“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.

• 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.

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.

“Those of you who know me will be more than aware (thanks mainly to my packed Facebook and Twitter feeds) that I have gotten myself involved in a lot recently.

I share a health & wellness business with my partner Andy, I am an ambassador for a beauty company, I do a bit of social media management for a new hairdressers in Manchester (who are brilliant by the way) and now I am a personal stylist for a fashion boutique. All of this is in addition to my full time job and busy home life with my kids Lucy (aged 9½) Roddy the Wondercat (aged 2) and Andy (aged 41¾)

I cannot yet say that I have reached a point where I can quit my day job, but I can see that opportunity is on the horizon, so I keep trooping on.

The hardest thing for me has been (along with losing touch with a lot of my friends) is that I have encountered a fair bit of negativity from people; from being told that the products I sell are “a load of shit”, to “you are neglecting your daughter”

I will be brutally honest and tell you that this negativity has drained me at times. Although I know that I should let such poisonous comments wash over me, it is really hard to put that method into practice. Only yesterday was I sat in the kitchen in floods of tears (no, I hadn’t been peeling onions) mascara streaming down my face onto Andy’s shoulder and white tee (sorry, luv) wondering why I am putting myself through all this stress and heartache.

Then Andy reminded me why I am, because it is ME and what I LOVE TO DO. He also made the following points (as he always does when I have one of my episodes)

1. The things I sell aren’t shit. I wouldn’t be wasting my time selling them if they were.
2. I am not neglecting Lucy, I am building a better life for us, so we can have a holiday next year, and every year thereafter (and nice clothes, days out, a rainy day fund, a nest egg etc…)
3. The negative people are far outweighed by the positive people, who can see what I am doing and my WHY.
4. People are in awe of what I do. I receive a lot of messages from people telling me this, commenting that I have a lovely aura and who notice that I am still smiling all the time.
5. People who say they wish they were like me…!? He tells me that all these people see greatness in me, I just need to start seeing it myself.
6. If any of the above points were not true, then Hello Inspiration would not have got in touch…

Which brings me (finally) to the topic of my post…

A couple of months back, Chris Keep, owner of new company Hello Inspiration, and fellow resident of Urmston, got in touch with me via my favourite platform, Twitter.

He had set up a new business, which combines motivation with art, and he wanted to use me as a muse for a project he was doing, entitled ‘Inspiring the Inspirers’

Of course as confused as I felt at that point (in my Typical-Marie ‘why me’ kinda way) I accepted his kind request. He had already thought up some ideas of what he wanted to do from reading my earlier blog post (my post about finding acceptance after encountering a rude man in a pub) but being the perfectionist he is, he asked me to complete a series of questions:

• What three words to describe your outlook on life?
• Who/what inspires you?
• What’s the best compliment you’ve ever been given?
• What would you like to say to your younger self?
• What job would you do if time, talent, money etc were not factors? Why?
• Do you have a mantra or set of words you find yourself going over when things are challenging, a piece of advice that you rely on?

After a couple of weeks, he came back to me with a series of pieces of art which he felt encapsulated what I am all about.

All of the pictures contained a quotation or word which highlighted my strengths. We shortlisted the pictures down to two, and Chris decided on this as the final piece (which also happened to be my favourite)

He went for a subtle but strong message, which hints at the greatness which he sensed in me….’There is greatness within me’

Cool!

He then delivered to me, a mounted copy of the image, which is now hanging proudly on the wall of my hall (it stands out nicely against my vintage pictures) I was emotional, as you can imagine!!

Chris is a lovely gent with a brilliant concept. We all love to be inspired and motivated day to day, and one of his pictures on your living room wall or on your desktop will keep you feeling that way.”

The post Guest Post – A View From the Other Side appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

On Thursday 30th October, Hello Inspiration is going to be participating in a shopping and pamper event in aid of the Macmillan Cancer Support charity. This promises to be a great event in support of a fantastic and worthwhile charitable cause.

