The pursuit of inspiration is something that nearly all of us value. By being inspired, we appreciate how we can become energized to realize our goals. A sense of awe and power overcome us when we are inspired. And this naturally boosts our confidence that we can achieve those most coveted dreams we have for our lives. Therefore, it’s perfectly understandable why we constant seek factors that inspire us and encourage us to act. But while this is important, it is also worth noting that not all types of inspiration are the same.
When it comes to inspiring motivation, two basic types exist: passive inspiration and active inspiration. The former is something we experience quite frequently. Stories, images, and real-life examples are often sources of this type of inspiration. But while important, active inspiration offers greater rewards and potential in our pursuits of a bold life. In fact, through active learning efforts, we infuse our lives with active inspiration. By engaging and applying inspiring concepts, we utilize active inspiration tools to become the best we can be.
What Is Active Inspiration?
In describing exactly what active inspiration represents, it can best be appreciated through active learning strategies. In educational settings, a distinction is often made between passive and active learning. Passive learning, like passive inspiration, involves reading, watching, and hearing information that may inspire use and expand our knowledge. These pursuits are very important, but they are not the most powerful in terms of motivation. Indeed, passive inspirations are wonderful, but they tend to be short-lived. In contrast, active inspirations, using active learning techniques, invites long-term motivations that can evoke powerful changes in our lives.
Active inspiration is achieved through a variety of activities that are also common to active learning. These activities include actual application of information in your life pursuits. Active inspiration requires creating, producing, and being willing to make mistakes. Through these “activations,” we energize our ideas and pursuits allowing them to gain momentum and evoke greater enthusiasm. We not only appreciate something as inspiring, but we allow it to transform us and motivate us. Passive inspirations may provide important insights and motivations. But active inspirations, using active learning strategies, infuse us with stronger passions and motivations to help us evolve and transcend.
Active Learning Techniques to Fuel Active Inspirations
In an effort to attain active inspirations in your life, active learning techniques are powerful strategies that can help. Active learning requires engagement, participation, and application. They involve social interactions as well as hands-on exercises with a willingness to fail. Through these types of active learning efforts, we are better able to realize key connections and grasp a larger perspective. This is especially true when it comes the personal application of ideas to our own lives. Through active learning techniques, and subsequently active inspiration, our passions and motivations grow significantly.
The reason active learning techniques drive active inspirations relate to different cognitive learning methods. When we create, produce, and apply concepts through various activities, we activate many other areas of our brains. In passive learning and inspiration, our brains “receive” information, which demands much less of our learning capacities. But in active learning, this information is used by a variety of brain regions. As a result, our capacity to learn and to be inspired is enhanced greatly. This is why active inspirations motivate us and transcend us so much more over time.
Enjoying the Advantages of Active Inspiration
In terms of inspiration, three key attributes have been identified to define it. First, inspiration is something that happens to us in specific situations. When we experience something relevant to our lives and goals, inspirations are evoked spontaneously. Secondly, inspirations provide us with clarity and enhanced awareness that enables us to achieve goals that might have seemed impossible. And lastly, inspirations motivate us to take action toward those goals permitting us to become our very best.
Understanding this, active inspiration offers many advantages that we may not realize through passive inspirations. Through engagement, participation, and application, we pave the way for spontaneous inspirations. And through action, we help the activating nature of inspirations from the start. As a result, action inspiration creates lasting motivations and passions that aid us in realizing transformative change. When it comes to our bold life pursuits, active inspirations offer notable advantages that far exceed those of passive ones.
