How to Stay Inspired as an Entrepreneur (FS190)

Being “inspired” as an entrepreneur can mean a lot to your business and life. To me, the feel of inspiration is towards possibility and opportunity… a far cry from the standard doom and gloom that can come with starting a business.

But more importantly, I find my best ideas, my most creative moments, come not when I’m dour and heavy, but when I’m light and hopeful… which is what I mean when I say “inspired.”

So, we think it’s important to find a little wind for your wings, chase your interest, make some space in your life for YOU, and we want to teach you how we do it so you can find your own way.

On this episode we share 11 things that are inspiring us right now in our business and personal lives so you can come up with some new ways right now to practice a little discipline of inspiration.

Thanks for listening and please enjoy the show!

• Steph likes to do a book for fun every month. She started a book club with friends for fiction books. “It’s not about making myself better or improving my career or anything; just for fun!” One recent from Steph: The Girls.
• MOVEMENT! If you work from your house you may need to commit yourself to some exercise. Steph is committing time every week, signed up for a training program. Inspiration can come when your body and mind are in tune.
• Viral videos are one way Corbett gets giggles and relief. They usually find him (instead of him going to look for them). The best part is sharing these with friends. Like this one:
  
• Chase uses Tumblr and subscribes to all manor of weird meme sites. He loves the absurdity of it. Absurdity can snap you out of how serious you are about things.
• Chase loves documentaries. Immersing in another world for a little while, learning something real (and from a really different world than your own), can lead to enormous creative energy. Some recent favorites of his: Stripped, . Greenwich Village, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.
• Find an article that inspires you and read it once or twice a week for a while. Steph is having this experience with this article these days: Don’t Carpe Diem. Chase is having this experience with this article.
• Find a person that inspires you and dig into their work! Chase is doing this recently with Elizabeth Gilbert. He’s found every interview he can with her and loves to listen to them (sometimes repeatably). Here’s a good one to start with: You Made It Weird #283: Elizabeth Gilbert. Glennon Doyle Melton is Steph’s current fascination.
• Taking in the arts. There’s something about being in an audience. Theater, art shows, stand up comedy, music, there’s something very unique about sitting in an audience, witnessing a thing in real time (not over a screen), and then talking about it afterwards with people. You get some perspective when you go out and see artists doing their thing.
• YouTube. Chase just loves YouTube. Comedians and channels like The School of Life and explainer videos like this one are the kinds of things he’s into.
• There’s something about digging into history. Many famous writers have talked about the importance of reading only old things; there’s something about how the distance helps us see our own time better. Chase had a powerful experience reading about the history of advertising that continues to inspire him. His current history fascination is the incredibly well done miniseries called The Sixties.
• Take a trip. A lot of this inspiration stuff is pattern interrupt, getting out of the rut. Taking a trip is one of the most profound ways to interrupt your status quo and get you looking at things from a fresh perspective.

So, what’s your thing? How do you practice inspiration and find some levity in your business and life? Let us know in the comments. I’d love for this to become a really helpful list for all entrepreneurs.

Thanks for listening, y’all!