Latest / the Daily Quote - Positive Daily Inspiration and Motivational Quote of the Day / Octavia Butler - "First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit is persistence in practice."

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Octavia Butler - "First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit is persistence in practice." · the Daily Quote - Positive Daily Inspiration and Motivational Quote of the Day

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  Podcasthero.com. Welcome to the Daily Quote, the
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  podcast designed to kick start your day in a positive way.
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  I'm your host, Andrew McGivern, and this episode is brought to
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  you by the Great News Podcast because good news should be
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  heard. Find it in your favorite podcast
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  app. And just to make it easy for
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  you, I've left a link in the show notes.
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  Today's quote comes from Octavia Butler, an African American
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  science fiction author, multiple winner of both the Hugo and
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  Nebula Awards, and in 1995, the 1st science fiction writer ever
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  to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
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  From her essay Purer Scribendi, she wrote.
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  First, forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.
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  Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not.
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  Habit is persistence and practice.
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  Wow. First, forget inspiration.
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  That opening is almost confrontational, especially
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  coming from one of the most imaginative writers of the 20th
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  century. You'd think inspiration would be
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  everything to a creative mind like Butler's, and yet she leads
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  with Forget it. Here's why.
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  Inspiration is real, but it's unreliable.
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  It shows up when it feels like it.
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  It disappears without warning. And if you've ever waited to
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  feel inspired before starting something important, you already
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  know the problem. The waiting can go on
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  indefinitely. Days become weeks, weeks become
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  months, and the work never gets done.
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  Butler herself wrote everyday. No excuses, she said.
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  Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean
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  the toilet than do the writing. The difference is they write
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  anyway. That's not inspiration.
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  That's habit. And then there's the final line.
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  Habit is persistence. In practice, it reframes
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  everything. Persistence sounds heroic, like
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  white knuckling through adversity on sheer willpower.
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  But Butler strips away the drama.
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  Persistence isn't a grand gesture.
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  It's just showing up habitually, day after day, whether you feel
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  like it or not. The magic is in the repetition,
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  not the motivation. Butler also extended this beyond
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  inspiration. She argued that continued
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  learning is more dependable than talent.
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  Talent fluctuates. Inspiration fluctuates.
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  Habit doesn't. It's the one variable you can
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  actually control. This podcast doesn't get made on
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  inspired days. It gets made on all of them,
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  including the ones where the last thing I feel like doing is
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  sitting down and recording. What keeps it going isn't a
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  surge of motivation, it's the habit of showing up every day,
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  the decision made once that gets carried out automatically,
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  regardless of how the day feels. Butler was right.
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  Inspiration is a guest that visits occasionally.
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  Habit is the one that lives here.
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  So here's the question. What are you waiting to feel
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  inspired to do that you could simply decide to do habitually
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  instead? Because inspiration might show
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  up, or it might not, but habit will be there either way,
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  sustaining you, moving you forward, turning persistence
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  from a heroic act into a daily practice.
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  Forget inspiration, Build the habit.
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  That's it for today. I'm Andrew McGivern, signing off
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  for now, but I'll be back tomorrow.
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  Same pod time, same pod station with another.