“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman
Life is too short to not spend it doing things that you love, with people that you love in places that you love. When we love something we are in the moment, we are inspired and we feel alive. We’ve all had the feeling of doing something or being with someone so intensely and passionately that we don’t realize how much time has lapsed.
In these moments we are truly one with life. Life is being summoned through us and we are completely in the moment, without letting any mental constructs of analyzing the moment or counting the minutes on the clock. These moments are truly what makes life worth living, and if we become super aware, we can call upon these inspirational moments at any given moment in the day.
It doesn’t matter where you are, when we switch our perspective on things, we can identify the beauty and inspirational in the normal mundane activities of our day to day existence. Then, life doesn’t seem so humdrum anymore.
Each “scene” of our life becomes a beautiful piece of living artwork that we are observing. Watching the sunrise, seeing birds fly, watching our loved ones laugh, observing a butterfly in flight, really anything… can become an amazing experience if we bring ourselves into the moment and see how miraculous everything really is.
In order to truly recognize the magical in the mundane, we must see the world from new eyes. We must look at something or someone so differently that we actually see it from an entirely different point of view, at which point it becomes fresh and new to us.
Here are a few ways we can switch our paradigms so that we see the world through a new set of eyes ~
1. See Beauty in the “Ugly”
Society has tried to deliver us this picture perfect little package of what we are supposed to believe is “beautiful.” Airbrushed photos of people who look like supermodels living in luxurious homes driving nice cars with picture perfect families. But who is to say that is what’s “right” and what we should strive to be?
If we challenge our culture’s constructs of what is beautiful, and instead look for the beauty in what appears to be “flawed” or representation of people “struggling” we are able to challenge the program that society has tried to embed in our heads.
Go somewhere you wouldn’t conventionally think of as a beautiful place, and try to find the beauty in the realness of life. Real people, living real lives, maybe they’re struggling or maybe they’re completely grateful for something that most people would take for granted.
Either way, when we can train our mind to see beauty in reality instead of what society has told us is “perfection”, we can find inspiration almost anywhere we look.
2. Experience nature
To be in nature is probably the most inspirational place one can be. Nature is not hurried, or anxious or angry or resentful… it just is.
Nature has no ego, nor is it living in fear. If we become fully aware of nature as it is in the present moment, we find that there is so much beauty around us just waiting to be noticed at any given time.
Just seeing the sunset, or studying the bark on a tree, watching a group of birds in flight or leaves on a tree swaying in a soft wind are absolutely amazing experiences. These are things most people take for granted day by day.
If we just spend 5-10 minutes a day observing these tiny little gifts that nature has given us, we will find that we naturally start noticing them more on a regular basis. Then we become grateful for these private little moments between us and the life force of the “all that is”.
3. Observe people without judgment
We are all more alike than we think. Besides the obvious differences like hair color, race, age, gender etc… we all have fears, dreams, the desire to be loved and appreciated. If we start to observe people that we see and try to experience their essence instead of living in our minds experience of them (which is always judging, comparing, and analyzing), watching the human species becomes an amazing experience.
Watch how people talk, laugh, feel confident, feel insecure, without judging it, but just observing it. Some may call this “people watching”, and when we try to look at people from a different perspective we realize that most people are all really the same, it’s just the details may be different. Watching people can be entertaining and bring life to a normally mundane waiting room or sitting in the airport, for instance.
4. Pretend like you’re new here
Spend an entire day seeing everything as if you’ve never seen or done it before. On your way to work, look at the streets and the trees and the buildings that have become so routine that you don’t even notice they are there anymore, through the eyes of someone doing it for the first time.
Eat food that you love like you’re just tasting it for the first time and experience it all over again. Get dressed, brush your teeth, take a shower in a completely from a state of complete awareness, as if you just got to this planet and everything you do is a completely brand new experience.
There was a time when all of these things were brand new to you, and they all seemed so interesting and mysterious… but over time they became routine. If we bring ourselves back to a place of presence we can become completely inspired by sensations we have become desensitized to over time. This makes life fun again.
Getting inspired is what life is really about. Inspiration is the precursor to motivation which is the precursor to change and moving forward. Finding beauty in the mundane injects love into our life. It makes the dull seem interesting, the boring seem fun and it challenges us to see this world through a completely fresh lens.
We must always be doing this in order for our lives to be new and exciting instead of stale and stagnant. So challenge yourself today… re-experience everything in your life as if you have never done or seen it before.
You will undoubtedly be pleasantly surprised to find how much love and inspiration you’ve had in your life all along, just waiting for you to notice it.
Image Source
Nature Pictures by Bhavika & Clyde