How to Live an Inspiring Life: Advice from the Professionals

I’ve always been fascinated by inspiring people. You know those that go beyond the ordinary, heart first into the extraordinary.

They’ve done things that most people wouldn’t dare do, let alone dream.

They are the people that motivate and inspire me.

So when attempting to be inspiring, I thought I’d go straight to the source and asked everyone from inspiring blogger Sherry Petersik from my favorite home decor site Young House Love to social media superstar Annabel Candy this question:

How do you live an inspiring life?

Here’s my email to them: You’ve all been kind and generous enough to add inspiration to my 2inspired blog and for that I am forever grateful. In some ways, you’ve help lifted me up, gave me hope and inspiration to fulfill my own dreams. You are an inspiration to me. And because of that I want to pass down that legacy. In addition, since you are all experts in your field and successful at what you do, I wanted to pick your brain and share what you know to my readers.

Would you be willing to answer this intentionally broad and simple (or maybe not too simple) question: How do you live an inspiring life?

And because they are so kind and generous with their time, here’s what they said:

Get in the Hot Spot‘s Annabel Candy: Be brave, follow your heart, chase your dreams and don’t worry about what other people think.Inspiring people are people who strike out on their own, take big risks and have the confidence to do that even though their plans seem crazy. The enemy is mediocrity so if you want to be inspiring yourself you need to surround yourself with people who inspire you to take courage and take action to do whatever it is you really want to do.

If you can’t find inspiring people in your daily life they’re there waiting for you at the bookshop, in the library and on the Internet. We all need to inspire and be inspired every day. I find inspiration in nature, on the beach, in the trees and people inspire me too. Often people inspire us to do the opposite of what they’re doing! If you look hard enough for inspiration you really can find it everywhere.

John & Sherry Petersik from Young House Love said: We like to think that we live an inspired life as opposed to an inspiring one. We’re constantly inspired by the creative and amazing people around us (from fellow bloggers and blog readers to friends and relatives) so that keeps us excited to tackle new projects and share our experiences along the way!

Nacie Carson from The Life Uncommon said: To live an inspiring life, we need to know what inspires us, which means we need to know ourselves inside and out. The quest for self-understanding and self-love is the very essence and starting point of understanding what will uniquely inspire us.  To find inspiration we must find out who we are and what is meaningful and special to us. Therein lies the key to inspiration.

Jaqui Duvall from The Evolving Self said: One of my favorite quotes is: “Life is a school to the wise man and an enemy to the fool.” I do my best to embrace this in my own life, that no matter how uncomfortable an experience might be, that it is in my life at this particular time for the purpose of growth and healing and expanding my experience as a human being.

I can’t ever know why some things happen, but there is always an opportunity to practice gratitude for some aspect of it. I believe that if we look for it, we can find meaning in suffering and that meaning can help us continue to move through life with grace and dignity and more important, there is someone in the world who can benefit from our experience.

I also try to remember that the word “inspire” is about breathing and that means being present in the moment. The only moment I can do anything about is the present one….Ekhart Tolle (one of my favorite spiritual teachers) said that “the only way to be successful in life is to have a successful present moment”. I believe this is one of the greatest challenges we face, to simply be present right now.