 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
BECOMING UNSTOPPABLE Getting what you want in your life! |
Most of us will spend much of our lives striving and struggling to get the things we want in our lives. We want to make more money, stop smoking, start exercising. We want a great relationship, we want a nice car, we want to travel, we want good friends, we want to make a difference. All of these things that we want (but don't have yet) create a lot of struggling in our lives, and often we just give up on one or more of our dreams. I’ll never get the right mate, I don’t have time to exercise, I tried to stop smoking but it didn’t work, I’m tired of working two jobs to make more money but I still live paycheck to paycheck. Because wanting something is so much easier than doing what is needed to get it, we all often live with a lot of unfulfilled desires. "Life would be great if I had that, but it probably won’t happen…" The reason we struggle in life and give up on our dreams is because We all have a motivational disability! That’s right, you and everyone you know were raised with a motivational disability that makes it much harder than it needs to be to get what you want in life. One of the keys to getting what you want in life is learning how to become unstoppable, how to motivate yourself to keep going until you get what you want. Becoming unstoppable is another vital skill that we were never taught in school. Becoming unstoppable has to do with several things, yet there is a very simple skill that you can learn in the next few minutes that will create a shift in your ability to get what you want in your life. (There's a lot more to it than just this skill.) This skill has to do with self motivation. How you motivate yourself to do what you do and how you motivate yourself to not do the things you know you should do. Self motivation is a simple skill to learn because there are only two ways anyone can motivate themselves. Positive or negative. That’s it, just two. You either motivate yourself positively or negatively. When you understand this and begin to consciously practice both methods for a few weeks, you will create a powerful shift in your ability to get what you want more easily and enjoyably. How many of us know that exercise is good for us yet we don’t do it? How many of us know that losing weight would be good for us but we don’t do it? How many of us know that flossing is good for us but we don’t do it? Why not? Because we have that motivational disability! When there is something that you want and you aren’t acting in such a way to get it then you are suffering from this motivational disability. Make a list right now of three things that you want, that you know would be good for you to have in your life, but you aren’t really doing things to get them:
Your list might include things like Being in a relationship Playing the guitar Changing jobs or careers Weight loss Exercise Singing Dancing More money Continuing Education Quality time with the kids This motivational disability isn’t bad, so go easy on yourself! We all have things we want in our lives that we aren’t acting in ways that will get them. But let’s look at the causes of this common motivational disability When you were a kid and didn’t want to do your chores, what did you hear? If you don’t take out the trash Do your homework Do the dishes Clean your room You’ll get a
As we’ve said, there are only two ways to motivate yourself. Positively and Negatively. Which way of motivating yourself is all that? Negative, of course! The threat of punishment, of something bad happening to your rear end, is the motivation we used to do the stuff our parents wanted us to do. If they didn’t threaten us with a whippin or taking away the tv, we wouldv’e kept ignoring those chores. Their negative motivation worked, it got us to do the things we needed to do. Negative motivation works, it isn’t bad, we use it to get things done in our lives. But only using negative motivation created a problem for us. See if you can figure out just how big a problem that is. Here you are now, an adult. You’re out of school, out on your own. If you don’t exercise, are you gonna get a whippin? Have to stand in the corner? NO. If you don’t exercise, are you going to lose tv privileges for a week? No. So you’re lost, you have no way to motivate yourself when there is no stick or whip. Can you see the motivational disability? People have big dreams. Start their own business Write a book Become a singer Lose weight Get a better job Get a new relationship If you don’t lose weight, are you going to get grounded? Lose tv privileges? Get a whippin? If you don’t start your own business, are you gonna get in trouble? So when you have only the negative way to motivate yourself, can you see how it disables people? And you get a gold star if you can begin to see how you yourself are motivationally disabled. IT’S NOT BAD. BUT WHEN THE MOTIVATIONAL BOX YOU OPERATE FROM IS NEGATIVE, YOU ARE GOING TO BE VERY LIMITED IN WHAT YOU DO IN LIFE. YOU’LL JUST DO THE BASICS RATHER THAN THE EXTRAORDINARY. WHEN THERE ARE THINGSYOU WANT TO DO BUT DON’T HAVE TO DO, YOU OFTEN WON’T DO THEM. Because nobody is going to make you! You don’t really "have to" after all, so you end up avoiding doing the things that will get you what you want in life. Nobody is going to make you
