Find the Fire

Scott Mautz

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780814438237
• Topic: Persönliche Entwicklung
• Subtopic: Persönlicher Erfolg

Wouldn't you love to feel as engaged and energized as you were on day one? The key is to quit waiting for it to happen and take control of the process yourself.

Once upon a time, you probably learned the thrill of a good day's work and were inspired to work harder and accomplish more. Then the honeymoon ended, burnout set in, and you began going through the motions uninspired.?

In Find the Fire, discover how you can shake off the malaise and dial up the motivation. Whether you're wrestling with fear, disconnectedness, boredom, lack of creative outlets, overwhelm, or other issues, you will find applicable insights, exercises, inspiring stories, checklists, and more as you learn about the nine forces that drain inspiration.

In this compelling book, you will learn how to:

• reconnect with your coworkers and managers,
• boost your self-confidence and personal presence,
• and how to stay in control during tough times.

Discover how to empower yourself, not waiting for others to fill that need, and how you can still produce work you're proud of, even after many years of performing the same tasks.

You've probably been asking yourself lately what inspires you now. But the more applicable question is, how did you lose the inspiration you once had in the first place? Learn to find that again.

PART I

THE ANTI-MUSE

1

The Forces That Drain Our Inspiration

YOU KNOW THE feeling.

Your pulse quickens. You can feel the energy welling up inside, thrusting everything else to the peripheral. You can sense the power of possibility while your mind races without constraint. You’re filled with a sense of excitement and feel compelled to take action. You’re ready . . . to . . . go.

No, not gassiness.

Inspiration.

The most powerful, catalyzing programming we have on our internal hard drive. The Holy Grail of enthusiasm.

Its power extends even beyond that of motivation. Motivation is the pragmatic consequence of inspiration; it’s that engineer in you that proceeds in a step-by-step fashion with marching orders in hand until it achieves its goal.

Inspiration is a three-beers-in guitar solo. It yields a moment of galvanizing energy and vision that precedes motivation and shoves it into action.

With motivation, we take hold of an idea and run with it.

With inspiration, an idea takes hold of us.

Inspiration’s résumé is Navy SEAL impressive. Research has clearly linked it to the enhancement of well-being and the sense that one is living a full life.¹ Inspiration produces moments that fill us and move us, stirring us to our greatest accomplishments. It has built jaw-dropping buildings and torn down oppressive walls. It has woven spellbinding pages, spit in the face of terrorism with heroic acts, pitched the winning bold idea to the conservative client, hit the shot at the buzzer, started a business on a shoestring, taught English in the jungle, burst breathtaking beauty onto a canvas, and finally taken that accounting class.

It’s a force that makes things so.

So . . . where has yours gone?

And why isn’t it at work for you?

You’re not alone—far too many of us no longer feel a sense of inspiration at work. In fact, research shows that over 70 percent of us have lost that loving feeling.

The sense of inspiration was always there when you started your career (or even your current job); it was everywhere. Everywhere, that is, before transaction replaced transcendence, and process supplanted possibility. Before your impact started to dwindle and you felt yourself shrinking. Before monotony replaced magic. Before you started working for that boss you’d describe at best as milquetoast or at worst as soul-sucking.

By the way, you won’t get much help on that last front, unfortunately.

Research shows that 55 percent of employees cite the ability to inspire as the single most important leadership attribute they want from their boss, and yet only 11 percent say their current manager is inspiring.² Furthermore, self-awareness on this front ain’t exactly sky-high among the leaders themselves. A study showed leaders gave themselves an average score of 7 out of 10 for how inspirational they thought they were, while their employees scored them on this trait at an average of 4 out of 10 or lower.³

Yup—your boss thinks he’s inspirational like in Good Will Hunting, while you daydream of hunting for another job.

The scarcity of inspiration is clearly having an impact on us, as another global study reported that just 12 percent of employees worldwide feel optimistic at work.⁴

That can’t be good.

Research shows that optimism is the single biggest predictor of resiliency and even has the power to undo the negative effects of a stressful experience.⁵ So, it’s really not something you want to try to do without.

Still another study showed that among leaders receiving the lowest percentile scores for inspirational ability, productivity was dreadful. Some 56 percent of employees working for such bosses negatively self-rated their productivity⁶ (but positively self-rated their impulsivity for taking a hammer to their temple).

