Hero, Champion, Inspiration. These are words that are bantered around about people regularly. Joe was a hero when he saved that puppy. Betty was the champion runner and won the race. Pat was an inspiration; they work so hard.
Hero and champion are universally understood as positive things. Inspiration is typically used as a positive, but is it? That is usually how it is used, but the definition is merely something that inspires. You can be inspired to do anything, and pretty much everything that is done was inspired by someone else. You have inspired others to do countless things whether you wanted to or not. The only question is: are you a positive inspiration?
Every move you make around other people affects them.
If you are writing code, you can inspire people around you by producing working code, writing effective documentation, writing thorough tests, and checking in your code when it is ready.
Designing a database? Making sure that the database works well with the data sizes needed, using proper standards, and meeting the requirements will inspire the next person to change the database similarly.
As a reader of this editorial on SQL Server Central, I will mostly mention technical things, but this extends to pretty much everything you do, technical and otherwise. How you treat others, clean up your workspace, etc, all will inspire others. Sometimes to be better, sometimes to be worse.
Who is watching? Everyone is. Kids and adults of all ages. People who look like you and people who look nothing like you. You are very much an inspiration to them all in some way, probably very small, but possibly life changing. Every day you get to make a choice. Be a good inspiration, or a not so good one.
Ideally, be a good inspiration.
