Tips for Writing an Inspirational Essay: How to Make Your Essay Stand Out

What is Inspiration?

Do you know that flashing moment of epiphany when all of a sudden a brilliant idea comes to your mind and you feel a strong urge to bring it to life? Yeah, that’s what most people perceive as inspiration.

The most common definition considers inspiration to be the process of getting enthusiastic and highly motivated to act or to do something creative. Some individuals believe inspiration to be a sort of divine intervention, some think of it as a mere lucky coincidence, evoked by a random stimulus object. But one thing remains undeniable: we broaden our imagination and become aware of new possibilities during the inspiration episode. And that’s the reason why people cherish this feeling and strive to maintain the state of being inspired as long as possible. But in reality, where most of our life is filled with mundane activities, it can be quite a challenging task, though.

What Can Inspire a Person

The question that remains relevant throughout the centuries, no matter whether you are an ancient Greek philosopher or a copywriter in an IT-company, is how to get inspired? Where to look for inspiration in everyday life, if all you are surrounded by is just a colorless and boring real world? Perhaps you should take a closer look at your routine activities. We are sure you could discover something exciting even on the usual way to work, just seek better!

Here are some other ideas that will help you to catch your muse:

1. Watch an inspirational TED speech on YouTube. The video down below is a good example:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sxpKhIbr0E
2. Meditate or do some yoga to relieve tension and clear your head.
3. Create a vision board that will give you a motivation boost to fulfill your dreams.
4. Write a list of things you are grateful for.
5. Listen to some lively songs to get a little push.
6. Try something new — stretching beyond a comfort zone will widen your outlook.
7. Communicate with ambitious people.

Transforming these ideas into actions is up to you now!

Why is it important to be inspired

If you still don’t understand why everyone is making such a fuss about inspiration, we will try to convince you that being inspired is crucially important regardless of your life goals. Inspiration can:

• propel you from apathy to opportunity;
• awaken your inner strength;
• motivate you to master your work;
• raise your self-esteem;
• eliminate your made-up limitations;
• make you way more optimistic;
• speed up your progress;
• increase your well-being.

Pretty attractive benefits, huh? You bet they are! But remember: inspiration won’t do the trick if you are purely passive. It favors prepared minds.

Now that we have a better understanding of inspiration as a notion, we proceed to the main part of this article — pieces of advice on writing an exceptional inspirational essay.

What is an Inspirational Essay?

We can define an “inspirational essay” as a story told with a purpose to encourage people and make them believe in their power. You should give your readers food for thought, provide them with meaningful things to reflect on, and teach them a lesson. To achieve such a result, you must concentrate on both form and content of the essay. Our tips will facilitate your success! Let’s go!

Choose Your Audience

Imagine the audience you are writing an inspirational essay for. Will it be high-school graduates, middle-aged men, or senior citizens? The style, topic, and vocabulary should be adapted to the intended readers. A young boy will not perceive your words in the same way as an old woman will do. And that is absolutely normal — in different life periods, we feel related to different opinions. You can’t make the entire world feel engaged — just get over it. So the prior thing to do is to establish your target audience.

What Are Good Topics for an Inspirational Essay

After considering your audience, you can do some brainstorming and write out on a sheet of paper all the topics of your future inspirational essay that you can come up with. The main requirement for your ideas is to sound immensely inspirational. Choose the one you can easily expand on. But if nothing comes to your mind, don’t worry — we have done all the work for you! Here are some profound topics and a few prompts on how to develop them:

• “My Mom is My Inspiration”— you will make a good choice if you write here about the influence your mother had on you, describe her personality and virtues she has, and tell your readers an emotional, expressive, and touching life story from your mother’s experience. You can recall some situations when she sacrificed for her family and exposed herself to risk for your sake. Make the audience admire your mom.
• “I am My Motivation” — in that kind of essay you can enumerate your current accomplishments, and on this basis lead the readers to a conclusion that we all have the power to do great things and achieve what people call the impossible if we have willpower and the determination to pursue our dreams no matter what. And it’s not just bragging. The main point of this essay is that when you start implementing your wildest goals, you will also start developing self-confidence, self-esteem, and, needless to say, inspiration.
• “Inspirational Person in My Life” / “Who Inspires You” — choose a person who motivates you to become a better version of yourself and explain why people should take some leaves out of his or her book.
• “What Motivates Me” — make this essay deeply personal and avoid trivial clichés. Do a thorough self-examination and relate your thoughts to your background by giving concrete examples.

Create an Outline For Your Essay

Making a plan for an essay is probably the hardest part of the whole process. This is the point when you combine all your arguments, funny stories, and thought-provoking ideas into a single unit which has to be well-structured and coherent. You may be struggling to do it properly, but if any problems appear, a professional essay writing service can give you a helping hand if you’re stuck.

