Igniting Inspiration: 5 Lessons To Help You Start The Thing, Do The Thing, And Succeed At The Thing

Don't aim for a masterpiece, just aim to keep showing up. Now this is a big one because you won't be great at anything when you start. And actually you might not ever be great when you finish. But thing I guarantee is that if you never start, you'll never know how good you are or how good you you can become. You're listening to the Circle C Project. Welcome to the Triple CE Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage so you can live life lit. I'm your host, Ryan Spence. The big lore dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop and big hairy audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life of think you should want and ready to start living the life you want. This podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. So now with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat. Allow me to guide you towards living a life that lives. Hey. Hey. Welcome to episode 105 of the Triple C Project. Before we dive into today's episode, ask you a question. What does success mean to you? What do you think about when you think of success? Now, the image that immediately probably comes to mind is money, cars, houses, holidays, status. Because that is the image of success that we're portrayed by society that we're conditioned to believe is success. Right? Anyone who's been told to get on that train, get a good job, get good grades, get on that corporate ladder and climb it all the way to the top, I mean, that's success. Okay, but have you ever questioned if that is what success means to you? I mean, is that what you want in life? Are they the most important things to you in your life? And if they're not, then what does success actually mean? And when you've thought about the answer to that question, how do you then go about getting that success? Being successful? Lots of questions. Hope I haven't broken your brain. Well, the thing is, until you know what success means for you, you can't be successful. Makes sense, right? But it isn't something that we often think about. And even when you do know what success means to you, how do you then do what you need to do to become successful? Well, this is what I'm going to be talking about on the 1st of July. So only if you listen to this in real time, only about two, three weeks from now, the first of July, I'll be hosting a free webinar which you're invited to attend by me. It's called the High Performance Way Six Secrets of the World's Most Successful People. And in this seminar, I'm going to be doing just that, sharing the six secrets of the World's Most Successful People. Not just based upon what what I think, but also based upon research on actually scientifically proven research by real scientists of which I am not one. There were six pillars which you will hear about and you will hear why. Focusing on those six pillars are what is going to help you to be successful. And you're also going to get a different interpretation, a different image, a different portrayal of actually what success is. It's probably not going to be what you think. So this is my invitation to you to Join me on the 1st of July for the High Performance Way 6 Secrets of the World's Most Successful People. To book your spot, you can go to the link in the show description on whatever podcast player you're listening to or just send me a DM on Instagram @ I am Underscore Ryan Spence. Just send me a DM with the word success in the title and I will shoot you the link to register. Or you can just go to the link on my bio in Instagram as well. There are many ways you can get this link, but I really want you to be there. I think you're going to find it really impactful and really insightful and you're. I know you're going to leave thinking about success differently, thinking about your life differently and how you approach things and how you do things. So join me first of July, 2024 high performance way six secrets of the World's Most Successful People. Head to the link in the show description or hit me up on Instagram for the link to book your spot. Awesome. Let's get to the show. Now if you follow me on Instagram, fantastic. And if you don't, why not? But anyway, I have been doing a, or basically running a project really, I guess you could say on there, which I have named 30 Days of Inspiration or 30 Days of Inspo for sure. And this project, this idea, it came out of a few things really. So you may have heard me talk a few weeks ago about how inspired I felt coming out of my continuing development training for, for coaching. It just really fired me up and it got me kind of rethinking about inspiration again because inspiration can get a bad rap when you, when people talk about inspirational speakers or inspirational quotes or that kind of things. There's a lot of disparagement around that now if you look at certain places online, but I think Inspiration is still very, very important. So there was that. There's also been conversations having with people lately just about despair at the state of the world. And just the lack, the lack of humanity shown by some people is really astounding and really heartbreaking as well. And that can lead to it? Well, it is leading to spilling into people's day to day lives and it's adding to that lethargy, to