Inspiration.

“I am not perfect now nor have I ever been. I am growing, learning, moving forward in my journey and in exploration of this earth. Always striving to be perfect, but never achieving. Because I am human.”  –Alex Minsky
(see full article and photos here)
Inspired.

in·spi·ra·tion

/ˌinspəˈrāSHən/
Noun

1. The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative: “flashes of inspiration”.

I had my blog drafted and half written, already into the format I wanted and was beginning the edit when I stumbled upon this article on this young man, Alex Minksy.  Yes, the photo got me interested, his story kept me reading, and he inspired me.  Sometimes you just have to change course and go with the direction your heart steers you.  Sometimes you just are inspired, moved, and HAVE to take a different route.  Inspiration to me is an emotion, a feeling, it moves you.
There are times when we just can’t help but listen to inspiration.  Inspiration often gets me out of my rut of thinking, the deep gully I have forged in my day in day out, same behavior, same thinking pattern.  I will often see an image, read a story, listen to a song, experience something beautiful, and if I can truly see it for what it is and allow it to move me, this is my definition of inspiration.  Pintrest is a great place for inspiration, especially for a visual person like myself. Allowing myself to feel inspired by even the smallest of things can often subtly shift my perspective, my outlook, my self-imposed pity party.  I think the biggest part of being inspired is first to allow yourself to be inspired.  So often we walk on by, ignore, don’t notice or won’t allow ourselves to open to the inspiration.  It can be a bit heart wrenching, it can be a mirror reflecting back to you things you may not want to see about yourself and the world.  You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable, open yourself up in order to allow yourself to feel and be inspired.
The second key aspect of inspiration is to take action on the inspiration.  To be inspired without acting on it is like watching a movie, seeing moving, beautiful things, then going home and being no different for the experience.  A recent example of taking action on inspiration, was me backing up on a deserted road to get a picture of an amazing house I had just driven past.  I could have kept driving and hoped I had remembered the image, instead I was inspired by the beautiful color of the trim on the house to go back and get the photo.  Now I have a perfect color of blue to create something new.
Open up, let things move you, expose your heart, feel inspired, then, take the action.
Wear Peace is so inspired by Alex Minsky, we are offering a coupon code (see below) and will be donating 5% of our proceeds for the month of August to the Wounded Warrior Project.