Would you love more inspiration? Living inspired is the secret to a fulfilled and happy life. But how do you get there when you feel meh, or how do you maintain it when you feel yourself dipping and getting flat or even uninspired? How do you lift yourself up when you have been staying at home, sheltering in place and maybe you haven’t taken a shower in a few days or you have lost track of what day it is and you are dying to go to the gym or a movie or a restaurant?
Or perhaps you have been sick or someone you love has been sick. The pressures of our current February through April 2020 (and beyond) has thrown some curves and fostered fear, vulnerability, and challenged even the most positive thinkers out there. However, yes, it’s possible to have some amazing growth and learning during this time. Even though this is a disruption, your whole life does not have to be completely upended. You can take leaps forward and also find meaning in the present moment.
Three keys that will help you live more inspired are expanding the way you think, creating a more inspiring environment, and learning how to choose love and joy frequently throughout the day.
The Key to Expansion
Expand your thinking beyond your conditioning. Expand beyond your limiting beliefs. Adopt a growth mindset.
Everyone has conditioned thoughts. Some of this conditioning is based on our parents on the way that we grew up, on the people who are influencers in our lives. And some of the conditioning is a result of living and getting too comfortable with the same thoughts.
We’ve conditioned ourselves to say things like, well, I could never do that or there isn’t a solution or I’m stuck this way or I try to change and I really can’t.
What would that look like for you?
We’re seeing an example of expansion right now throughout the world where we’re being challenged by an unseen thing, a virus that you can’t see. And people are being wildly creative and innovative with thinking far outside the way that they’ve always thought to be able to come up with solutions for world health and economic stability.
You can be wildly creative on how you approach your every day and the things that come up for you in your life. What does that look like?
For most people expanding into a new way of thinking and being does not happen by just snapping your fingers. This expansion usually occurs as a result of a paradigm shift.
A paradigm shift is changing the story of your life and the way that you see the world. In the United States, we are accustomed to many civil liberties. We are able to move around and pretty much live our lives the way we want to live. The experience of stay-at-home orders or a shelter-in-place order or and being severely restricted, staying at home is a shocking experience. Wherever you are in the world and you are experiencing a shelter in place or a lockdown, you feel the same way. You can’t go out and see your friends or you can’t be around people. This can be isolating. It’s also a time where you can have perhaps one of the biggest shifts that you could ever have in your life.
Some of the toughest times in my life created the most dramatic growth:
- During the coronavirus shut-down, I have worked with many biz clients who felt shaken and vulnerable. We created focus and plans. Friends have lost businesses and people have lost jobs. Yet, I see the spirit and strength. I believe in the fierceness and the kindness in people. I see people being generous. I see people being strong. I see people breaking down and then getting back up again. The inner work that you do throughout your life, prepares you for the unexpected. During these challenges, people dig deep and find the strength that maybe they didn’t even know they had.
- Five years ago, I suddenly became very ill, stopped breathing and woke up in ICU on a ventilator. I didn’t remember the ambulance ride, or the ER, 12 hours of my life evaporated. I went into the light and came back into my body and faced a serious diagnosis. I chose to focus on healing and doing everything on my bucket list and if I only had a little time left I would live my life to the fullest. Three weeks later, I had what the doctors described as spontaneous remission. I knew it was a miracle. The world looked so shiny and new and wonderful to me. I learned that I was strong, courageous, and unstoppable.
- On Sept 11, 2011, The U.S. faced a tragedy in New York, The Pentagon, and Philadelphia. The world changed. Flying would never be the same and TSA was born. On that morning, I was home from work, my youngest was one year old, and I was watching Good Morning America. The show was interrupted by the first tower being hit and while I was watching, I saw the south tower hit. Then, I knew it wasn’t an accident. Our country came together. People helped each other. We wondered if we would ever fly again or if the stock market or the economy would ever recover. We did recover. Two weeks later, I started working for United Way and met people who had gone to New York and worked at ground zero. My life was forever changed by taking that time to work for United Way raising funds when there was so much need. This helped me feel useful in a time when the earth under my feet felt shaky.
- When I was pregnant with my first daughter and I was advised to be on bed rest for 13 weeks I experienced a shift in thinking and an expansion. I was an active person, and then suddenly, I could only get up for a couple of minutes every hour and I was also responsible for a household and caring for my step kiddos. People were counting on me. Then, I chose to read a book called (aff) The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. This book shifted my life. Reading this book 26 years ago, changed my life forever, it changed the way that I looked at the world. I realized at that moment back when I was a young woman in my twenties, I could choose thoughts and this choice had a deliberate and creative effect on my life. I could find meaning and inspiration in any moment.