that heaviness of just getting through the day, of getting through the world. When you know of all of these things that are going on, you know that there are people who believe some of the things that they believe and say, it can leave you in despair. And I know when I get like this, when I allow myself to become overwhelmed just by all of the things that are happening, it's not helpful for me. And I need a spark. I need something to reinvigorate me, to get me up and get me out and get me to do something. Because we can't take on life's bigger issues and we can't take care of the people around us until we take care of ourselves. And so from these thoughts and these conversations and my own experiences, the idea of this 30 days of inspo was born to bring some inspiration back into people's lives at a time when it's very much needed. Now, are we going to solve all that's wrong with the world and our own lives by reading a few inspirational quotes from a coach on Instagram? Of course not. Definitely not. And it would be arrogant of anyone to think so, to think that that would be the case. So that's not what this is about. But what I do know is that there have been times when a quote that I've seen on social media has stopped my scroll and has shaken me out of a lethargic funk or got me thinking differently about an issue that's going on in the world or an issue that I'm facing or has just simply inspired me to get started or keep going. So my hope or my aim, my desire, with 30 days of inspo, with showing up daily and delivering these thoughts, in my words, based on my experiences and the experiences of my clients, is that I could be that spark for someone, just that little thing that got them to stop for a second or two and think about the words that they had read and maybe how they apply to their own lives or how it reframed their thinking about a particular thing. So on the day that this episode, episode 105 is released, which is Friday the 14th of June, by the time you're listening to this, I'll have posted quote number 30. So I've completed 30 days of inspo. And what I realized as I've gone through it is that there's been an unexpected outcome. And the unexpected outcome of doing this project is that it's actually inspired me and it's taught me as well. It's taught me a few lessons. So what I thought I'd do today is I'm going to share five of the lessons that I've learned in this process in the hope that they help and inspire you in your own projects or your own life, whatever it is that you are trying to do, thinking of doing, or have started doing. I hope that these lessons help to guide you along your way. And some of these lessons you may have heard before, either from me or from somebody else. But again, something else that I've learned is that you can hear a lesson lots and lots and lots of times, but sometimes hearing it from the right person at that specific moment in time can make it hit different, it can make you feel different and can be the thing that you need to just do something different. So that's the premise of today's show. Five lessons from 30 days of inspo that can help you in your own life. So here goes lesson number one. Be specific in your commitment. Now, I committed to 30 days, and I did that because vague ideas produce vague outcomes. If I just said I'm just going to try and post every day, well, what does that mean? For how long? Like when, when do I stop? Do I stop after two days, five days? Like, what does that even mean? And what am I actually trying to do? And these are the things you need to think about. I encourage you to think about when you're starting your own projects or going through your own transformation. Ask yourself, well, what is it that I'm going to do? What's the thing that I'm going to commit to and how long am I going to commit to it for? And it doesn't mean that if you say, I'm going to commit for 30 days that you have to do 30 days, or that you get to 30 days and you have to stop, it's merely giving you a framework within which to work. I like 30 days. Because if you're trying to run an experiment, see how things work, I think that's a good chunk of time at least to get started. If you can do 60 or 90, then obviously you're going to get more data. But I feel that 30 is a good place to Start. I feel that less than that just isn't really enough time. But obviously it really depends upon what it is that you're trying to do. And what do I mean by vague ideas produce vague outcomes? Well, say you decide, I'm going to get fit. Now, what does that mean? What does fit mean? Fit can mean different things to different people. Fit to one person can mean they. They can run their first 5k and just complete the run. Somebody else might want to run a 5k in under 30 minutes, for example. Like there is. There's nothing to kind of measure it against. It doesn't really mean anything. So you need to get more specific. So a better way may be, I'm going to run three times a week for 30 days so that I can. And then add something to it. Why are you doing this? So it could be so that I can walk upstairs finally without being out of breath, or it could be so that I can run for the bus and actually catch it. I don't know if you've ever done this, but you know how embarrassing it is when you see somebody running for a bus and you can just tell that