Inspiration comes in all shapes and sizes.

This week I am posting with intention and making it a lot more personal in honor of my official blog it forward post, tomorrow!

I’ve been thinking all morning about what inspires me and it honestly runs the gamut from hot-tattooed personal trainers (above) to my daily blogs, all the way to the mountain view I see from my room each morning (Which has the uncanny ability of compelling me to sing the theme song from Lord of the Rings! Too much?).  There is a lot to be feasted on out there, so how do we sift out what is truly inspiring and what is just noise?  Cause there are a lot of things that I think are cool and hip and rad…but instead of inspiring me they kind of just end up making me feel jealous, discontent, and a little inadequate.  So.  This is what I think is the difference:

True inspiration elicits action.

Action that is uninhibited. Willing to fail. And uniquely your own.

Sometimes this comes in the form of an inspiring person – who gives us sobering perspective on our own lives – compelling us to reform old patterns of thought, make a change in an area of our life, or finally let go.  Sometimes its a photographers work that takes our breath away and pushes us to start taking photographs on the weekend and post them on our flickr,facebook,myspace, blog et. al. Or maybe the words of a powerful writer, speaker, lover, friend – that awaken you to what could be possible.

Inspiration is a type of sledgehammer to our walls of fear, laziness, doubt, rebellion, and carefully built patterns of self protection.

It can have the affect of waking us up but it is never the work itself. We still have to be brave and take the first step and the second…and the third….and the….