Samwise Gamgee and the Defense of Inspiration

 By Matthew Gonzalez, PhD, CMPC

Sitting with his back up against a ruined building of Osgilith, an exasperated Frodo looks up and asks, “What are we holding onto Sam?”

Samwise reaches down to the weary Frodo, lifts him up, and replies, “That there’s some good in this world Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.”

That exchange always gives me chills.

And on some occasions, when I'm feeling bogged down, hearing that same exchange can sometimes give me a little boost towards whatever it is I am trying to accomplish.

Good writing can make you feel things. Great writing can make you want to do things. That’s the power of inspiration.

Unfortunately, I’ve been seeing a trend that I have found troubling. Lately, I seem to often come across social media posts that extol the virtues of discipline and admonishes the mere mentioning of inspiration or motivation.

This deification of discipline isn’t necessarily surprising. I’ll agree all day that discipline is likely going to be the most potent contributor to success.

What troubles me is the subtle or sometimes overt positioning of inspiration and motivation as lacking in utility. Or worse so, that the use of inspiration is indicative of some mental shortcoming.

I’m not entirely sure why this is becoming a pattern.

Perhaps it's just a trend. Perhaps selling the idea of discipline is more simple and resonates with a wider audience (Nike’s slogan is, in fact, “Just do it”). Or perhaps it's perceived by some that any reliance of an external tool is a form of help-seeking which some folks find unpalatable.

Whatever the reason, I would like to take the proverbial stand in favor of inspiration so that we might have a more nuanced discussion regarding its utility.

First, a little backstory. Since I was about 20 years old, I’ve used inspirational videos to help me push through moments in my life when I felt like I was hitting the limit of what I could handle.

I was never one to watch inspirational videos regularly, but about once or twice a year I would find myself listening to the same set of ten or so videos on YouTube in a moment of waning momentum or at the outset of something important.

Consistently after some exposure to those, I felt like my battery had been charged and my will renewed.

It is interesting to reflect on for a moment. Let’s be honest, the reality is that that YouTube videos didn’t get any of the work done, it was still me that completed the job.

But clearly, it played some role. But what role did it actually play?

The answer?

It played different roles at different times. And that’s what I’m going to unpack in this article.

Samwise Gamgee’s Monologue

Before getting along with this piece, I’m going to pull an example of something I’ve found to be inspiring to dissect throughout this article.

Furthermore, this particular dialogue is useful to dissect because it is meant to be inspiring for the person being spoken to. To that end, we will dissect it from the perspective of why it is effective in inspiring Frodo.

It’s worth nothing that, while this piece of inspiration resonates for me, it might not resonate with you at all. That’s okay! As we will discuss later, inspiration is highly personal.

If you are familiar with this speech please feel free to read ahead!

If not, I encourage you to watch the following two and a half minute clip from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002). I’ve also written the monologue below if you’d prefer to read it instead.

Frodo sits distraught and in exhausted agony amidst the ruins of Osgiliath. He looks to his gardener and co-fellow of the ring and states under his labored breath, “I can’t do this Sam.”

Likewise exhausted and straining to get to his feet, Sam looks over the battle-torn city. He says to Frodo:

I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding onto something.

Frodo asks, “What are we holding onto Sam?”

Sam reaches down to the weary Frodo and lifts him up. Sam replies, “That there’s some good in this world Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.”

In that moment, Frodo finds a strength within him that he was just seconds before unable to access. He is inspired. And if the dialogue resonates with you, then you might also find yourself momentarily pulled upon by inspiration.

But why?

What is Inspiration?

Newton’s first law states that an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by some external force. Minds can function similarly.

At its most basic, we might consider inspiration as an external force that acts upon the mind at rest. Or better yet, a mind that is stuck.

We can liken inspiration to the starter in your car. Upon turning the key or pressing the button, the starter itself provides just a big enough rotational force to the engine to get things going. But the starter itself plays no further role in getting you from point A to point B.

The social media posts that I take issue with often center their argument about the perceived futility of inspiration because inspiration itself does nothing to help accomplish a task. Whereas discipline, by definition, is the repetitive accomplishment of tasks in the direction of a pre-defined goal.

Those that hold that position are correct in their assertion in that inspiration on its own doesn’t actually do anything. But actually… in certain circumstances it might be a needed catalyst to action.

Inspiration is often thought of as a singular momentary force; for example a single YouTube video or a dramatic pre-game speech. I’d argue that it's not the force itself that is important. Rather, it’s where and how that force is applied that gives inspiration its power.

Inspiration doesn’t push from the outside. It pulls from the inside.

It pulls on something already well-established inside of you to do something. That’s why inspiration can work so effectively when leveraged properly.

Inspiration can pull on many different internal levers; but in general I’ve come to see it pull on three things consistently.

It can remind people of what is important to them. It can better connect people to why they do what they are doing. And it can provide people with a boost of vicarious confidence.