they're just not going to be quick enough to catch it and you really feel for them. Yeah. This happened a lot in London. It could be so that you can knock 5 minutes off your 10k race time, you know, but each of those things, they are specific. You know, you've got a definitive thing that you're going to do run three times a week. You've got a period in which you're going to do it, in which you're going to measure it in 30 days, and then you've got a reason for why you're going to do it. So that's better. Okay. So I was going to post an inspirational quote based on my own content for 30 days on Instagram so that I could help to reignite the spark within the people that read it. My why is a little bit broader than that. I'm going to expand upon that as I come to a later lesson. But I just wanted to kind of give you that snippet there so you can see how I did it. And then after that period that you've committed to, you can then evaluate your progress. What worked, what didn't work, what would you tweak? Do you even still want to do the damn thing? You know? But that's my first lesson there. Be specific in your commitment. Okay. Second lesson from 30 Days of Inspo. Don't aim for a masterpiece, aim to keep showing up now this is a big one, because you won't be great at anything when you start. And actually, you might not ever be great when you finish, but thing I guarantee is that if you never start, you'll never know how good you are or how good you can become. Now, a common trait that I see amongst high performers like you is you want to be great, right? You want everything you do to be a masterpiece. That, and you beat yourselves up if it's not. If you get a slight mistake or do something slightly wrong. And that can lead to you staying in that comfort zone and remaining caged. Because within that cage, you know, you can do all of that shit with your eyes closed. But the idea of stepping out of that and maybe getting something wrong, it's quite debilitating. But here's the thing. No one, not Picasso, not Jean Michel Basquiat, not Van Gogh, woke up, sat down, and created a masterpiece on their first attempt. Pretty certain of that. But they created masterpieces because they were prolific. They kept showing up and doing the work, and in that, they kept getting better. So rather than aiming for a masterpiece off the bat and stressing and theorizing until you feel that you can create one, just keep showing up. I mean, aim to do good work for sure, but aim to do your best. But what's more important is to aim to learn from the work that you do so that you can keep getting better and get closer to that masterpiece. And I'm not just talking about art in the sense of painting or drawing here. When I talk about a masterpiece. If you've listened to episode 53 of this here podcast, you'll know that I encourage you to look at your life as art. Like, so, keep showing up and make your life a masterpiece. Keep showing up for yourself every day to make your life a beautiful piece of art that you enjoy, that can inspire you and inspire others. And so for me, in this 30 day project is a case of I'm posting every day for 30 days. I can't be precious about thinking of the perfect caption. I don't have time to spend however long, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, every day trying to kind of perfect the caption. I need to just write it. And this is something I've been accustomed to doing. But sometimes, you know, when you have more time, sometimes you could think, I'll take more time. And I just said to myself, look, this post is going up. And sometimes it would go up without a caption and I'd add it later. The most important thing was committing, doing it showing up. So we need to think about that. If you show up messy, show up messy. I mean, every day is not going to be your best day, but you have more best days, the more you keep showing up. Sounded quite profound. Okay. Sometimes I do surprise. I say something and I'm like, where did that come from? But it's great. I mean, it's obviously what's. What's in there. So that's. That's great. Okay, lesson number three. Momentum motivates. Now, the first few times you do anything are going to be the hardest. But if you follow lesson two and keep showing up, before you know it, you're gonna have a streak. I love a streak. I don't know about you, but I really love a streak. I love that visual representation of how long I've been doing something for. And I hate to break a streak. As much as I love a streak, I hate to break a streak. So, for example, it's why I track my meditation days. I meditate every day, as I've said before, and currently I am on a 143 day stre of daily meditation, and I really, really don't want to break it. And so having that streak means that I'm mindful each day that I want to meditate to keep the streak. And because I know how much different my day can be if I actually sit down and be still for some time. So even if I've had a rough night, the kids have been annoying, and I haven't had enough sleep, and I get up later than planned, and I don't get to do it as my first thing for the day, I will make time in the day to do it, to maintain the stream, because the momentum motivates. And so for you, what I would say is suffer through your first few tries. Whether it's sending your first few job applications for that new