2023 August 22 Live your life with motivation and inspiration

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website all about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk about being inspired and living with motivation. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like and tell your friends and send me a message.

For the past two weeks, we've been talking about life's priorities and setting goals in two different ways. Two weeks ago, it was about being a leader and being someone who's making big changes in life, even if the big changes are happening on a smaller scale, they're still really important.

Then last week we talked about remembering to prioritize your core beliefs. Even if they aren't on your to-do list, there's still something that should really virtually always be at the top of your list. So this week is another aspect, namely how to live your life with inspiration and motivation. It's something we all want to do, but a lot of times we get sidetracked and lose our way.

So these are some ways that help you stay on that path. There's a popular saying that you'll become the average of the five people you hang around with most. It was originally said by Jim Rohn, I believe. The concept is that you want to surround yourself with great people, and they'll lift you up to greater things.

Jim said many great things and had a lot of wisdom to impart, but I disagree with how many people interpret this particular statement. Some people say you always want to select friends who are better than you, like shopping for the best deal in friendships.

If you're with a group of people and you think you're getting as good as them, you want to find somebody else and, and hang around with different, better people. But some people also wisely advise that if you're going to hang out with really great people, then you'd better be able to bring something great to share with those people, or else it's not really a friendship, but it's essentially trying to get some free coaching.

The real golden nugget is hiding in that last statement. If you have something amazing to share with others, but don't consider that you're really that amazing overall, then maybe that really means that most people truly have something amazing in themselves that they can share with others.

That's something I very strongly believe in. The approach of sharing something amazing with other people sounds a lot better than always looking for new, amazing friends. So let's tweak the popular interpretation of Jim Rohn's saying to something more like, You'll become the same as the best qualities of the five people that you hang around with, especially if you encourage those qualities and share your best qualities with them.

We're really getting somewhere with that statement. There still might be a little friend shopping going on. Only now, it's to find the best mutually positive relationships and share your knowledge at the same time. That sounds a lot more like a friendship and a lot less like trying to get some free coaching.

So now we have an idea of who we want to hang around with and some things to talk about. But what about the inspiration and motivational part of it? Well, first off, what is motivation? Typically it's some sort of reward. People often think of money first, but it could be friendship. It could be a positive feeling, seeing someone else improve or succeed, finding peace.

It could be a financial reward, but motivation is different for every single person. You have to decide what's motivating to you. So what's the best way to be motivated to do things that bring you successes, no matter how you define that success? 

Well, what's being inspired? You could say that it's being in an environment that encourages you to think of amazing things. To think of the almost unthinkable, and to have the motivation to still work towards that very lofty goal. It's all sort of coming together now, tying that all the way back to the very beginning. 

Living a motivated life would be to have friends  where we can mutually help each other to improve in ways that you might not otherwise have discovered, and to inspire each other so that you're more likely to find amazing success in whatever you do. Now that's really starting to sound like just a solid friendship and not some search for free education, but it gets even better, because you're now associating motivation and success with all these people.

Now you're going to naturally associate these individuals who you're hanging around with as a positive influence in your life, and that further encourages you and them to bring out the very best traits in each other, and be the very best you can be, to truly inspire each other to more success.

Back to the beginning. So who do you look for to have as friends? Probably not the totally outstanding people, right? Do I want to spend half my week with Tony Robbins? If you listen to me, you know I admire Tony Robbins without limit. But no, I don't want to spend half my time with Tony Robbins. First off, he'd kill me by exhaustion in the first 24 hours. The man works about 19 hours a day. But more importantly, he has so much to offer and, realistically, I have little tiny tidbits that I could offer him, but there's just too much to be taken in. However, in my particular position now, he's a great resource, a great mentor, and a fantastic teacher, but I don't want to go sit and take up half his day hanging around with him because the difference in capabilities is just so much.

That's a good way to frame yourself. It's not that you are worse than somebody else, it's just they've spent a longer time, developing their skills to a higher level than you have so far. That's the point. This is a stepping in progression situation. Going back to Jim Rohn's statement, I think this is where it gets misinterpreted a lot.

You don't necessarily have to surround yourself with great people. I want to surround myself with people with whom I can find motivating traits in one or more areas, areas in which I find them amazing, and ideally where they feel the same way about me, where they find something amazing in me, and we want to inspire each other to greatness.

