Motivation vs Inspiration: Friday’s with Filar #0013
Good morning beautiful people. It’s another cold, dark ending to this January week - but we’re pulling through. We should be proud of ourselves for making it another 5 days. Some people don’t get that opportunity. Some people don’t want to get out of bed in the mornings. But we did, and that’s fucking awesome.
A handful of things happened this week that I’d like to share with you all. The first is this ideology of
People
______
Product
(aka people over product)
It doesn’t matter what the product you work on, try to sell, design, or consume is - what matters is the people around it. How many times have we purchased something because of someone we believe in? Or how much belief there is in the service or product you work on during your day to day job because of the people around you? Or lack there of - some people hate the people around them and therefore hate the product.
This week I had the amazing opportunity to join a group of 30-40 humans who showed up in Arlington, MA at this restaurant called Tryst. Its owned by a twitter friend of mine, Taek, who is a Veefriends owner, like I am. And this isn’t a segment about NFTs and trying to convince you its the future (but it might be).
Its a segment about how a group of 4 people who are all in the community of Veefriends, pooled together the idea to host a ‘meet up’, share it on socials, and see who shows up. Low and behold, a bunch of people showed up. The BEST people showed up - everyone was super fucking nice. What does this have to do with people over product? Well, in the middle of the event, Taek gets behind the bar, elevates himself on a stool or char and says a few words. He goes on to say the goal of this is to share who you are, what you’re working on, with the strangers and people around you. That we have the ability to uplift each other and support each others projects or art or businesses.
And he was right. The conversations flowed the rest of the evening with people not ‘selling’, but genuinely curious as to what each person was interested in. It was pretty cool to witness.
CONTENT CORNER 🎬:
I just started doing this segment of the blog last week but I really like it and as much as this may be helpful for you all reading this - it’s a way for me to document the things I listen to or consume during these weeks. So in 3-4-5 years when I’m (hopefully) still blogging, I can reflect back on them.
This weeks goes to The Danny Miranda Podcast featuring George Heaton. For those that know me, I fucking LOVE the brand Represent Clothing. George is the cofounder, with his brother Mike Heaton, and they’ve built an absolute beast of a community through luxury fashion at an affordable price.
George never does interviews, or very few exist online so it was refreshing to see how much he’s grown since his last podcast and the way he’s able to verbalize and articulate his thoughts in a concise and deliberate manner.
I will say the podcast felt a lot like a traditional interview, reading question after question after question, versus an organic conversation which I don’t personally love in podcasts - but nonetheless it is great to see George share some incredible thoughts.
Check it out here:
THE MAIN IDEA 🙇🏼♂️:
While I have my occasional down weeks, I typically don’t need you or anyone else to push me through each week. I’m a pretty motivated mother fucker. In each moment, I know what I want to accomplish that day, that week, month, year… etc - and that mission continues with inner belief.
What I need is to consume my days with content, voices, messages, people… that inspire me. These things either resemble where I want to go or someone who has hints of who I want to become or environments I want to be in, so they are taken in.
There is a big misconception between motivation and inspiration though. People always say “need to find some motivation today”, when in actually it should be rephrased to inspiration.
Motivation is sort of bullshit, right? It can pretty easily be boiled down to gratitude and how you feel in that moment. If you’re grateful for being here, or grateful to be healthy, or grateful to be able to walk - then that’s enough to get your ass to the gym. What the purpose or goal of you going to the gym is what COULD tip the scale of you actually going or not. Is your inspiration a very attractive he/she on Instagram and you want them to notice? Are you inspired by someone who lived to be 110 years old and therefore want to start eating healthier so you can live a longer life?
When googling what ‘motivate’ meant, the definition that came up is:
‘provide (someone) with a motive for doing something’
Thats pretty tough to sustain long term I think. Sure, my motive for working this job can be money. But that won’t survive or fuel the fire for that long. But if I’m inspired by the CEO each day, and part of that inspiration could be his nice car or how much money he makes, I think that will provide me much more energy to show up everyday in the long run.
When googling what ‘inspire’ meant, the definition that came up is:
‘fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something”
I don’t love the word urge as its definitely temporary, but the ‘feel something’ part really has me going. Every action we take everyday is based on emotion and how we feel towards something. I washed my car Saturday morning because it was dirty - - deep down it was because I didn’t like the feeling of people looking at me stepping out of my car and it looking that way. I drove 4 hours to new york city to see a friend - because I like the way they make me feel and wanted to feel whole again.
Emotion is at the root of everything. So I really love the idea of inspiration providing a feeling towards someone to do something.
What do other people think? Is this on track? Am I crazy? Are you crazy?
Lets have a beautiful weekend.
Get motivated.
Get inspired.
Get whatever you want to get out of this life.
Good things.
DF