This post is about inspiration and is about you. Just as you are right now.

It won’t suggest you become someone different, or tell you that you have to gain anything of material significance.

It won’t because your most valuable gifts are already within you.

And once they are uncovered everything in your life will flow more smoothly. When you change your inner world, the outer world will change around you.

There is no need for me to tell anyone that the road of life is never easy. All too frequently we encounter detours, speed bumps, and U-turns.

Instead of being negatives, I like to think of these challenges as necessary to appreciate the full scope that life has to offer. Without experiencing the lows would we truly appreciate the highs?

“Once I decide to do something, I can’t have people telling me I can’t. If there’s a roadblock, you jump over it, walk around it, crawl under it.” – Kitty Kelley

Sometimes it is too easy to only focus on the challenges. They occupy our attention and become all we can see.

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In the past, I would lose sight of goals because I could not see past the obstacles in the way. I then began to fixate on the obstacle instead of the goal.

I was quickly and continually derailed from achieving my goals.

Goal setting and the subsequent derailment became sources of frustration for me. I had to find a way of breaking the cycle.

I had to find sources of strength, inspiration, and perseverance to keep my focus on the outcomes I wanted.

In this post, I offer four simple thoughts that will help you find the treasures that are within you to uncover your greatness.

Inspiration: Your greatest love affair should be you

That person is you

Your greatest love affair should be with yourself. And you need to view your relationship with yourself as your most important relationship.

How often do you see people giving their love freely to others, but they don’t provide themselves with respect let alone love.

Many of us are happy to speak up and defend people we care about but let that critical inner voice in our head continue unchecked.

“Our first and last love is self-love.” – Christian Nestell Bovee

Will you indulge me and allow me to tell you a story? I am working with a wonderfully giving single mother.

She does everything she can to support her children, emotionally, financially and psychologically. All the things that you would say a good parent should do.

But if you listen carefully to what she says you will note that her conversation is plastered with self-deprecating comments. She is continually putting herself down.

The critical inner voice

After seven minutes of chatting, I paused the conversation. I read out the first 15 negative and scathing comments that she made about herself that I had listed. After fifteen, I stopped writing them down.

“Would you tell anyone those comments over the course of an entire day?” I asked.

“Never. I couldn’t be that cruel.”

Yet she was that cruel to herself. And not over twenty-four hours but seven minutes.

Before we started working together, she had no idea that she could control her inner voice. And her inner voice is toxically damaging.

We are working together to build her relationship with herself. If want to improve your relationship with yourself Self-Esteem Develop More Of It is a good starting point.

Is it time that you built your relationship with yourself? To train that inner voice to compliment you and to show appreciation to yourself?

You make it easier for others to love you when you love yourself. It is never too late to start to love yourself.

Inspiration: If you are in a hole stop digging

We can all fall into a rut. The key is when you find yourself at a low point, not to dig the rut even deeper by beating yourself up. Many people fall into a hole and then dig it deeper without even realising it.

Sometimes, giving up is perhaps the most natural thing you can do. Whatever we repeat often enough becomes a habit. If you give up then giving up becomes a habit.

“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” – Michael Jordan

The problem is giving up becomes our default solution. Our automatic response to pretty much everything.

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Do you want to have giving up as your default option?

To get out of that rut, we must first accept our current position. Yes, we are in a hole.

When we recognise the behaviours and decisions that lead to us falling in, we will be capable of avoiding similar pitfalls in the future.

Inspiration: Show up even when you don’t feel like it

Some days, life gets the best of us. There is no helping it. These occasions will continue to test our resolve.

I remember the Woody Allen quote, “Showing up is 80% of life. Sometimes it’s easier to hide at home in bed. I’ve done both.”

Imagine it is Monday morning at 6:00am, and you are on your way to work. Nobody told you that you needed to be there that early.

If we were being honest, we would all prefer to be in bed right now. It’s a cold morning and just staying curled up under a warm duvet actually sounds really nice right now.

But you don’t want to let yourself do that.

Why? Because you have got to show up.

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.” – Walt Disney

Several years ago, a friend used the analogy of life being like a photo album. Your task is at the end of each day, to put a photograph summarising that day into your album.

What would each picture look like? Would yesterday be any different than today? Or would tomorrow be different from any day next week?

Most of us settle into routines and ruts in life that allow us to take the path of least resistance. It’s easier that way.

It is easier to stay in bed, to not to do the work. It’s easier just to hope and wish it all works out.

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But doing so will only reproduce the same picture of what your life has already given you.

Let’s be honest… most things worth doing in life are never easy. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

Inspiration: A stumble does not have to be the end of the journey

How hard we fall is not important, the critical part is continually picking ourselves up. The challenges and obstacles we face in life are momentary occurrences in an enduring adventure.

It made me think about people I’ve known who have stumbled and stayed there. Not to mention the times I’ve stumbled and wanted to stay there…

“For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.” – Mary Kay Ash

The road of life can be long and challenging. And the path may twist and turn. There will be potholes and obstacles in the way. Some days it may seem more comfortable to sit down and make camp where you stumbled. Don’t do it! Don’t!

Keep your goal in focus and keep moving forward until you get there!

We will slip, trip and stumble. And making mistakes is an essential part of learning how best to handle recurring situations. With experience, we learn to recognise these potholes in advance and deal with them before they cause us to stumble.

How will you use these four simple thoughts to find inspiration that will help you push through and not give up. Developing perseverance is an integral part of living an outstanding life, click HERE to find out more.