BITESIZE | How to Find Inspiration Everywhere You Look | Light Watkins #349
In this episode, meditation teacher Light Watkins explains how to tune into inspiration by training yourself to look for it and cultivating intuition. He shares how trusting your inner guide and acting despite fear can open up opportunities and lead to a more peaceful, guided life.
Deep Dive Analysis
9 Topic Outline
Introduction to Tuning into Inspiration
Finding Inspiration All Around Us
Perspective on Miracles and Guidance
Training Your Perception for Inspiration
Overcoming Negativity Bias
Trusting Your Internal Guidance
Identifying Inspiration: Excitement and Fear
Differentiating Inner Guidance from Other Voices
Practical Steps for Overcoming Feeling Stuck
6 Key Concepts
Cultivating Inspiration
Inspiration is always present, but we must train ourselves to look for it, often by looking within our own heart and spirit. Focusing on gratitude and being present can make inspiration 'pop up everywhere' in our lives.
Leaps of Faith
These are small, inner callings or urges that may not bring external validation but are crucial to follow. Starting with these small acts of following your heart can culminate into bigger, more significant changes in your life.
Training Your Perception
Similar to how buying a green car makes you notice green cars everywhere, what you train yourself to look for is what you will see. If you don't see inspiration, it's likely because you haven't trained yourself to actively seek it out.
Internal GPS / Inner Guidance
This refers to an internal, intuitive sense of direction or a 'divine destination' that, when followed, tends to lead to positive outcomes. Trusting this inner guide, much like trusting a car's GPS, helps navigate life's path more smoothly.
Hallmarks of Inspiration
True inspiration is identified by two key feelings: excitement about the possibilities it presents and a degree of fear. The fear arises because inspiration often pushes us outside our comfort zone, where growth and magic happen.
Courage
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather loyalty to your inner calling or heartfelt guidance despite the presence of fear. It involves moving forward in the direction of inspiration even when feeling afraid.
3 Questions Answered
Choosing to believe the world works for you and looking on the bright side can lead to calmness, less reactivity, more peace, and overall happiness, even amidst life's challenges.
True inspiration is characterized by two hallmarks: excitement about possibilities and a degree of fear, as growth often happens outside the comfort zone.
Your inner guidance will always tell you what *to do* (e.g., 'Go to the right,' 'Take this chance'), whereas other voices like fear or social conditioning often tell you what *not to do*.
16 Actionable Insights
1. Train Your Focus
Understand that what you actively train yourself to look for is what you will perceive; if you don’t see inspiration, you are likely not training yourself to look for it.
2. Choose a Miraculous Perspective
Choose to believe that everything is a miracle, rather than nothing, as this perspective can shift how you perceive guidance and serendipitous events in your life.
3. Cultivate Gratitude and Presence
Focus on gratitude and be more present to enhance your perception of inspiration and opportunities, making life feel more vibrant and revealing possibilities everywhere.
4. Choose Optimistic Perspectives
Choose to look on the bright side and believe that events happen for a reason, even if unclear initially, as this perspective fosters calmness, reduces reactivity, and promotes peace and happiness.
5. Experiment with Optimism
Experiment with having more optimism and trust in your internal guidance, rather than defaulting to negativity, recognizing the power of where you place your attention.
6. Practice Meditation for Connectivity
Engage in meditation to access a deeper sense of connectivity that transcends intellectual understanding, helping you feel drawn to experiences and situations more intuitively.
7. Discern Inner Guidance
Practice discerning your ‘still small voice of inner guidance’ from other internal voices (pain, trauma, social conditioning) by ‘split testing’ and following the one you believe is your intuition, accepting you may not get it right every time initially.
8. Identify Intuition by Affirmation
Identify your inner guidance by its affirmative nature; it will always tell you what to do (e.g., ‘Go right,’ ‘Take this chance’) and keep you moving forward, rather than telling you what not to do.
9. Follow Your Internal GPS
Trust and follow your internal guidance, or ‘internal GPS,’ without over-questioning, similar to how you would trust a car GPS to reach your desired destination.
10. Embrace Fear and Excitement
When you feel both excitement for possibilities and fear, recognize these as hallmarks of inspiration and move in that direction, understanding that fear is a natural part of the process.
11. Cultivate Loyalty to Inner Calling
Define courage as loyalty to your inner, heartfelt calling rather than the absence of fear, and cultivate enough courage to act on that calling despite fear.
12. Step Beyond Comfort Zone
Recognize that magic and growth occur outside your comfort zone, and understand that the fear you feel at its edge is a natural rite of passage, often loudest just before you begin.
13. Act to Dissipate Fear
Take action on what you’re called to do, as fear tends to dissipate quickly once you move beyond the initial starting place and engage in the activity, allowing you to enter a strategic mode.
14. Act on Small Leaps of Faith
Begin by taking small leaps of faith or following your heart on minor urges, such as meditating or complimenting someone, as these small actions will eventually lead to bigger, more significant outcomes.
15. Start a Gratitude List
If you feel stuck or can’t see your next step, start writing down everything you are grateful for, as gratitude anchors you in the present moment, clarifying your inner guidance and revealing your next instructions.
16. Focus on the Next Step
Avoid paralysis by not trying to see the entire ‘staircase’ or future path; instead, focus only on identifying and taking the very next step.
5 Key Quotes
You can look, you can believe everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle, but you can't really believe both.
Einstein (as quoted by Light Watkins)
Whatever you're training yourself to look for is what you're going to see. And if you don't see inspiration, you probably aren't training yourself to look for it.
Light Watkins
We've almost been conditioned to overthink everything, but to err on the side of negativity, as opposed to positivity.
Light Watkins
I operate from the belief that there is an internal divine destination, and that the word divine may throw some people off. So we'll just, you know, look, I, I'm not apologizing anymore for believing that there's some sort of bigger intelligence than just my individuality. But yeah, there's a divine, there's an internal GPS. And if you follow that, things tend to work out. And if you don't follow it, things tend to be a little bit more dramatic.
Light Watkins
Courage is more about loyalty than it is about getting rid of fear.
Light Watkins
1 Protocols
Overcoming Feeling Stuck and Finding Your Next Step
Light Watkins- Identify a small, tiny leap or change you feel inspired to make today, and try it out, even if you don't know the outcome.
- If that seems like too much, take out a pen and paper and write down as many things as you can think of that you're grateful for.
- Allow gratitude to anchor you in the present moment, where you can hear your inner voice clearly to get your next step.
- Focus only on the next step, rather than trying to see the whole staircase, to avoid paralysis.