If you know where to look, there is no short supply for inspiration. If you are not interested, inspiration can be right in front of you and you will miss it by a mile.

Here are three videos that should inspire anyone:

1. Stanford Commencement speech by Steve Jobs

More than 11 million people have watched this so there is a very good chance that you have already watched it. But, it’s worth watching again (and again)

The biggest take away for me is the message about “connecting the dots” in the future.

2. Emmanuel Kelly’s performance on X-Factor

If you have tissues, you are good. If not, you better get some. It is touching beyond belief to watch Emmanuel perform

3. Nick Vujicic on “I Love Living Life. I Am Happy”

Nick is an epitome what attitude should be for oneself. If you are not inspired after watching this, there may be nothing that will inspire you.

Three Additional Lessons

In the midst of these inspiring videos, there are a few more lessons to learn here. Let me go over them:

1. You can’t please everyone:

The above videos should inspire everyone. Well, EVERYONE is a stretch. If you notice closely, hundreds of people have “disliked” everyone of the above videos. Since you need to be logged into YouTube to like or dislike, these are individual people who not only felt strongly against the videos but also were explicit about it. C’est la vie.

2. The metadata is interesting and easy to miss:

Metadata, in simple terms is data about data. In this case everything about the video (title, sub-title, # of views etc.) constitute the meta data. It typically takes only a few seconds to consume the meta data and it adds a lot of color. But it’s also easy to miss. Next time, take those extra few seconds to consume the metadata.

3. The magic is in what you do post inspiration:

Inspiration is not the end. In fact, it really is the start. What you do after you get inspired is where the magic lies.

All the best!