Excel Training & Consulting

How good are you at getting motivated? Are you motivated by consequences or enjoyment? By others, or can you motivate yourself?

Motivation is a vital ingredient in life. It helps us get things done, make changes and improve our lives.

The purpose of motivation is to get something started; you don’t need it all the time. For instance, if you’re ½ way through an activity you usually have enough momentum to keep going.

The real key to motivation is to be able to get yourself motivated from the inside out, not from the outside in. The following techniques are designed to give you some tools to get motivated using the internal approach:

1. Do it anyway.

This is the proactive approach. Even though you don’t feel like doing something, you do it anyway. Although this approach is a challenging it teaches your  mind that it doesn’t have all the control, that ultimately the actions you take override whatever is going on in your mind.

2. Play the 10 minute game.

Just begin the activity you’ve been putting off. The rules of the game are once 10 minutes are up, you can stop. Chances are you won’t because beginning is half done.

The advantage of this strategy is that you’ll bypass overwhelm, which tends to quickly quell the fires of motivation. So if it’s big, make it small.

3. Remember.

Can you remember a time in your life that you felt motivated? If you can’t can you simply remember the general feeling of motivation?

Motivation is a state or a feeling that you have felt before – it’s actually already there in your nervous system. Why not access it? In a future blog I’ll show you how to lock this feeling in so you can use it at will!

4. Think differently.

Believe it or not, you actually have an internal strategy to get motivated. In other words, you are thinking in a specific way in order which in turn leads to motivation or a lack thereof.

For example, let’s say you wanted to tidy your office. Notice what goes on in your head when you attempt to get yourself going. Do you think thoughts such as, ‘I really should get this done’ with a dreary internal tone of voice? Or do you have a nice big, clear picture of your office already tidied up? Which one feels better? Or why not just a simple affirmation: ‘I feel motivated!’

Thoughts ultimately lead to feelings, so be careful of how you think them!

5. Think ahead.

One of the biggest mistakes people make with motivation is they wait for it to happen to them, some kind of external event, circumstance or situation to happen before they have the drive to do something. A classic example of this is waiting right up to the deadline before you start your taxes.

To get around this think ahead. Examine the consequences of putting something off. For example, say you consistently decide not to exercise for 3 months. How would you feel? Sluggish? Tired? Carrying a few extra kilos? What about if you had consistently exercised for 3 months? Imagine the results. Notice how good it feels.

The beauty of imagination is that you can pre-empt the results of doing or not doing something. Why not take advantage of it?

Look at motivation as a skill you can develop over time – something you can better and better at.

One final tip in case you’re still stuck - call in for reinforcements. Find a good friend, family member, (or life coach!) that can hold you accountable in the long-term to getting those things done that are important for you.