While any or all of these things might be something you’d want to accomplish or have in your life, you don’t have to do any of them. So how can you motivate yourself to get them done? Try to understand this: Negative motivation only works well for some things when you’re an adult. Like going to work in the morning. If you don’t get out of bed and get to work you’ll get fired and then you’ll get kicked out of your apartment. That is a form of negative motivation we’ve all used in our lives! We really don’t want to lose a roof over our heads, so we get up at 5 AM and drag ourselves to work. The threat gets us to work! But if you don’t exercise, what’ll happen to you? Will you get fired? Will you get written up? Will you lose the roof over your head? Probably not. So to motivate ourselves to do some things as adults, we need a different motivational method. Consider this common scenario. You’ve come home from work, you’re tired, your fix a quick dinner for your kids and then plop on the couch to be a potatoe until bedtime. But then at 8PM your kids inform you that you’re out of bread and milk. Using negative motivation, how do you get yourself to the store? You think of how you’ll have to listen to your kids complain about not having bread for lunch or milk for breakfast, you think of people saying you’re a bad mom, so you pull yourself off the couch wearily and drag yourself to the store. Again, negative motivation works, but notice that it involves a lot of grumbling and burden. But there is another way to motivate yourself that can have you rushing to the store with a smile on your face! And that’s to use positive motivation. What if, instead of thinking about the negatives like your kids complaining or the parental police taking you away for a being a bad mom or dad, you thought about something positive instead? What if you really like Hagen Daaz ice cream, and you think about going to the store to get that along with the bread and milk you need? Oh my, that creamy, rich, oral orgasm called Butter Pecan? Man, that would taste really good, and I deserve it after the day I’ve had! So off you go to the store, but this time with a little spring to your step. You’re not dragging yourself there, you’re actually wanting to get there and get back quick to enjoy your ice cream (or whatever your favorite treat is). Hagen Daaz is an example of positive motivation that we all can use. And it demonstrates one of the keys to motivation. When you negatively motivate yourself, you drag yourself into action. You force yourself. It is draining and burdensome to do whatever the thing is. Negative motivation drags you kicking and screaming into your future! When you positively motive yourself, you are pulled towards that thing. You want to! You get to! Wow, as soon as I get to the store and back I get to have some Hagen Daaz ice cream! Instead of going to the store for bread and milk and groaning and bemoaning your fate, you go to the store with some zip, some interest and desire. It takes no less energy or effort to go to the grocery store at 8PM at nite. Either way you’ve got to get in the car, drive down, walk all over the store to the break, milk and ice cream, stand in line, carry the grocery bag, load the car, drive home, unload the groceries. The physical effort is the same, but your experience of it is completely different if you use negative or positive motivation. Positive motivation pulls you to the store and back, negative pushes and drags you by the hair kicking and screaming all the way. Got the idea? You already know this skill, kinda! You have used positive motivation in your life many times already, you just didn’t know you were using it. Say you don’t like to get up early in the morning to go to work. You have to drag your butt into the shower and get a cup of coffee before you can even stand yourself, and then you hate the traffic and your first hour at work everybody knows to stay away from you til you become human. But now there’s this new guy or girl you’ve been flirting with recently. You tend to get up and hop in the shower and get ready for work with a positive zip to your step and no complaining. You’re even humming on the drive in traffic to work. All because of the positive pull of a potential new relationship filling your thoughts and feelings! Or let’s say you hate to clean your house on Saturday’s. Not fair, you should have servants and slaves to do the drudge work, you already work hard enough as it is earn a living, on top of it you shouldn’t have to be forced to clean toilets and vacuum til your ears ring and your arm falls off. But this Saturday evening you’re have a dinner party at your home and you’ll get to see several friends you haven’t relaxed with in a while. So you hardly notice cleaning the toilets as you think of what a good time it’ll be and again you’re humming as you vacuum away, wanting your house to shine for your friends! So we’ve all successfully used positive motivation in our lives many, many times. Now let’s take a look at another common scenario most of us have faced as adults, the issue of exercise. First off, let’s all be clear. You don’t have to exercise. Nobody can make you, right? But you know exercise is good for you and you want to do it, so you decide to start an exercise program tomorrow! You set your alarm clock a half hour early so you can get up and jog. The alarm goes off, and all of a sudden you’ve got a big motivational disability! You think how warm and cozy the bed is, (which positively motivates you to stay in bed) and how much you deserve some extra sleep because today at work is going to be a bear. You think of getting up to jog and remind