You should make sure that an outline for your inspirational essay includes:

• captivating introduction that will definitely hook the audience;
• body of the essay with poignant and compelling arguments;
• personal content to create the verisimilitude vibe;
• a moving and persuasive core message;
• an inspiring conclusion with a call to action.

How to start an Inspirational Essay?

The main purpose of the introduction is to make your readers interested in what you will be writing further. If you fail to catch the attention of the audience, they simply won’t read more than a few sentences. That’s why you can’t afford to come up with a dull and lifeless introduction. Don’t write any general or overused phrases. Instead, tell a joke, anecdote, or begin with a real story, appropriate to your topic and the central message.

Provide Your Readers with Reasoning

You should give strong arguments in the body of your inspirational essay to invest in the readers’ interest. To succeed at it, answer one question: “What will make my essay valuable for people?” Don’t make them feel confused by writing something that will divert their attention from the lesson they should learn after going through the text. Each word, sentence, and paragraph should contribute to your core idea, and, step by step, lead to the final motivating conclusion.

Call the Audience to Action

We reached the last part of the inspirational essay structure — its conclusion. It is important here to show the readers the way they can incorporate knowledge gained from your essay into their lives. If you fail to make it clear, your words will be recognized as bland and useless. Figuratively speaking, it will be just as if you are screaming in silence and get no response — only the echoed sound of your own voice. You need to be honest here as well because if you try to fake your emotions, people will not believe you. So, your task is to inspire the audience to take risks, make great changes, and fight for their dreams.

Recheck Your Work

Even if you consider yourself to be a God of spelling and grammar — reread what you have written and correct some minor mistakes if any. Become your own strictest critic — analyze the whole essay and make sure that it looks like a cohesive story, where everything works on a settled goal. You can also ask your family and friends to evaluate it and give some advice on how to refine it. It would be wise to repeat this process several times until you know for sure that you did your best.

How Do You Get Inspired to Write an Essay?

In order to inspire others, you need to be inspired and full of energy yourself. But don’t believe in magic and fairy tales here: you will not find an inexhaustible source of inspiration, that will guide you from the very beginning to the very end of your essay for no reason. You should learn how to keep your inspiration bright and fresh, even if you’d rather just stay in bed and watch films, postponing writing to the better times. This is the exact moment when you should consider finding your own ways to get moved. We suggest you some ideas:

• read the blogs of successful people — perhaps you will find here a story you will want to write about;
• change the scenery around you — go to a nearby café instead of sitting at home, because staying in the same surrounding day by day can have a depressive effect on your creativity;
• travel to a busy place and do some people-watching — there are always interesting characters in malls, restaurants, or parks, who might ignite a sparkle you will later turn into a burning flame;
• look through popular magazines — they are often filled with great articles in terms of writing style, so you can look up to them;
• try reading an author you have never read before;
• watch some movies, but don’t get too carried away — your essay waits to be written;
• play great music as you write — it can lift your mood;
• see your friends — dialogues with them may stir your imagination and make a substantial contribution to your ideas;
• go through some inspirational quotes for writers;
• go for a walk to establish closer contact with nature — it will refill your inner resources;
• make a little trip to the next town to discover new things;
• start a diary and write down your thoughts there — they don’t need to be overly sophisticated, just let them flow;
• break your routine — for example, try another route to your work or watching the sunrise in the morning;
• look around — details matter more than you think;
• google everything that comes to your mind — it can help you out if you are puzzled.

To summarize, writing an effective inspirational essay requires a great deal of effort, but with a lot of determination, brain work, practicing, and — who would have thought? — inspiration, you’ll nail it!

FAQ

What is inspiration?

Inspiration is a state when you are stimulated and highly motivated to do something, especially when it is something creative.

How to find what inspires you?

Try new things, go out of your comfort zone, make new acquaintances, be open to this world. Stay curious and don’t be indifferent.

Is inspiration a feeling?

When you are struck by inspiration, you see it as an accidental feeling, although it can also be viewed as a state.

Why is it important to be inspired?

Inspiration influences all spheres of our life in a good way: from work to personal relationships. We can improve our quality of life, because when we are inspired, we create something new, take risks, and work hard to pursue our dreams.

Can you be inspired by yourself?

Of course, you can! Your current achievements can inspire you to move further and make you realize that the sky’s the limit. You will be improving yourself day by day if you understand that everything you need is already in you — just give it a chance to be revealed.

How do you get inspiration for a story?

Read good books, watch great movies, be attentive to everything that surrounds you, write down your thoughts into a diary, change the scenery, communicate with different people, get closer to nature. Don’t be too self-critical — let your ideas flow.