How do you become motivated?

How do you become motivated?
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An interesting comment from a website passerby yesterday. He had been reading the section on weight loss. He said incorrectly that I had advised him to "just do it" and that nothing in the article motivated him to lose weight.

As I said to him, actually I didn't say anywhere in the piece he had been reading to just do it, but had been pointing out the usual myths associated with dieting and weight loss. Any of the programs work if you work them. But unless you retrain your thinking as well as your stomach you will gain weight again, and that's why the dieting and weight loss industry loves people like me (I have fallen off as many band wagons as everyone else). Lets face it there wouldn't be a dieting industry if we all ate what we knew we should eat.

But that's not really what I wanted to talk to you about - it was the cry for help, the "nothing on here motivates me" comment that really got me thinking.

Now I could be your usual cheer leader type motivational speaker - get you all fired up and inspired, but have you noticed there is usually little or nothingto back up the quotes and the told many times type of personal stories. Or I could carry on and do what I have always done and try and provide you with help, guidance, suggestions, head cracking (on occassion), whingeing at you - sometimes I feel like your mother when I do that though -

"Have you done your homework today? And why not? Now get inyour room and you don't get any supper until it's done."

And once I've given you that day's personal thoughts and action items, simplyask you to consider adding the new ideas or suggestions to what you are currently doing to see if that one thing will make the major impact you've been hoping for. That elusive silver bullet / magic pill we hope will fix our problems without us having to do very much at all. Now as I always say, what you are doing may be Ok, all I can do is ask you to take a look. Remember you can'tchange things in the long termwhat you don't measure in the short.

Of course if nothing in the message motivates you to do just that. How do you become motivated enough to make the first of many, many changes that you know you need to make but don't really want to do today. Tomorrow may be different, we may feel differently about tomorrow.

The answer is of course - if you can't motivate yourself day after day to keep on going - then you will stop. And that's where I come in of course. The daily proddings, the new suggestions, the have you thought about this kind of scenario. But I know that not even I can help everyone all of the time. Every day is a new challenge for me - will the message today strike a chord. Will it make people think and act differently. Will it inspire them to start the process of goal setting and goal achievement.

Now I know from some of the feedback I've been getting, that sometimes I do hit the mark. Several of you have left jobs you didn't enjoy to pursue new and exciting careers. More of you have started eating more healthily and started working out. And that's awesome. But I take the other comments just as seriously, everything is a learning opportunity and I am glad to have you teach me more than just a thing or two.

So - how do you become motivated?

Well in real terms it's either through a positive - I want to be a ..... do .... or ....

Or it's the negative - I've had enough of this, I'm fed up of doing .... and so on.

Both are positive motivators, but even those things can wear off after a while. So make sure your reasons for doing something are written in very big letters in prominent places. Use your computer screen saver if you like - I want to be .... and have it rolling across the screen whenever you stop working.

And finally for today - you need to know what you want and you need to know why you really want it. But don't make the reason wishy washy - make it bold, make it exciting, make it come alive for you and it will.

With many thoughts

Elle

Comments

[Happy Lists]

How true! It's silly to search for motivation when I don't know what I want. It seems like an obvious question, what do I want? But it takes some serious thinking. Thanks for the suggestion of writing it big on the screen saver, that's great!