role you want to go for, that new industry you want to move into, or whether it's making your first few asks of people to support and advance your ideas, whether it's attending that yoga class or that PT session or that running club, just keep doing it. It's going to be challenging the first few times, but before you know it, you kind of have a streak. And that streak will motivate you to keep going so you don't break the streak. So what I find helpful here is to have some sort of visual, visual representation of the streak if you're using an app. So for meditation, I use calm, for example. That's a great, easy way of doing it and I can go and manually add if I meditate using a different app or just doing a non guided one. Maybe you like to have a calendar on the wall. I remember and I'm going to screw this up, but there's a sort of famous quote or saying from the comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who's talking about being a comedian, become a comedian and that just marking off the calendar each day that you write a joke. And when you look at the calendar and you see all of these days marked off, you're going to want to keep that up. So whatever it is, whether it's in physical form, in your electronic form, have some way of recording the streak and keeping an eye on that so that it can be there to motivate you when you wake up one day and think copy bothered, you're not going to want to break the streak. Okay, number four. So despite all that I've said about you're not going to want to break the streak. Number four's lesson is if you fall off, get right back on. Because even with momentum, you're going to fall off at some point, even with that motivation of the streak. Because things happen, right? Life happens. You get sick or work gets crazy, your child won't sleep or it's just being annoying and you fail. You will fail to do what you promised yourself that you will do. It happens. We're not machines, we're not robots, we're human. And we are susceptible to external forces. As much as we try to control, there are certain things that we cannot control. So I talked about my meditation streak. Now 143 days, fantastic. But my previous longest streak, and I looked at it before I recorded this episode was 210 days. Wow. And that streak ended on the 9th of March 2023. And I didn't get back to it until 16th of March 2023. But I got back. That's the most important thing. I didn't waste time beating myself up. I didn't tell myself that, oh, I'm a failure and I'm no good at this and I should just quit. No, I. I did what I tell my clients to do. What I've said to you on this podcast, I acknowledged that I'd missed a few days. I accepted that I couldn't change that and I adapted my approach so I could get back on track. That's the same thing I did with the 30 days of inspo. There was. I miscalculated. I pre scheduled some of my posts, but I miscalculated and there was a day where when I was away for the weekend with the family and I had forgotten to schedule a post for that day and I didn't realize until I checked my feed that day and wondered where my post was. And then it hit me. Dope. And I could have beat myself up and got annoyed and thought, oh, I've broken it now and this is rubbish and I can't do this anymore and I should just stop. But instead I shrugged it off and posted again the next day. And you know what? Nobody cared. The world didn't end, nobody died. So you will fall off. And when you do get right back on, it's lesson four. And so now for the fifth and the final lesson, and this is one which you've heard me talk about in different ways before. Reconnect to your why. Now. This is going to be familiar one to you regular listeners, and what it means is remember why you started and remember why the thing you're doing is important to you. We start things for a reason, we do things for a reason, but we don't always really give any thought as to what that reason is. And the thing is, coming back to these 30 days of inspire is that if I was relying on external motivations such as the number of likes or the number of comments to fuel my momentum to keep me going, I wouldn't have made it to 30 days. Because, you know, keeping it real with you, there weren't a lot of them. It's not like. Not like there was like thousands of comments or hundreds of comments even. Not at all. You can go and look for yourself. But I had so I had to have a why that was bigger than that, bigger than the external. I had to have something that came from within. And mine was as it is in all the work that I do as high performance coach and a yoga teacher is, and as a writer is to be of service is to guide people back to themselves so they can move from survival mode to thrival mode and live life lit. So I connected with that why daily. And I kept repeating the mantra that has gotten me from somebody who was afraid to share a post on social media to someone who freely shares their message, no shares their message now. And that is service over ego. And I've talked about this before, but I'll explain again. What it means is that if sharing even one quote within those 30 days was of service to someone, if it helped that person to see themselves differently, if it helped them to ignite the spark within them that had been dampened and snuffed out if it helped them to see possibilities for