Where do you get your inspiration from? I don’t know about you but I am suffering from a lack of inspiration from our so called “leaders”. Recent behaviour from Canberra and other places have only added to this lack of inspiration. I am the last person to judge another’s behaviour or choices but gee, sometimes I wonder!

I was lucky – I had giants in my younger days with Whitlam, Keating, Hawke and Howard. I may not have agreed with their views but they kept me interested. I often find myself wondering…the Snowy Hydro Scheme, Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Storey Bridge – would they have been built today?

So, where do you find inspiration today? My answer is to look inside yourself – you may be all the inspiration you will ever need! For me, recent events have only reinforced the need to give up looking for inspiration from leaders and start looking within.
“Be the change that you wish to be in this world” as Mahatma Gandhi would say.

I was once given a saying that, as part of my own journey, I have used as a source of inspiration. “How would the person you like to be, do what you are going to do?”. I know it’s a bit convoluted but for me at least, it makes me stop and think.

What type of person do I want to be? Who are my role models? What are my values? Are my actual and intended behaviours in line with my values? Is what I am going to do consistent with the person I would like to be and would I like other people – especially my children – to see? It can be a hard test which, I know in my life, I have often failed and carry the shame of that. But, it’s a reference point that keeps bringing me to ask myself and question my behaviour. It all comes back to your values, behaviour and action.

Sometimes it seems like we enjoy bringing other people down – through negative comments, social media (anonymous key board warriors), bullying, exclusion and so on. Maybe we have lost the wisdom of the saying “let those who have not sinned, cast the first stone.”
People will choose to react to you the way they want – you have no control over that and quite frankly, it says more about them than you.

Focus on what you can control – you. Be that person other people want to use as a role model. Work through your values and behaviours. Live by them. Use them as your reference point and when you don’t live up to them; accept it, commit to trying harder to fulfil them and always use them as your guiding light.

I am a great believer in human “urban” renewal and am determined to make my own back yard look pretty good. Maybe that will inspire my neighbour to address their own back yard, which might further inspire change down the block, and pretty soon the whole village and then the world!

Be the inspiration you seek.