It also promises to be a nerve-racking experience for me personally

Thus far, Hello Inspiration has lived the whole of its short life on the internet. I’m free to create designs, publish them and watch the feedback (or not) from the safety of my little computer screen. I design and produce primarily for an audience of one – me. If I like it, and I’m happy with it, it gets published. If not, it doesn’t. Simple. I don’t have to worry about seeing people’s up-close-and-personal reactions – their love, their hate or worst of all, their ambivalence.

All of that will change at this event

I will be eye-balling potential customers, and they will be eye-balling me. In the flesh. Person to person. IN REAL LIFE. Arrrgghhhhhh.

They can look at my creations and react accordingly, and I will be able to see it all happening right there in front of me. Will they pause for a second, look and then move on? Will they flick through the display, pick out ten or twelve favourites and buy them all? Or will they walk on by, without even giving my work a second glance?

What will happen? I have no idea

This kind of in-person sales is completely new to me. The closest I have come to it previously was working on a trade stand at a telecoms technology exhibition, many years ago and in a different life. That experience did not go well. I spent the entire day looking into the middle distance, hoping beyond hope that no-one would try to catch my eye and horror-of-horrors, actually ask me any questions. That tactic worked well for most of the day, but on the two occasions where my defences were breached, I was quickly pulled in out of my depth by a rip-current of technical questions, and had to call on more experienced colleagues to save me from drowning.

Not a great experience

But Hello Inspiration is different – and deep down I know that. It is something I am very passionate about (something I would never have said about the telecoms industry). It is also something that I know a lot about – you can’t really avoid that kind of in-depth knowledge as the founder of a small business. And hopefully, it will be an occasion where I will be actively seeking to catch people’s eye and engage with them, rather than trying desperately to avoid their gaze.

So if you come along to the event, please do stop by the Hello Inspiration stall. I’ll be the one wearing the nervous/welcoming smile.

The post There’s Nothing To Be Scared Of, Right? appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

I re-posted it to Twitter and Facebook a couple of weeks ago and had a mini-hit on my hands…

The post had 10 retweets within about 15 minutes – and I thought this must be what it feels like when something is going viral! I know that isn’t a huge amount of viral-ness (virility?), but it gave me a huge rush to see it being shared again and again.

I think that going viral is relative anyway – if someone posts all the time and no-one ever shares their stuff, then one day they get 3 retweets, wouldn’t they consider that to be a huge viral success?

So Why Did This Happen?

I think the design has resonated with people because it goes against an accepted piece of wisdom. We all hear that ‘good things come to those that wait’, and that ‘patience is a virtue’, but what if that just makes us less likely to try and take decisive action ourselves? Personally, I think we’re all better served by taking life into our own hands and going out to make things happen, rather than sitting around waiting. Both the ‘Good Things Don’t Come To those That Wait’ artwork design and an alternative ‘Impatience is a Virtue’ artwork design try to go against this accepted wisdom, and get people actively participating in their lives, rather than passively waiting for it to happen.

Going Viral

Having experienced this mini-viral post, I can now just about imagine what it must be like to have something go properly viral, and that remains my aim with everything I publish from Hello Inspiration. The more people that retweet it, the more people that see it. And the more people that see it, the more people that can be inspired by it!

So thank you Twitter for making me believe that going viral is possible…

The ‘Good Things Don’t Come To those That Wait’ artwork design is available to purchase here. The ‘Impatience is a Virtue’ artwork design is available to purchase here.

The post Going Viral (ish) appeared first on Hello Inspiration.

You hear it all the time… “Follow your passion”, or the alternative “Do what you love”.

It seems like the new mantra for entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs in today’s anything-is-possible world. And sure, it sounds tempting – I mean, who doesn’t want to follow their dreams, right? What they don’t tell you is why the ‘follow your passion’ approach works…

Following your passion works because you’re more likely to work your ass off.

There, I said it.

You’ll get up early. You’ll stay up late. You’ll keep going, even when everybody else is out having a good time. And you’ll do all of that because it doesn’t really feel like work at all.

Passion is a catalyst for hard work.

And hard work is really what makes success.

Buy ‘Follow Your Passion’ quote artwork here.

The post The Real Reason Why ‘Follow Your Passion’ Works appeared first on Hello Inspiration.