Everyday life is often busy--overwhelming with pressures and demands. Daily chores and deadlines can leave little time for finding the motivation and inspiration you need to get through the day and make each moment of it a pleasant one. After time, this lifestyle takes a toll--sapping your drive, focus and even the capacity to set meaningful goals.

Inspiration is a vital force that helps people regain control over an overwhelming life. It can eliminate those apathetic and dreaded cycles. It helps you tune in to your values, find purpose and achieve goals -- when you're inspired everything seems to meld together.

Inspiration not only rejuvenates your focus and restores your emotional well being, it’s a passionate ingredient that's vital to motivation and the next epiphany. Sure, unsought epiphanies do occur, but they're rare. Those fantastic ah-ha moments most often arise from inspiration - the things that inspire you most are born of the internal longing to live aligned with your fundamental values.

While the whole inspiration process may sound easy, it often requires real planning. Often, inspiration is gained when people devote their energies to seeking it out -- through the beauty of nature, the insights of friends and even the ingenuity of free thought and values exploration.

So how do you discover this inspiration? How do you harness it to change your life and achieve success? According to LifeManual, a values-based, self-help program that provides “a blueprint to an extraordinary life,” inspiration is the real driving force of meaning and success. It makes things happen, gets things done, and is a guide for setting and accomplishing meaningful goals in alignment with your values. LifeManual offers these suggestions for discovering inspiration:

Find your Place: It is important to have a special place to think, reflect and feel inspired. Seek it out. Spend some time there. Make it a routine part of life.

Learn Constantly in Life: Creativity and brain activity fuel inspiring experiences. Keep yourself active and stimulated using books, puzzles, games, music and other mind-challenging activities. No matter the age, a limber mind challenged by new exploration is a great way to get inspired.

Spend Time with Inspiring People: As the saying goes, “To the world you may be just somebody, but to somebody you may just be the world.” You, and everyone around you, provide inspiration. Children, for example, have a surprising effect on people. Just by interacting with them on their level, or even watching them play can revive your own childhood dreams – dreams that have ‘gone on vacation.’ Consider others who might inspire you, and seek them out.

Keep an Idea Book: Immediately write down all those little inspirational thoughts that pop into the head when you least expect them. Interestingly enough, these ideas tend to happen during the most everyday, mundane tasks: while washing dishes, taking a shower, while driving, mowing grass or fixing the vacuum. But just as quickly as those thoughts come into your head they disappear. Grab them while you can and then review your book whenever you need inspiration.

Switch Gears: Recognize when you need a change of pace or different environment. Take a long walk on the beach or through a park. Use the opportunity for free thought and reflection … you may find inspiration is just around the corner.

Once you discover inspiration, you’ll also discover ways to use it. For artist Sean Landers, it’s the jumping off point for new adventures. “Over the years I have learned to put myself in a position where accidents can happen and where I can take advantage of small mysteries. This is a strange process of discovery. I know my initial idea is merely a point of departure, never the end.”

But you can’t wait for “lightning to hit you with a bolt of inspiration,” says LifeManual author Peter H. Thomas. “Some of the world's most inspired and successful people find ways to inspire themselves."

So, if you need a bit of inspiration to find your own, then you're in good company. Great men and women throughout history have all had their personal rituals.

To get in the musical mode, Beethoven dumped ice water on his head.

Rudyard Kipling apparently wrote only with a certain type of ink.

Charles Dickens slept with his bed pointing north; he believed the Earth's magnetic field stimulated him.

The famous poet Maya Angelou might suggest simply opening your eyes: “Life offers us tickets to places which we have not knowingly asked for.”

Finding your inspiration could be as simple as opening your eyes, but it might take extraordinary steps to do so. Whether your inspiration is waiting for a walk, a creative challenge or a day away from work, it’s waiting in the wings. And once you discover inspiration you’ll be sure to discover ways to hone your personal inspiration trigger.

What are you waiting for?

Peter H. Thomas
http://www.lifemanual.com/