Motivation
is a combination of a whole bunch of things, usually including some type of
fear or intense desire. After all, the motivation battle is nothing but your
head telling you "I think I can," "I think I still can,"
and "I'm doing it!" Because of that, we're going to home on three
things: getting focus, gaining confidence, and maintaining direction. And we're
off! I will take these points one by one so that it will not be too much for
you to read. Let us start with the first point;
Getting
Focus
1
Stop thinking in terms of fear.
We're all guilty of thinking in the negative instead of the
affirmative. We're busy not wanting things. That's fine and normal, but
there is no action associated with not wanting something. You can't
decide to do something because you don't want another. That's not how it
works. That will just keep you on the couch, doing nothing.
- Fear is harmful for two reasons: A) It keeps you unmotivated. A negative goal isn't something you can go to action on. But what's more, there's B) it’s draining and exhausting. Living in fear sucks. It keeps you in a state of perpetual worry instead of action. When you're drained and exhausted and worried, you are not going to be motivated. There's no two ways around it.
2
Define your goal and your plan to
achieve it.
Now that we have you
thinking in the positive, you got to know what you're getting positive about.
Instead of, "I don't want to be homeless, poor, and live my life in a
state of abject poverty," you're thinking, "I want to be financially
secure." Awesome. Now -- what's your plan to achieve that?
- Well, for that specific example, you'd create some type of income plan. It would involve making a budget, possibly going back to school, or expanding your business. You have concrete steps toward your goal. But for whatever you're facing -- be it weight loss, doing well in school, or following through with a dream -- you need to figure out what it is you want and just how you plan on doing that. If you really want it, it won't be all that hard to figure out.
3
Keep it to just one.
If you have a ton of things on your to-do list, sometimes
it becomes daunting and you end up putting the list away and "tackling it
later." But if you have one thing on that list of yours, that's it. That's
doable. It's doable and you can focus on it -- spreading yourself thin over a
dozen won't do you or your goals justice.
- You can't focus yourself if you're not focused on a specific goal. Break it down into small pieces as much as possible. If your goal is to shave 5 years off your appearance, attack it bit by bit. Start off with a new workout routine and get that down. Then, move to a new makeup regimen. Then, tackle your wardrobe. If you don't parse it out, your brain will raise it's arms (if brains had arms) up in surrender and you'll be left with no idea where to go or what to do.
4
Make it fun.
Straight up, doing something you flat out despise won't be
something you keep up with. The second you can drop it like a bad habit, you
will. For that reason, whatever you're doing -- be it saving up money for that
new car or losing 15 pounds -- you gotta make it enjoyable. The more enjoyable
it is, the more you'll do it. The more you'll do it, the better you'll get at
it. The better you get at it, the quicker the end result will come.
- Where there's a will, there's a way. Do you hate running? No problem. Take a kickboxing class -- the weight will fall off that way, too. Horrible at writing papers? Change to a topic that drives you. Can't save money to save your life? Switch environments. Your world is malleable -- what you make of it can change your motivation entirely.
5
Read about it.
On the outside, this kind of sounds silly. How could
reading about something that you think about all the time really get you
motivated? But it does. Hearing other people's success stories
(especially when they make it sound super simple), gets your brain thinking,
"Hey! There's no reason I can't do that, too!" You all of a sudden
become logical. So stop Facebook stalking your high school peers and get
to doing something useful.
- You may think reading stories of people who have succeeded in losing 100 pounds may make you feel overweight and unaccomplished (for example), but if anything, you should feel driven, empowered, and armed with resources. You can learn from these people! And if their success doesn't resonate with you, at least it can bring out your competitive edge.
6
Set rewards.
Let's be honest: results just don't come soon enough. It
takes years to make money from a new business, it takes months to reach weight
loss goals, and it takes a virtual lifetime to be happy with yourself. That's
just about the opposite of instant gratification. To overcome this unfortunate
fact of life, give yourself rewards. Life sure isn't going to do it for you, so
you might as well will.
- Don't just use rewards for the big end goal (though by all means do that!). Set up checkpoints for yourself and give rewards at those smaller successes, too. Lost 5 pounds? Great! That warrants a massage. Aced your last three tests? Super! A night out it is! Finished the first half of your book? Wonderful -- now it's time to go shopping.
Check out for
explanation on the next point tomorrow.
