I was watching a sports commentary the other day. The commentator got extremely excited when a player from his country won. Now, commentators are supposed to be unbiased, so technically he failed at his job. But what he revealed—without realizing it—was something deeper. Why do we get so emotionally invested in other people’s victories? Why do we feel inspired… sometimes a little too inspired?
Don’t get me wrong— inspiration is powerful, but only when it is intentional. When you clearly know what you want to improve and then consciously look for inspiration, it works almost like magic. Say you want to become a rocket engineer. You start learning about A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. Not just admiring him, but understanding his discipline, his curiosity, his way of working. That kind of inspiration stays with you. It pushes you toward action. I call this Action-Oriented Inspiration. It may not make you a world-class rocket engineer, but it might teach you consistency, focus, and work ethic—qualities that can be applied anywhere. Even a small habit change, triggered by the right inspiration, can reshape your life over time.
But there’s another kind of inspiration, and it is quietly dangerous. I call it Hero Worship Inspiration. This is when we stop admiring the work and start admiring the person. We begin to associate our identity with them. Their wins feel like our wins. Their image becomes more important than their effort. In today’s world of social media, this has become incredibly easy. A 30-second video is enough to make you feel motivated. You watch it, feel inspired, maybe even share it, and then move on to the next piece of content. It gives you a false sense of progress. A feeling that once required effort is now available instantly. But in reality, nothing changes in your life.
What makes it worse is that a lot of this content is not accidental. It is designed. PR teams carefully craft stories to influence how you think. Slowly, you start admiring not just what someone has done, but how they live, how they speak, how they present themselves. You begin to follow personalities instead of principles. And in that process, your own thinking becomes weaker, more dependent, more borrowed.
We take inspiration from too many places these days and fail to bring any of it into our lives. A team wins, you share a story. A player wins a tournament, you post about it. Someone makes a comeback, and you reshare their journey. But rarely do we pause and ask—what exactly can I learn from this? What part of this can I apply to my own life? Instead of understanding the work, we end up worshipping the outcome.
If even 1% of the energy we spend consuming inspiration was redirected into action, the long-term impact would be massive. But action is hard. Watching is easy. Sharing is even easier.
Today’s generation is perhaps the most exposed to inspiration—and also the most vulnerable to this trap. It does not just affect individuals; it affects how a society grows. When inspiration becomes shallow, progress becomes shallow. When admiration replaces effort, growth slows down.
If you have to take inspiration, take it from the work. Study the journey. Understand the struggle. Do not defend someone’s mistakes just because you admire them. Do not reshare their victories as if they are yours. Create your own.
Inspiration is meaningful only when it leads to action. A simple way to test yourself is to look back at the last five years of your life. Can you list five things you improved because you were inspired by someone? If not, chances are you have been consuming Hero Worship Inspiration more than Action-Oriented Inspiration.
It is not too late to change that. We are not here to build a cult around individuals. We are here to improve our lives, to become better, to learn from others and apply it in our own journey. We have access to more information than any generation before us. Whether that becomes a tool for growth or just noise is a choice we make every day.
