How to find inspiration
When being on your own passion is what drives you the most and keeps you going even when dealing with harder choices or long hours. Knowing that you are working towards a goal and making a dream come true is essential. But what does one do when is faced with a moment of lack of inspiration, where does one find it, especially when faced with a deadline? Even the more creative and inspiration people have found out that is not that easy to answer the question and even they have been faced with this problem.
Here are some of the ideas we have for you and that we know work.
Change the place that you are working from
Being “stuck” at a desk or the same environment may prove out to be a good reason for loosing inspiration or seeing things from the same angel. Going out, even for only an hour, taking out the laptop and working from the park or a nearby coffee shop with a great view may change your opinion about how you see things and help you discover a fresh view. The outdoors can do magic for new ideas.
Do sports
Breaking the work pattern with an hour of swimming or running can clear up your mind of problems and stress. The endorphins being released can help you revitalize your mind and body and also focus better in the future.
Leave your phone behind
By totally disconnecting from your daily work, you get to be again in touch with yourself and your passions and remind you what truly brought you into this path. Meeting new people, talking with friends about other subjects will open yourself to new perspectives and ideas, which will ultimately translate into inspiration.
Listen to and / or play music
Music is an eternal source of imagination and inspiration and helps you reach into your emotion and feelings. But at the same time it can help you clear up your mind and put ideas in order.
Find a quiet place
Peace can also help if you have a very stressful period of time, with many projects. Time to listen to the ideas in your “head” may be always a good thing.
source: glassdoor.co.uk
Spend time online
Reading and looking through different news and pieces of information helps your brain remain active and ready to spark an idea that can be unique and original. Knowledge is also key to inspiration, as it creates a fertile soil for innovative ideas to emerge.
Brainstorm
Surrounded yourself by people who think differently than you and that live different lifestyles and challenge them to a brainstorming. This process will definitely offer you new perspectives and ideas that you would have never come up with on your own.
Broaden Your Horizons
Traveling is a great way to see how the rest of the world lives. You can get inspiration from seeing new ways of doing things or discovering needs you didn’t know existed.
Study History
History is full of great ideas. What’s more, it often contains the processes and the influences behind those great ideas. Tracing the creativity of great minds in the past can help you find new solutions in the present.
Simplify:
Sometimes a lack of inspiration can come from working on too many projects. Just try and focus on solving one problem at a time.
Keep Pushing:
Anyone can have one good idea. Unfortunately, you need a lot of good ideas to make a business work. The best entrepreneurs relentlessly follow up on their first idea and keep picking away at new problems for as long as it takes.
Failure is not the end
We are not used to talk about it, to consider it part of the process, to give it its big importance, to learn from it and understand that it might, or might not, take us to the success. What is sure ids that we mustn’t be afraid of it, try to hide it underneath the carpet and pretend like it never happened. The most successful people in the world lived through it, surpassed it and pushed through. Many entrepreneurs that we know and appreciate nowadays have failed with other previous business or fail daily in more or less important parts of their jobs or activities. Failure makes them stronger, teaches them the values and the importance of appreciating every step of the business track and, more than anything, the success, when and if it comes.
“We all have different definitions of failure, simply because we all have different benchmarks, values, and belief systems. A failure to one person might simply be a great learning experience for someone else. Many of us are afraid of failing, at least some of the time. But fear of failure (also called “atychiphobia”) is when we allow that fear to stop us doing the things that can move us forward to achieve our goals,” believes the team of www.mindtools.com.
The fear of failure may have various causes and goes back, most of the times, in our childhood, just like it happens with most of the things that define our lives and whom we are meant to be. Not having the right support, being undermined or humiliated in childhood, those are some causes that will most definitely carry negative feelings into adulthood.
As the editors of edutopia say, failure is an inevitable part of life, but it’s often accompanied by shame — most people do everything in their power to avoid it. As educational philosopher John Dewey said, a true thinker learns as much from failures as from successes. What if educators worked to take some of the sting (and the stigma) out of failing, and encouraged reflection and revision to build upon the lessons learned? “Perhaps there’s a goldmine of opportunities if we can re-frame failure as a valuable learning experience, an essential step along the path to discovery and innovation,” they added.
“Not talking about it is the worst thing you can do, as it means you’re not helping the rest of the organization learn from it,” said Jill Vialet, who runs the nonprofit Playworks. “It gives [the failure] a power and a weight that’s not only unnecessary, but damaging.” Vialet added, referring to the fact that the people involved in the failure should speak about it openly and work to prevent history from repeating itself.
This idea is already ingrained in the cultures of some for-profit industries. For example, in Silicon Valley, failure is a rite of passage. “If you’re not failing, you’re not considered to be innovating enough. Silicon Valley investors, in turn, regularly reward entrepreneurs’ risk-taking behavior, though they know the venture may fail and they will lose their capital,” it’s shown in an article on opinionator.com. In addition, Jill Vialet of Playworks emphasizes the importance of “failing fast and cheap” (as opposed to slow and expensive). She sets aside a budget for new programs that intentionally have unpredictable outcomes. They limit the scope of these programs, clearly define failure and success at the outset, and decide when to measure the new program’s merits. “It’s about being disciplined and rigorous,” said Vialet, since human nature normally prevents us from recognizing our mistakes while they are occurring, quoted by opinionator.com. A great article on the subject one also can find on guardian.com.
