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Perhaps like you, I am asked for personal guidance from time to time, and often from people who have observed that I enjoy a purposeful and satisfied life – and notably, a life needing or wanting few things, though not nothing.
Over the years, and aided by and aiding my natural health writing, I have distilled my general advice into an emphasis of two core ideas or general qualities, one emotional and one intellectual. Importantly, each of these qualities finds a place in modern psychology, are ones that can and indeed must be self-evaluated and cultivated, and appear consistently to result in more joyful, meaningful, vitalized, and open life.
As my title and graphic indicate, and as I will explain briefly, the two qualities I encourage – unless we are in crisis – involve pursuing and achieving life that is progressively informed and inspired. In my experience, this twin approach and understanding of life gradually and reliably builds superior and thus broadly healthier conditions for us, and often for those who depend on us too.
With the word inspiration, I of course mean uplifted and propelling feeling or experience generally. But more specifically, and in a crucial and often missed idea, I would highlight that feelings of inspiration, elevated happiness, or moving joy are almost always associated with the activation and pursuit of one or more of our various and especially higher-order motivations or drives (see Wikipedia Motivation and Motivations). Turning this idea around, I would say, and I hope helpfully or insightfully, that motivation is the source of inspiration. Importantly, this is just as it is the source of frustration, a condition we might understand as arising in degree when our natural motivations are not adequately or ably understood, pursued, explored, and fulfilled.
This set of proposals brings us to the idea of information, which I will define simply as useful understanding or knowledge, and therefore learning, about the world within and around us (see Wikipedia Understanding, Learning, and also Framing). In a crucial sense, our motivations and thus inspirations contain information and drive learning, and equally depend on and are influenced by our information and learning in turn. Owing to these natural or inevitable dynamics of human and complex animal life, we might understand ourselves and our groups at any point in time as operating amid or expressing distinct levels or states of both information and inspiration.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, since we are long-evolved and able entities, assessing and then increasing our information and inspiration often mainly involves our awareness and seeking of these things, and thus both openness in our lives and honesty with ourselves. In practice, most of us quickly and sufficiently can understand our primary motivations, and thus waiting sources of inspiration, and also our dominating and typically interrelated states of information, or senses of life. In addition, we often readily and durably appreciate that these things are changeable, over the course of our lives or owing to more episodic events, and similarly that our levels of information and inspiration are improvable or cultivatable as well. In each case, this can lead not only to altered and perhaps refined or widened information and inspiration, but to life that is more reflective, aware, mature, essentialized, and chosen or created overall.
My two-level graphic above encapsulates a number of these ideas, and also emphasizes the vital or vitalizing natural importance of progressivity or growth in our lives, endeavors, understandings, and motivations. Crucially, such progressivity is essential not only to informing self-discovery and cultivation, but to sustained inspiration or joy, and related purposefulness or meaningfulness as well. This is because fulfilled motivations often only satisfy us for a time, and thus naturally lead or inspire us forward into life – and into life’s open and enlivening possibilities for healthy new information and inspiration.
As you can see in the graphic, one of its two overlaid models, in white, highlights the natural circularity of our information and inspiration, how each can be surfaced and assessed at any point in time, and also how both might healthfully compound or potentiate one another over time – and through motivated life and learning in particular. The other model, in yellow, more simply emphasizes our potential for life in relatively high or low states of information or learning and inspiration or motivation, and once again our opportunity for and the natural vitality of life that is progressively informed and inspired. Importantly, this progressivity is across many or diverse but also often strongly archetypical and thus instructive forms.
With this brief but likely crucial set of ideas, I would encourage you first to explore and define your current and typically interacting states of information and inspiration – as highlighted, by observing and surfacing your primary assumptions, beliefs, and views, and in turn your main motivations, goals, and priorities – and then, as is a common theme in my work, to consider how each might be satisfyingly and beneficially improved or made healthier, for yourself and so often naturally for others as well.
Wishing you new health, and ever more informed and inspired life, now and always,
Mark
Mark Lundegren
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Mark Lundegren 