After last week’s post I had a long chat to my brother-in-law (at least, in less than two weeks he’ll be officially my B-I-L) about the video, how amazing it was and everything else. But something he said stuck with me this week.
“I’m not sure if it’s inspiring.”
Don’t misunderstand – I’ve yet to meet anyone (including my B-I-L) who didn’t like that video and get emotional watching it. What he was saying was that while it was a wonderful film, could it really be classes as inspiration? I agreed.
And then I thought about it a bit more. And I disagreed.
Inspiration is one of those intangible things that you just can’t put your finger on. It’s like music: one person may love rocking out to Green Day, the next may prefer chilling to Jack Johnson. What one person finds inspirational and motivating, others find dull, uninteresting or not their thing.
And that’s all fine.
Maybe last week’s post wasn’t the kind of thing that inspires action in people, though. So I thought I’d share this one this week.
You may well have seen it (it’s been pretty big these last few weeks), but it’s worth watching again. As far as inspiration goes, this is exactly the kind of marmite video I mean.
For me, I love the story and I love the images of someone working themselves into the ground; it makes me want to get up off my chair and go and get something done (whatever that may be). For others, I know they will find it overly-dramatic, they will pick up on the poor-form and questionable exercises of the athlete or doubt the power of the narrative.
That’s what fascinates me about inspiration: it can come from all corners, in many different ways. I’d love to know what you think of this and what inspires you. If you’ve got great videos, share them with me and I’ll post them up here one week.