Let’s spend a little bit breaking down each one of these “levers” and how inspiration might influence them. Along the way, we will also talk about how Sam pulls on each of these levers in his emotional pitch to Frodo.

Pulling on Values

Some of the most fulfilling work that I’ve done with high performers has been in the identification of values. Many of us have a general sense of what lies at the core of who we are, but too often we don’t apply language to it. Without language, it’s harder to utilize these values when needed.

Before we get to that though, where do values come from? And furthermore, why are they important?

Often, values are sourced from our environment as we grow through our formative years. In our earliest moments, these come from our primary caregivers. As we age, more influence is felt from a combination of key members of our social groups, authority figures, and the media that we are exposed to.

We are also introduced to values from certain groups and institutions. This can be in small groups such as a sport team, larger institutions such as a school, church, or military, or larger still when you consider the social culture of which you are a part.

During this time of values exposure, we take turns resonating with various values seeing which ones seem to speak most to our authentic selves.

Eventually, we settle into a set of core values that define who we are and they then help us to understand what is important to us in our lives. These values are not necessarily set for life at any point in time, but by the time adulthood is reached, the volatility of values identification has lessened.

Consciously or unconsciously, our values help us navigate our complex lives. Often this navigation process is straight-forward and makes sense, at least to you, the holder of the values. At times though, there are moments when life presents decisions that lie at the crux of competing values.

For example, high performers often experience competing demands for their time. Dedicating time to one’s craft might satiate their value of personal striving, but might do so at the cost of their value of social connection or family.

This is why it is important to spend dedicated time exploring one’s values deeply and defining what is truly most important ahead of time. Knowing one’s values and how they apply across contexts help us to make decisions in a complicated world.

Samwise’s speech to Frodo is effective because it contextualizes the moment to their shared value of service to others. Frodo clearly doesn’t have it in him to finish the quest for himself. But when he’s reminded that this isn’t about them, that it’s about a fight for others, he receives the boost that inspiration can provide.

An inspirational video or quote associated with one’s chief values can go quite a way towards reminding someone of what they have decided is important. It can likewise give someone just enough energy and clarity to make a difficult decision.

Here’s how you can use inspirational materials to light a fire through your own values:

1. Identify your core values; if you haven’t done this as a high performer then you are missing a key component of understanding who you are.

2. Once identified, find material that resonates with those values and keep it close. You will likely not need it often, but there will be moments where it can be helpful. And in those key moments, you don’t want to have to go looking for something you haven’t yet found.

Pulling Motivations Together
 

The term motivation is often conflated with inspiration so let’s get the vernacular straight right off the bat. Motivation is the force behind why someone chooses to do a thing. Inspiration, on the other hand, is an external and momentary influence on a mind.

One of the most often turned to explanations of motivation, self-determination theory, states that people are driven by a set of three core “needs.” These needs are: competence (the need to feel like I know what I’m doing), autonomy (the need to feel like I direct my own life), and relatedness (the need to feel like I belong amongst others).

The extent to which these needs are filled by a task, determines the extent to which someone feels more “intrinsically” motivated to engage with that task.

The less intrinsically motivated we feel about a task, the less likely we are to complete it, complete it with quality, or be able to sustain an effort towards completing it over time.

Typically, we aren’t concerned about tasks that are at or near intrinsic motivation as people tend to complete those things with limited issue. But what about in cases where a task is important, yet, it lies in the deeper recesses of extrinsic motivation?

This is where inspiration can come into play!

Let’s say we have an athlete who is a couple months into rehabbing a major injury. At this point, that athlete is solidly in the period of time where rehab could be starting to wear on the athlete mentally. It’s tedious, any novelty wore off a while ago, and the rehabbing process can be isolating. Not to mention, it’s painful, it’s prescribed, and the physical gains at this point look like an ever-so-slightly tilted plateau.

At this point, the fulfillment of their “needs” has all but vanished and predictably the athlete’s motivation to complete the rehab is almost entirely extrinsic.

To counter the waning energy that can come with extrinsic motivation, it can help to have some form of inspiration to remind the athlete “why” they are doing what they are doing.

Inspiration can help the athlete draw a stronger connection between the extrinsic actions that are occurring now and the much more intrinsic actions that are being sought. It can help in seeing the bigger motivational picture so to speak.

Let’s say this athlete listens to an interview about an elite athlete’s injury recovery process. In it, the elite athlete admits the difficulty in the rehabilitation process, but then talks about using their desire to return to the game to drive their full investment in the process of rehabilitation, completing every exercise to the best of their ability with enthusiasm and optimism, and using the down time to further study the game.

After reading this, it's possible that our athlete might now feel a slight tug on their motivation. What once was, “I need to do this because if I don’t I won’t be able to play” may now have become “I am going to fully invest in my recovery because that’s what good athletes do; and I am a good athlete.” Now that’s a more robust and sustainable form of motivation.