themselves that they couldn't previously see, then what I was doing was far more important than my ego. My service to that person, all those people, was more important than any damage to my ego, than any embarrassment that I might feel for not attracting huge numbers of likes or comments. I mean, for wondering whether or not anyone's reading that didn't really matter. The people who I was writing for mattered. So I kept showing up. And I know that these quotes have impacted people. These people have told me. Not a whole bunch of people. I know there are a lot of silent lurkers out there. I know this from experience. But people have told me in a comment or in a conversation and not that I needed it because I was already fully connected to my why, but it's additional validation, additional support as to what it was that I was doing. So for you, what will you keep you doing? The same what will keep you doing the thing that you're thinking of doing or you are doing? What's your why? Who you doing it for? What's that thing that's bigger than you know that connect with that, feel that deep within you and you'll keep going. Even when challenges arise, you'll find a way to overcome them because you have that deep need, that necessity to do the thing, regardless of any external validation or motivation. So they're the five lessons and I'll recap. So lesson number one, be specific in your commitment. Lesson two don't aim for a masterpiece, aim to keep showing up. Lesson 3 Momentum motivates. Lesson 4, if you fall off, get right back on. And lesson five reconnect to your why. That's it for me this week. I hope those five lessons do something differently for you today. I hope they hit differently for you today and I hope they get you thinking about how you can apply them in your own life to whatever it is that you're doing, any changes that you're trying to make. Because that's what I'm sharing them for, right? I'm sharing them because they help me and I pretty sure that they can help you. And if you haven't yet, go ahead and check out the 30 days of inspo. They're there on my Instagram feed at I am Underscore Ryan Spant and I'd love it if you would do me a favor and drop me a line. Either comment on the post, send me a DM and send me an email and tell me which which One of those 30 quotes really spoke to you? Which one did you read and be like, damn, I never thought of it like that? Or which one kind of really opened your mind up to seeing something differently in your own life? I would really, really love to to hear that from you. So if you send me a message on Instagram at im_spence or shoot me an email hey Amarispence.com or you can use the new text function. Amazing. If you go to the show description, there's a link there. You click on that link and it will open up your text app and you can send a text directly to me, which I think is probably the easiest way, right? Particularly if you're overseas as well. I can't respond to those texts, but it will mean, still mean a lot to receive them. And if you want to drop your name at the end and I will give you a shout out and read out your message on a future episode. And while you're sending that text Message or that DM on Instagram, take an extra 30 seconds and head to ratethispodcast.com Triple C or just head over to the podcast app that you listen to this podcast in and and leave a review. Just leave a few words and say why, why you listen to the show, what makes you tune in each week? What do you get from it? What insights? Why should anybody else listen to the show? It really helps me. It helps me know what you're vibing with and it really helps anyone who's just browsing through their podcast app trying to decide what to listen to to know hey, this shows for me must be because this is exactly what it is that I'm looking for. So I don't ask for a lot, I don't think, but a review would really, really be fantastic. So please go ahead, ratethispodcast.comcc or head over to your podcast app and just drop a review for this little old show. Okay, that's it for this week. Just one more reminder. Join me on the 1st of July for the webinar the High Performance Way 6 Secrets of the World's Most Successful People. Send me a DM for the link or just head to the description of the show. Click there and book your spot. It's gonna be great. I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Until next week, thank you. Thank you for being here and go ahead and stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit. Thanks for tuning in to the Triple C project. In the spirit of the Triple C, here's three things that you can do to support the show, head to ratethispodcast.com Triple C, or over to your favorite podcast app and leave a review. Reviews really help people checking out shows to see what they can expect and how this show can help them. Second thing you can do? Share. Share this episode Share a previous episode with a friend, someone who you feel could benefit from what I'm throwing down on this here show. And number three, head to iamrinespence.com get on the main list. I'll be sharing news about the show, news about what I'm up to. My new book Start writing soon. So to be the first to be in the know, you need to get yourself on the list. Really appreciate you being here. And until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit.