A lot of people use inspiration to start off. They see sites they want to be able to create in the future, they try to use it as a starting point to learn the techniques over time.
i started from my father who owns a design shop chain and learned from him then took up designing on my own computer and now i design in school classes also.
I started at the age of 12, started by making signatures for forums and what not. Then I got into other things, playing with settings. Gradually I got better. I stay motivated by thinking of cool new things I can design for future templates or current projects I work on.