Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Annarose Ingarra-Milch with me. Hi, Annarose.
Annarose Ingarra-Milch: Hi, Toni.
Toni: How are you today?
Annarose: I’m very well, thank you.
Toni: Take a moment and tell us just a little bit about yourself.
Annarose: I am the author of Lunch With Lucille. I am also the host of Storied Women. I have a company called ROI Training and Consulting. I’m the founder of that.
Toni: You are a very busy woman, aren’t you?
Annarose: Yes, I am.
Toni: Let’s go into the Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Annarose: You are the first person to have ever asked me that question.
Toni: Really?
Annarose: Yes. What does inspiration mean to me? I have to say that when I think of the word inspiration, I know what it sounds like. It sounds very uplifting; a happy word, so to speak. There’s certain light in the word. Then I think about what it looks like. It radiates. It glows, to me anyway. Then I know what it feels like. It’s effortless. It’s like a pulling along.
I think you once used the term with me, “being in the zone.” That’s really what it is. It’s like that pulling along, being in that zone. To me, anyway, when I think of inspiration, it’s like a calling. It’s being delightfully open to one’s passion, to one’s own glow. That is really how I view it. It’s being easily led and simply guided and using every single day to be inspired.
Toni: I love that. I have done the Get Inspired! Project and these interviews hundreds and hundreds of times, literally, and no one has ever described it first of all and what it looks like, and second of all what it sounds like; what it feels like is usually what’s there – but to say to be “delightfully open,” I love that. I really love that. How do you put all of these senses together when you’re inspired in practice here in Berks County? What do you do?
Annarose: That’s relatively easy for me. It’s gotten easier for me over the years. That’s really the value of age when I talk about that. Wherever I look, I actually look to be inspired. Some people may go to the mountaintop and see the vista and then run home and get their easel and paint. I find my inspiration in people, in relationships. That’s where I find all my inspiration, so that whoever crosses my path, I almost encourage them to inspire me. Help me out here. Pull it out of me.
I think that’s where the difference between motivation and inspiration comes from. I see motivation as being a push, somebody pushing you to do something, whereas inspiration, someone’s pulling you along.
I like to be pulled along. That’s one of the ways I do it. I would have to say that just about everybody that I run into inspires me in some way. You, for instance, you inspire me.
Toni: Thank you.
Annarose: I can say that because if you ask me how you do it, it’s very simple. It’s the simplest way. When you laughed at my joke, when you just smiled at me and said, “Thank you,” that says to me that you think kindly of me. That inspires me. When you ask me my opinion, it says that you value what I think. You want to hear from me. When you invited me today to speak on the show, it tells me that you want to be in my company, that you value your time with me and your most precious commodity of time. You value that. You’re willing to do that. That’s very inspirational for me.
That’s what I’m talking about, that that pulls me along, so that every single part of my day, I look for that in other people, whether it be at the grocery store or wherever. That’s how I practice it.
Toni: When you are pulled along by that inspired feeling – and I’m humbled by what you said, by the way – how do you pay that forward to others?
Annarose: By staying open is a sign of respect. By making that eye contact. When you laugh at my joke or you smile at me, I smile back at you. That’s how I pay it forward. That’s a sign of respect. That’s communication. That’s building the relationship. That’s where I try to inspire other people, whether they pick up on it or not, I don’t know, but I pick up on it. It feeds itself.
Toni: It really does feel itself, doesn’t it?
Annarose: Yes, it definitely feeds itself.
Toni: And you can see that. You can see it, and you can feel it.
Annarose: There’s a glow to it, and there’s an effortlessness to it.
Toni: Who in Berks County inspires you?
Annarose: The one person that inspires me has always inspired me. It’s my mom, regardless of where she is. What she does, what she did, what she continues to do is to really be my guiding light. I say that not because of anything that she did specifically or said to me specifically, it was the way that she lived her life, to watch how she did it.
What she did was every single moment of every single day she enjoyed, no matter what. Not only did she carpe diem as the saying goes, “to seize the day,” she enthusiastically did it, regardless of what it brought her. In the food she tasted, in the clothes that she wore, the drink that she savored, each person that she came in contact with, she savored that. She valued that.
As I wrote in the book Lunch With Lucille, I wanted to share that message with people, because I think that’s a really unique gift that someone has is that they know the value of their time, and so they use that time to the utmost to enjoy it, because it’s so limited. I look around now. I’m 60 years old. I have no idea how that happened.
Toni: I understand that. I love the way you say, “no matter what that day may bring,” and it could at the end of the day not been one of your best days, but yet you wake up embracing that day.
Annarose: Exactly. It’s a great day, because it’s another day, another chance. It’s another opportunity. It’s another person. It’s another drink. It’s another food. It’s another. It’s more.
Toni: I love it. I absolutely love it. Anybody else in Berks County inspire you that you want to talk about?
Annarose: Like I said, everybody inspires me. Call me a thief. I take from everybody. When I can take, it fills me up and it pours out. It’s very simple. Like I said, it’s effortless. It becomes effortless.
Toni: Annarose, what would you like your legacy to be?
Annarose: This one I have thought about, because when I think of the word “legacy” I think of long-term goal. You just don’t have a legacy. You have to work on your legacy. You’re designing your life. At this point, I always want my life to be valuing time. I truly value time. Lucille valued time. I value age, because age and time are really two synonymous terms, at least in my book.
Thomas Edison said our only true capital is time, and it’s something that we cannot waste, because it’s something that we cannot get back. I want my legacy to be that when I’m in the company of people – anyone, I don’t care who it is – I want that person to feel that they used their time well, and that being with me was time well spent. That’s what I want my legacy to be.
Toni: Thank you so much for being part of the Get Inspired! Project.
Annarose: You’re welcome. Thank you, Toni.
