…Millionnaires?

…Happy?

…Healthy?

…Starting our own business?

…living in a bigger house?

…10lbs lighter?

…Backpacking around Borneo?

Pick a plan, then execute it mercilessly.

The post This Time Next Year appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

“Hi, my name is Chris, and I am an overthinker.”

I’ve been overthinking things for the last couple of weeks. I’ve convinced myself that thinking about getting stuff done is the same as actually getting stuff done.

It isn’t. Not even close.

I’ve got so wrapped up in ‘thinking’ that I didn’t even know where to start actually ‘doing’.

Thankfully I’ve had a bit of a kick in the arse with some simple yet effective advice…

Start at the beginning. Pick one thing and get it done.

Now I just have to think about picking that one thing ;-)

The post Overthinker appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

Today, we’re going to play a little game…

I want you to imagine you’re a scientist, and you’ve been tasked with producing the best possible cure for a deadly disease. You have a big budget, a fully-equipped laboratory and a lifetime of research ahead of you.

What do you do?

You would get started with your experiments straight away, right? People are suffering, and it’s up to you to make it better. You try different things, and see what works. You mix Chemical A with Compound B, stir in a few drops of Isotope C, boil it over a bunsen burner, throw the whole lot in a centrifuge and wait to see what happens.

And after all that effort, it doesn’t work.

Disheartened but not deflated, you move on and try something else. The nature of what you’re doing means that you WILL have these failures along the way – potential cures that have strange side-effects, medications that allow the disease to come back… heck – maybe even treatments that make the condition worse.

You learn from those errors, take care not to repeat them, and then move on to try something more promising. You keep doing this until either you find the perfect cure, or you die of old age, having given it your very best shot.

You wouldn’t try one potential cure, find out it didn’t work, and then give up, would you? That would be a waste of precious time and resources. Every day you waste means another day of suffering at the hands of this deadly disease.

But in our daily lives, can find ourselves repeating the same unsuccessful experiments time and time again, without thinking to change what we’re doing. We get trapped into thinking that our current life-situation is the only way our life can possibly be.

We forget that life is an experiment.

We forget that we can try out new things any time we want, and see if they help cure whatever ‘disease’ we are dealing with every day. Unhappiness. Dissatisfaction. Lack of fulfilment. Boredom. That faint but undeniable throb at the front of your skull that says you’re not living the life you dreamed about as a kid.

You name it, and there is an experiment in life that will help cure it. The trick is to keep trying something new until you find your cure. The trick is to experiment.

After all, what do we think will happen when we reach the end of our time in this great laboratory called life? Will we be comforted by the fact that we didn’t fail a particular experiment (because we never tried it), or will we regret that we never tried finding a cure by making mistakes and learning?

We are not the lab rats in this life (despite what it might feel like sometimes), we are the scientists. We have the control and the power to do what we want with our lives. We have the power to tinker with the experiment of life as much as we want, just to ‘see what happens’…

So what is your next experiment going to be?

Keep an eye out for an exciting new ‘experiment’ from Hello Inspiration – coming very soon!

The post The Great Experiment Called ‘Life’ appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

Today, Malala Yousefzai – the Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for having the temerity to go to school – receives her Nobel Peace Prize. In a ceremony presided over by King Harald V of Norway, she becomes the youngest ever recipient of the award.

After she was shot, she was flown to Birmingham for life-saving treatment, and has been campaigning ever since for the rights of girls to be educated. If you’re ever heard her speak, you will know that this girl of seventeen is old beyond her years. She is confident, measured, insightful and funny. Plus she has guts of steel.

Here she is addressing the UN on the right of as part of her campaign to ensure free compulsory education for every child. On her sixteenth birthday.

I don’t know about you, but I think I went bowling on my sixteenth birthday.

A wise man (and a character in The West Wing) once said: “If they’re shooting at you, you must be doing something right”. Malala is definitely doing it right – this girl has more courage and strength in her little finger than most of us have in our whole body.

You can read more about Malala Yousefzai in her autobiography.

The post Malala’s Little Finger appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

The post Belief Is The Difference appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

• a) Throw in the towel?
• b) Step back and regroup?
• c) Redouble your efforts?

The trouble is, any one of these options can be the ‘right’ solution in any given scenario. We’ve all faced situations where we honestly didn’t know what to do for the best. You will only ever know in hindsight (if ever).

The good news is, with any setback, and with any action you choose to take, comes the opportunity for learning.

The post How We Deal With Setbacks appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

We like to kid ourselves sometimes that we can’t do action X because of reason Y.

Now reason Y may be very convincing, but we need to be careful to make sure that we’re not just a tiny-weeny little bit glad that it exists. Are we hiding behind that reason, because we’re afraid of taking action? Here’s a little secret… the ‘reasons not to’ are all rubbish. And here’s another secret – you ARE capable of doing what you want to do, if only you believed it.

The post Scary Inspiration for Hallow’een appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

It actually has three tiers now, so it’s even more spectacular looking (if that’s possible!)

Hopefully ‘shabby-chic’, rather than just plain ‘shabby’…

The post In Preparation for Tonight’s Charity Event… appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

Pep Talk

Kid President commands you to wake up, listen to the beating of your heart and create something that will make the world awesome. This video from SoulPancake delivers a soul-stirring dose of inspiration that only a 9-year-old can give.

I can’t tell you how much I love this video! Seeing the world through the eyes of a child is a fantastic way of cutting through all the garbage of adult life and getting back to what is important. It fills me with hope that the world may not be lost just yet after all…

The post I Think We All Need a Pep Talk appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

Who are the strongest people at the gym?

There are people with amazing bodies at the gym that I can’t help but admire. Some people go to the gym every single day. They work out because they absolutely love it. They love the feeling it gives them, almost as much as the body it gives them. The buzz of adrenaline lifts their entire day. They have the toned physique, the rippled muscles, the raw strength and the cardiovascular superiority. They have the ability (if required) to bench-press me and the whole of my little family all at once.

They. Look. Amazing.

There is certainly a lot to admire in these people. But they’re not the gym-goers that I wanted to write about.

For me, the most inspirational people in the gym are the ones that look like they don’t belong. The ones who don’t match the fitness-freak stereotype. The ones who may be a little overweight, are almost certainly unfit, but DEFINITELY look like they would rather be absolutely anywhere else but the temple of fitness that is the gym.

They are amazing to me, not because of their bodies, but because of their minds.

That awkward “I-want-to-curl-up-into-a-ball” feeling of self-conciousness

They turn up at the gym knowing that they are going to face the stares, the smirks, and the awkward “I-want-to-curl-up-into-a-ball” feeling of self-conciousness in the gym probably more than anywhere else in the world.

The looks that say “Wow, what are YOU doing here?!”. The smirks that say “I could run faster than that with my feet tied together”.

They are inspirational because despite the negativity, bordering on hostility, they are still there.

Still going. Still running. Still pushing themselves as hard as they can, as hard as the toned gym rats with their trophy bodies (if not harder). They may not run as far, or bench-press as much as the fitness gurus, but they are there trying to improve themselves, which is amazingly inspiratonal to me.

That is true strength.

Buy ‘True Strength Doesn’t Come From Muscles’ artwork.

The post True Strength Doesn’t Come From Muscles appeared first on Hello Inspiration.