Returning to Sam’s speech, it is effective for Frodo because Sam puts the context of the horror they are experiencing in the present with a vision of the heroic triumph they will feel in the future. He helps Frodo to see the bigger picture.

In this way, Sam is clarifying to Frodo that they aren’t navigating this nightmare and grasping onto survival just for the sake of doing it; they are persisting through this process because there is something so much greater at stake than their day to day well-being.

Here's some tips to help you use inspiration to re-tune into your larger motivational picture when needed:

1. Learn to recognize the signs within you that alert you to when you are drifting away from the big picture. What changes for you mentally in those moments?

2. Frequently strengthen the connection between what you are doing now and why you are doing it. This should come in the form of frequent and purposeful reflection, but at times, you can strengthen this connection with carefully selected inspirational material that resonates with you.

The Pull of Vicarious Confidence

Sometimes the difficulty in completing a task isn’t about an amount of motivation or a connection with our values. It might be about how much (or little) personal belief there is to be able to complete the task.

At times the idealism of values and motivation will fail to meet the complexities of executing in the real world. And in those moments it can help to have a role model.

In this form of inspiration, exposure to this role model yanks on confidence in such a way that someone can see and feel themself be successful in the future. It goes past simply hearing others' belief that they can.

Remember, good inspiration doesn’t push from the outside. It pulls from the inside.

For myself personally, I find this type of inspiration most helpful when I struggle to believe in my ability to sustain an effort over a very long period of time.

In those moments, I think of memories I have of my parents from when I was a boy. Day after day, year after year, I watched them work tirelessly with the goal of supporting their family.

It was hard. I know that it was hard. I watched it be hard for them. I know that my Dad probably didn’t want to do some of the part-time jobs that he had to do when our family was young, nor do I believe that my Mom wanted to work overtime week after week. But with steadfast determination, they did just that to make sure ends were met.

When I feel like I’m stuck and can’t conceive of a way forward, I call on those memories with intention. If they could do what they did then, then I can do what I need to get done now.

Arguably, Sam’s entire monologue is about inspiring vicarious confidence within Frodo. Frodo says quite clearly, “I can’t do this,” which starts Sam’s effort to try and convince Frodo otherwise.

Sam leans upon the stories of the heroes to pull on this last lever of inspiration. He is expressing to Frodo that if those heroes were able to navigate the terrors of the stories that they were told, then maybe they too can navigate the terrors of their own story now.

You may not be as fortunate as I am to have potent memories to recall for this piece of inspiration or to have a trusty gardener turned quest-companion; however, the world is littered with role-models who can help inspire confidence in trying times.

You need only to spend time finding the pieces that resonate with you in these circumstances in advance:

1. Start first with your own memories, the closer the person was to you the stronger the effect. Is there anyone you’ve ever seen who has done something that temporarily made you believe in yourself? If so, reflect about it for a little bit. Maybe consider journalling those moments down.

2. If there are no memories to draw upon, then no matter. Is there someone whose story you’ve heard about that you saw pieces of yourself in? If so, I encourage you to read and learn more about this person. The more detail you know about them, the more of you you might see within them helping to increase the effect.

Wrap-Up

While our lives might not be the Hollywood epic that Sam and Frodo faced, each and every one of us are on life’s quest in our own right. Like any quest, real or fantasy, the ability to sustain through various key moments might vary.

Often, we will find that we can handle whatever life is throwing at us fully on our own. At times though, we might need something to inspire us to continue the journey. And that’s okay.

Periodically you will need inspiration. In other moments, you might need to be the one doing the inspiring. In any case, I hope that you understand better how inspiration works and how you might leverage it in yourself and in others.

The needless positioning of inspiration as a mental vice needs to stop. Like so many topics discussed in the mental performance sphere, inspiration is simply another tool in the toolbox.

Should it be an often used tool? Maybe not. Consistent leaning on inspiration might indicate that deeper conversations about motivation, values, or chosen activities might need to take place.

Then again, the frequent use of inspirational material might not necessarily be indicative of anything other than having found an effective way to get a little boost.

Every day, people listen to energy-laden music in their workouts or use caffeine in the morning all with the explicit purpose of manipulating the energy they are feeling. We don’t typically admonish those people, why should we treat those using inspiration any different?

To those working hard and chasing a dream; think twice about taking advice in the form of simplistic solutions. Our lives are nuanced and the solutions to our challenges are even more so.

If using inspirational videos or speeches is part of what helps you get to where you are going, then go right on ahead. All of our journeys are going to look a little different, find the tools that work for you.  

As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read this piece; I sincerely hope you enjoyed it! If it resonated with you, I encourage you to share it with others who it might also resonate with. I’m always happy to hear comments and feedback at matthewgonzalezphd@gmail.com.