It all depends on how the organization and the people that run it see failure and its importance in business. Just as some organizations encourage employees to talk about failure in office events that are closed to the public, others publish their failures for the world to see. Engineers Without Borders Canada, which creates engineering solutions to international development problems, publishes a “ failure report” every year alongside its annual report. “I only let the best failures into the report,” said Ashley Good, its editor. The examples that are published, she said, show people who are “taking risks to be innovative.”
Moreover, Good also started a Web site, Admitting Failure, to encourage people working in international development to share their stories of failure. The site includes stories about arriving unprepared to an emergency medical situation in the Middle East, the theft of an expensive and underused water filter, and more.
In addition to nurturing a culture of innovation and reflection, talking about failure helps build a canon of knowledge of what not to do in the future.
Still, change doesn’t come over night and building a culture of openness to failure takes time and consistent effort. In the majority of cases, however, failure in the social change world does not involve as many dollars or stakeholders, and admitting it can have a net positive impact on an organization. Doing so can build institutional knowledge and create a culture where people are more open to taking risks.
Often, valuable insights come only after a failure. Accepting and learning from those insights is key to succeeding in life.
“The ability to grow and keep trying when you don’t succeed — resilience and grit — are key to cultivating a growth mindset, in academics and in life. I like how the business world has coined the term “failing forward” to mean using mistakes as stepping stones along the road towards achieving your goals”, says edutopia.org.
We can choose to see failure as “the end of the world,” or as proof of just how inadequate we are. Or, we can look at failure as the incredible learning experience that it often is. Every time we fail at something, we can choose to look for the lesson we’re meant to learn. These lessons are very important, they’re how we grow, and how we keep from making that same mistake again. Failures stop us only if we let them.
“Maybe failure doesn’t always lead to success but is simply the price of doing the right thing. Or sometimes tragedy strikes for no reason and without any apparent benefit. Maybe success in the broader sense comes in the form of failure itself when success’s definition is no longer limited to our individual lives,” says Anthony Sabarillo for medium.com
Instead of conclusion, we leave you with a very interesting article on lifehack.com, showing you six reasons it’s ok to fail.
How to have the best brand storytelling on Instagram
As storytelling is the latest trend in communication, all the agencies and companies trying to bring the concept to life in their campaigns and social media presence, Instagram is one of the latest powerful social media tools to try and capitalize on this trend.
According to Social Media Week, since Instagram launched a couple of years ago, over 300 million people have used this platform as a visual place to share their lives. With more than 20 billion images shared on the app to date–this app has become a creative space & community for people to share their story in innovative ways using photography and short videos.
It’s no wonder the stories on Instagram are catching up people’s attention and likeness as so many of them spending so much time on their mobile devices. What it does now for its users is allowing them to share their stories to the world in a quick and easy fashion. It has become a simple, yet powerful tool that has allowed people and brands to develop their own voice visually.
How can a brand take advantage of this trend and make himself even more noticeable on Instagram? Just take a pick here at our short pieces of advice:
- Identifying your niche & developing your own unique voice.
The way you position yourself is always the key. The more different, unique, special your brand is, the better. Make sure that your stories are always capturing that essence of the brand and special approach. By giving your audience something they know they can expect from you, it will be easier to grow a stronger and more dedicated community around your work.
- Utilizing your captions to add more depth to your photos.
Captions may become a vital part of your storytelling process, if you know how to put accent on them and use the right hashtags and words. The story behind the story is always important and should be relevant. Putting your own spin on the story, emphasizing on a certain aspect that makes your brand YOURS is helping bring the story where it should. Your story ultimately, makes a huge difference.
- Choosing and using different angles
The same places or the same ideas, presented in your brand’s way, are creating the differentiation that you are looking for. Instead of shooting something from the same angle as everyone else, try looking for new spots to take the same photo. Maybe you want to get closer to the ground for a different angle, pose a person in a different place, or shoot a photo through the branches of a tree to provide a more natural frame. There are always ways to put a new spin on the same place, and try to make sure you try a bunch of different angles.
- Highlight your brand’s versatility
People want the brands to be playful, to interact, engage and entertain them. They get bored really easy and you must make sure you always bring something fresh to the table. Don’t be afraid to try, to mix and match, to always have in handy a special new app or filter that is trendy. Make it count while is still fresh and not used by a lot of other brands present on Instagram. Your followers will be looking for powerful, original, content. Find ways to expand your current niche creatively to develop a strong brand voice.
- Using video and gifs
Always be present. Be fast and up-to-date. A video speaks more than a picture. A gif makes one laugh and entertains. In other words, powerful tools for your story.
- Making sure you have user-generated content
Getting your followers involved is extremely important for a TODAY brand. Get your audience to do some of the heavy lifting for you by creating a user-generated hashtag for your brand tribe. Then you can post the content of your biggest fans directly on your Instagram account.
- Showing your happy employees
There’s a global war for talent today and the best brands are showing off the fresh faces on their team and all the fun they are having at work. Showcasing yourself at work or your company’s employees in action is great for putting a human face on your brand, which makes what you share on Instagram more interesting to your followers.
- Introducing them behind-the-scenes
Each one of us loves to feel special and shown that they are important. Make sure your brand does that for its followers. You can start by taking them inside the stories of your company, showing them some never-seen before images, actions, activities, etc. Take them where nobody has been before!