And when we do manage to eke out some inspiration at work, it’s hard to hold onto. Almost 70 percent of us find it hard to stay inspired at work.⁷

The message here is don’t wait around for your leaders to inspire you and keep you inspired. Apparently there’s a landfill worth of books on “How to be an inspirational leader” still gathering dust on the bedside nightstands of leaders everywhere.

It’s time to take the matter into your own hands.

Now, I know that conventional logic tells you that you need to be inspired by external forces—you can’t ignite your own pilot light. I know common beliefs and classic historical accounts will tell you that you have to be patient—inspiration is a mysterious, fickle force that will appear when it’s good and ready, a force over which you have no control, like David Hasselhoff.

I disagree.

While I will grant you that inspiration can be elusive, it can, in fact, be codified and coaxed. You don’t have to helplessly wait around for it to happen to you—you can create the conditions where inspiration is much more likely to occur.

And I’ll show you how.

Frankly, the prevailing wisdom isn’t doing a whole lot for us. As the data clearly shows, we aren’t exactly prevailing in the “inspired at work” department.

So, let’s get on with the art and science of self-inspiring. As the Russian composer Tchaikovsky advised on finding inspiration, “If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic.”⁸

I’m on a mission to help you reignite your inspiration at work.

Let’s find the fire.

THE FIRST SPARK

Self-inspiration is first and foremost, a choice.

Dr. Gerald Bell, a professor at the University of North Carolina, asked 4,000 retired executives, average age of 70, one question: If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?

The number-one response?

I should have understood more about my cell phone plan.

Just kidding. Actually they said I should have taken charge of my life and set my goals earlier.⁹

I can’t imagine that one of your goals is to feel uninspired in your work life, nor can I imagine such a state makes you feel in charge of your life. You probably don’t need 4,000 aging executives who watch too much of the Golf Channel to tell you what you already know deep inside—it’s time to take charge and make change—and it’s up to you.

The first spark is struck in one of three ways:

1. You choose to view your old job in a new light. You see it for the possibilities it yet still contains to reignite your inspiration.

2. You decide, in your heart of hearts, it’s time to move on and find new work. But you first commit to understanding the triggers and warning signs of what keeps and drains our inspiration over time so that you can inform your search and know what to look for/ensure absence of at your potential new employer, and make a move that will stick.

3. If you’re lucky enough to be in a place where you really do feel inspired in your job, you then choose to elevate your awareness of why that’s the case and how to keep it so.

In any scenario, it’s time to look closer—much closer—at this supposed mystery called inspiration.

WHAT INSPIRES US?

Let us begin with the basic question, “What inspires us?”

The answer, of course, is as individual as the person answering it (aside from the hugely popular response of “Super Bowl half-time show”). It might be a compelling vision, a specific song, your favorite painting, your boss’s boss, or a well-crafted quote. It might be a story of heroism, a talented coworker, a tale of triumph, a particular idea, or a beautiful sunset.

So, when we’re feeling uninspired, we can think of what inspires us and try to find ways to incorporate more of it in our life. Makes sense.

Unfortunately, the net effect of our efforts is often too tepid and too temporary—as sobering statistics on our current state of inspiration at work indicate.

We’re missing something.

Asking and acting on “What inspires me?” at first glance seems like fertile territory, and yet a fundamental, deep-seated lack of inspiration persists.

To find a more sustaining solution versus temporary spikes, to find common powerful themes to draw from amid a dizzying array of individualized and random sources of fleeting inspiration, you must go further and dig deeper.

THE ANATOMY OF INSPIRATION

Let us begin this excavation with a deeper understanding of inspiration. Leading research on inspiration reveals three defining characteristics:¹⁰

1. Our inspiration can be evoked; we become inspired by (a leader, an act of bravery, a sunset, a story of redemption, remarkable work). Responsibility for becoming inspired is ascribed to something beyond the self, something that has engendered a deep appreciation.

2. Our inspiration can come from within, triggered when we gain an awareness of better possibilities and when new interests or insights are revealed. This reorients us toward something more imperative than our usual focus (an innovative idea piques our interest, a new challenge stirs us, a renewed relationship reenergizes us, a better way to work becomes evident).

3. Any of these inspirations can compel us to act—we have a strong motivation to act on and actualize the idea, interest, or insight and/or express or imitate the qualities expressed in the inspirational stimulus. It is here that we are inspired to work with conviction, joy, excitement, confidence, control, and pride. We’re inspired to create, connect, produce, and pursue ideas and interests with vigor.

This last characteristic o...