, you must always be humble in your learnings, and follow the wisdom of those who inspire you.

Whether that be the wisdom of a great athlete and the steps they take to achieve greatness.  Or a great preacher, who’s religious knowledge is vast and can be applied even in today’s crazy world.  Or some other leader who is worthy of your admiration, understand the steps they take, and the actions they perform to become all they can become, and be everything you admire.

Whenever, and wherever you are investing your time, keep in mind the fact you only want to spend time with quality people.  You only want to spend time with people who are worthy of it.  Now don’t fall down the slippery slope of judgment, as it’s easy to dismiss the diamond in the rough.  It’s easy to be put off by initial impressions, but keep an open mind.  You can usually tell who is a good person, and who isn’t.  Just do your best to only spend time with quality people.

The final step on inspiration is not only where you find it, but becoming it as well.  In order to be inspiring, you have to inspire, and this comes down to your communication.  If you’re speaking to someone, when you open your mouth, you tell them who you are.  Do you swear?  Throw away words needlessly?  Talk in unformed thoughts?  This will tell them as much about you as any deep study of your mind would.

This is something I had to relearn.  When I suffered my brain injury, I had to start again as I couldn’t form the words I needed, or find the things to say that I wanted to.  It was all I could do to make sense in the world.  But I kept going, I learned the words again, and I discovered all the things I wanted to say, were there for the saying.  So, with some practice, you too can form the words you want to say, and become all the things you want to become with a little practice and hard work.

Everything you do inspires me, thank you.  I hope you keep up the good work.