- The day I lost my brother, I faced the biggest battle of my life. How could I go on without him? He was 15. I was 17. This loss pushed me forward. At a young age, I sought to find out why some people are happy and other people struggle. I wanted to know how to be happy and how to power through instead of giving up. I was on a journey, a path of discovery that I continue today.
This moment right now in our history can have that same effect on you. Instead of feeling constrained or restricted or feeling small, you can look at this as a time of great expansion, of great awareness, of great plans being put in place for your next move that you’re going to do. Need some creativity help? Twyla Tharp’s book (aff) The Creative Habit is stellar.
Journal Prompts:
What does my new expanded story look like?
How are my new story and my expanded thinking going to change my life right now and in the future? How will I be different and act differently?
Create an Inspired Environment
Your environment shapes your experience.
Let’s move from expanded wide open thinking to a micro-level and look at your daily environment. The second key to living inspired is to create an inspiring environment. This could be a challenge because perhaps you have a lot of people at home who are not used to being together all the time. Maybe there’s a lot more noise. Maybe you are doing home-schooling of your kids.
How can you create an inspiring environment?
When you look at creating an inspiring environment, you want to first look at what you are tolerating right now. And when I say tolerating, I am not talking about diversity. Yes, we want to be tolerant and accepting of people and their difference.
What I mean is what are you tolerating in your environment? You can make a lot of environmental changes in your home and office. For example, I hurt my back several months ago playing with my daughter’s puppy. The pain goes away and then comes back. When I decided that I was not going to tolerate it anymore, I looked at what I could do. (Note the word decided) The first thing is that I looked at my mattress. It was fairly newish, but I would often wake up with a sore back. The solution? A four-inch mattress topper. This made a massive difference. Honestly, I wasn’t even aware of what a difference it could make until I tried out a friend’s mattress.
Next, I looked at my office. I needed an upgrade. I noticed that after a long day of writing or working on project, I could barely walk. I purchased a new ergonomic office chair- a high-end chair, plus a lumbar support pillow. Then I purchased a stand-up office desk, so I can stand during my conference calls and coaching calls. This was another dramatic difference in my back health. I was willing to do what I could with my environment to better support my back. When my back started feeling better and better, other things improved.
A big environmental change for me with the coronavirus shelter in place was not being able to go to the gym every day. At first, it was a struggle. Then, I decided that I was not going to tolerate a no-workout lifestyle. So, I started doing a dumbbell workout at home and going on long walks and hikes.
No more happy hour with my friends? We changed to a virtual zoom happy hour a couple of times a week.
Grab a notebook and look around your environment and notice what you are tolerating that is causing stress? Noise? Clutter? Broken pieces of anything? A less than desirable office set up? Old technology- laptop? phone? Lack of healthy food? No creative outlet? Too much news? Negative people?
Journal prompt:
What is inspiring me about my current environment?
What is weighing me down in my current environment?
What am I willing to change?
Choose Love and Joy Every Day.
You have a choice to wake up and say, hell yes, I choose joy. I choose love. I choose to look at life abundantly.
Journal Prompt:
Make a list of everything you love and appreciate each day.
Choose joy and choose to see the abundance in your life. It’s the habit that is the magic sauce for everything else. You have the capacity to transform your life every single day. I know what it feels like to go through something traumatic and dramatic and something that creates deep grieving. I know that even in my deepest grief or my deepest fear when I could hold on to that micro-moment of being able to choose something positive to focus on, it really helped.
We see this when we see people singing on the balconies in Italy and when we see doctors dancing in the E.R. rooms and singing and playing the national anthem to people in the hospital. People rise up. People come together and you have what it takes to really live an inspired life no matter what. At this moment here, right now, a month from now, a year from now, you can truly live an inspired life.
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Sheri Kaye Hoff
sherikayehoff.com
Coach, Trainer, Mentor, and Author, Sheri Kaye Hoff, is known for inspiring massive action and being a catalyst for personal and business growth, joy, and profits in a way that is fun, relaxing, and fulfilling, Sheri inspires people to do the work they love and make more money. Sheri offers business and mindset coaching for business owners and professionals ( including life coaches, health coaches, creatives, personal coaches, spiritual entrepreneurs, consultants, and more) to relax into success. She uses both spiritual and practical techniques to obliterate blocks and create dramatic change. She is a business, leadership, happiness, and mindset expert. She has overcome nearly dying, and the loss of her brother at an early age. She has made it her life mission to share the keys to happiness and success with her clients and community. Learn More About Sheri
Specializing in life mastery for individuals, business coaching for life coaches, business coaching for health coaches, business coaching for creatives, business coaching for spiritual entrepreneurs, business coaching for creatives, business coaching for consultants, business coaching for professionals, business coaching for boutique online retailers.