yourself how cold it is this early in the morning, and how you’re about to get all sweaty and tired. Besides, you’ll look silly huffing and chuffing around the path. "Ah, forget it," you tell yourself. "I’ll start an exercise program some other time when I’m less stressed and more rested!" And yet another promise to yourself gets broken. You have successfully de-motivated yourself in about one minute! All because the default motivator for all of us is NEGATIVE. When there’s something you want to do, thinking of how hard it is and all the difficulties associated with it is a way of motivating yourself not to do it! What if, instead, when the alarm goes off, and you’re feeling all warm and cozy in bed, you take one minute and positively motivate yourself. You remind yourself how good you’ll feel once you’ve jogged for half an hour. You’ll actually have more energy to start you into your workday. And, you need to lose a few pounds, so you remind yourself how good you’ll look once you’ve been exercising for a few weeks. You’ll feel better, you’ll look better, hey, you’re already up and throwing on your sweats… Again, all it takes is one minute either way, but that one minute of what you tell yourself or focus on when its time to start a new project or move towards a new goal is the key to success or failure. It’s not all that mysterious, and just takes a little practice, but getting what you want in life has a lot to do with how well you motivate yourself. Studies have shown that people who have high accomplishment levels keep their goals clearly in their mind, up close and with a picture of the results they want to achieve clear in their minds. A key to success in life, to getting what you want, is to develop skill at using both motivational methods, not just the negative. Just because we were all raised with the default method of negative motivation, doesn’t mean we have to keep using it all the time. Now it’s time for you to do a simple exercise to begin developing your positive motivation muscle. EXERCISE: THINK OF AN AREA YOU’VE BEEN STOPPED IN, OR A PART OF YOUR LIFE THAT YOU DRAG YOURSELF KICKING AND SCREAMING THROUGH. How do you motivate yourself now? List three things you think about or focus on when it is time to get started or do that thing:
Can you see how you SUCCESSFULLY motivate yourself to not do that thing, or to drag yourself into it? What positives can you think of that start to pull you towards taking action? It might take a little imagination, but think of two or three things that would be great once that were done or accomplished.
Again, the idea is to focus on the result you want to achieve for just one minute or so. See yourself successfully doing that thing, how great you’ll feel or how good you’ll look doing it or having it done. Focus as clearly as you can in your mind on an image of the positive result you want or will get. You’re just starting out developing your new motivation muscle, so if you find it hard to focus or keep thinking of how you’ll fail or some negatives don’t worry. Just take a few beginning steps at focusing clearly in your mind, as best you can, on the positives associated with whatever you want to do or accomplish or have more of in your life. See if you can focus clearly enough for a minute or two to start to feel pulled towards doing or getting started doing that thing! Then get going and do something to move toward your goal! One of the great things about motivation is that once you’ve successfully motivated yourself for a few weeks, that action will begin to become a habit. You won’t need to motivate yourself to exercise after a few weeks. It’ll be a habit, you’ll just do it cause, you’ll just do it because you feel weird if you don’t. You only need to successfully motivate yourself to do something new for a few weeks until it becomes a habit in your life! Successful People Developing skill at focusing on the positive until you feel pulled into action is an invaluable addition to your emotional IQ. Successful people throughout history have used this mental method to focus clearly on the desired result and keep that image up front and center in their mind until they are literally drawn into action, while others focus on the all the potential problems or disasters and often don’t ever get started on following their own dreams. Developing both motivational skills, not just the negative, is a powerful way to start you firmly on the path of accomplishing your dreams in life. Nobody is going to make you accomplish them, after all, so it’s up to you and positive motivation to get you started. There’s a lot more to developing the skill of becoming unstoppable, but understanding how you motivate yourself and de-motivate yourself is a key skill in the journey of life! Exercises: For the next week, begin to notice how good you are at successfully motivating yourself to do or not to do certain things. Notice what pictures you fill your mind with when you put off certain things. Notice what you tell yourself about the things you put off. Begin to see how good you are at de-motivation! It’s not bad, we all do it, becoming conscious of it is very worthwhile. Pick one dream or goal you’ve been putting off and for the next week, once each day, take a minute or two and focus on accomplishing that goal or having that thing in your life. Think of how good it would be to have it done, how great you’ll feel to have accomplished that thing. Focus on it in positve ways until you feel pulled into some kind of action. |