My friends have to be 10s in every single way. No, they really don't. They probably shouldn't be. I'm not a 10 in every single way, and a one-way friendship won't last long. If you're amazing, successful and rich and wealthy and all those things, and somebody who's just working towards getting there hangs out in that circle, they'll probably be cordial about it. They may be very nice, but it turns into a one-way friendship. I get a lot from it, but they may not be getting much from me other than my company. We'll talk about personal friendships in a minute. However, if they're just amazing in certain aspects of their lives and I can learn from that, and teach them something in return, then we'll both be closer to our goals and we'll both be more likely to be supportive of each other and to succeed.

We will both grow and be inspired by each other and inspired to perform our own personal best. We will both enjoy the friendship more and tend to make the friendship itself be more supportive and successful. To me, that's a huge advantage. It turns that saying inside out, because in the original saying, it was all about me. It's about what you can do for me. Hang around with people better than you. What can you tell me? What can you teach me? What, what can I learn from you? That never stays very interesting for very long. Dale Carnegie had a saying: be interesting, be interested.

Looking outside of yourself and being interested in other people will make you a far better friend and also a far better person, and also bring far more insight into that other person's life and motivations. You will learn a lot more. They will feel better about you and their lives, and it's just a mutually much better relationship.

By being interested in the other person's success, you'll automatically tend to make them interested in your success, but not in a needy selfish way. This isn't about manipulation. This is a genuine mutual caring friendship and working towards a common goal.

This brings us back to the original topic. How do you live a life with motivation? By surrounding yourself with people in which you can find one or more amazing traits in a relationship that's mutually inspirational and brings both of you more fulfillment and happiness. It's really the kind of people you want to surround yourself with where you can find one or more amazing traits in a relationship that is mutually inspirational and brings both of you more fulfillment and happiness. 

That doesn't mean you can't have social friends for a ball game or a card game. But that's a very different sort of relationship than cultivating deep friendships that encourage everyone to grow. This group of motivational friends may be quite different than the close personal friends with whom you share your life secrets and things like that. Totally different group.

They might be considered business friends, but that really isn't accurate either because it's not about business per se, but about maximizing your life and maximizing the inspiration you get from being with them, which creates motivation to go and fulfill your goals. It's about living your life to your own definition of success.

Some people will call such a circle of friends a mastermind group. It could be that. But the modern definition of pure masterminds is a little different. I've been in a couple, and it seems most masterminds I've been involved with are more like the original saying. It's people looking for what they can get from you. You're looking for something much more mutual and much more mutually fulfilling that.

Bursting into a group for short-term information might get you some returns, but we're really looking for huge, long-term improvements. Those big 10 x gains, huge improvements that really can make life so exciting and really change your life, that sort of improvement only happens when you are motivated and inspired, and that comes from recognizing the talents and abilities that exist in everyone.

So that's it for the night. Your homework (always optional) is to think of what qualities you have that other people find amazing. Are you organized? Are you very creative? Are you freeform? We've had a whole episode on this. Think about what other people have said to you. Make a little note about those compliments, and remember them because that's something that somebody else finds amazing about you. 

Then for extra points, think about some of the traits that you really admire in other people, especially the people who gave you those compliments. Do you think they'd want to spend some time telling you how they do something that you find amazing, if in exchange you coach them and how you know things you do. Genuine compliments are very powerful because they really come from the heart, and you can tell when somebody's really being genuine about it.

It's a good way to break the ice and talk about putting together a little group. It could be 2-5 people sharing goals, and working towards your goals and supporting each other in growing your life to the best point it can be. 

That's it for what we're going to cover tonight. People who you find amazing don't have to be amazing in every way. Telling them, Wow, I really find this amazing, and seeing if there's any way that you have can set up a mutually amazing relationship where both of you feel that you're helping each other grow. Get motivated about life and be inspired to work towards your big goals. 

So thank you very much. Thank you much for joining me. Please remember the war in Ukraine and everywhere there are disasters or suffering.  This is a link to places where you can share and support the people of Ukraine. UKR7.com

There's also a link there to World Central Kitchen WCK.org. Two great places. Remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. It helps move your thoughts from inside yourself to outside yourself, to change your perspective on the world. It really is a good way to try and live life. So if you can and you're able, please check it out. 

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along. Please hit that like button. If not, drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear about. Have a great week. Remember to live the life that you dream of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. Thank you.