The Truth About Motivation
We are constantly looking for new ways to motivate ourselves to do the things we know that we should be doing to move forward and achieve our intentions, but what if your natural state is, to be motivated.
What if all that is necessary, is for you to stop doing those things that prevent you from embracing your natural state of motivation.
Anytime you feel a lack of ambition, energy or enthusiasm, your are probably invoking one or all of the following five behaviors. Which will ensure You’ll stay in front of your television watching reruns or down at the neighborhood bar sipping on fermented hops and feeling unmotivated.
Behavior Number 5: Spending Time with Low Achievers
We absorb the mindset and attitudes of the people we associate with, so it’s important to stay away from the low achievers and instead spend time with high-fliers.
Be very careful to choose friends who are going somewhere and, if possible, who are open to the entire idea of achievement and success.
If you want to identify low achievers, listen for phrases like:
- You’d have to be ruthless to succeed like that
- He’s rich, so he MUST be crooked as a corkscrew
- We just weren’t born to be rich or successful
- I don’t try to be somebody I’m not
- We may be poor, but at least we’re happy
Be sure to spend all your available time with people who have the correct mindset.
Behavior Number 4: Avoiding Goal Oriented Activities
If you never set a goal. Never work toward anything. If someone offers you a step up, such as a promotion, and you firmly refuse. If you accept raises, but avoid giving any value in return, you just might be avoiding goal oriented activities.
Instead, try to pursue activities that might enlarge your concept of what’s possible. Ideally, you should be working to enlarge your world rather than shrinking it. At all costs, question your status quo as if your very life depends on it.
Focusing on these principles will open the door to excitement, hope, enthusiasm and other exciting emotions.
Behavior Number 3: Openly Criticizing High Achievers
Closely related to number 5 is this next behavior that causes you to move away from your natural motivated state.
Looking for ways to undercut the special achievements of others. If an acquaintance does something noteworthy, find a way to minimize there achievement. Typical examples include:
- I guess that’s good… but her poor husband and kids
- Pretty unbelievable. Wonder what he’s on?
- Of course, she never sees her old friends any more
- The way he smiles you’d think he’s sincere
- Some people just don’t know how much is enough
By suggesting a possible negative side of things, you can make them seem true, even though they’re not.
Please note that this behavior will work even if you don’t make your remarks aloud. Planting them in your own mind can squeeze out any urges to better yourself. So it’s a sure-fire way to keep yourself caged within your walls of limitations looking for ways to become motivated.
Behavior Number 2: You Seek Logical-Sounding Reasons for Why Not
Here is what this looks like. If an exciting idea wanders into your mind, you immediately reach for a ready repertoire of excuses so you don’t unthinkingly jump up to put the plan into action.
The logical repertoire of excuses sound like these:
- I would never know how to do that
- That would take too much time (energy, brains, etc.)
- They’d all laugh at me
- Who am I to try something like that?
- I’m not really all that interested in…
In fact, any kind of “I’m not, I can’t, I wouldn’t” thought will serve the purpose. They don’t need to be especially true – their only real purpose is to keep you from ever starting.
Behavior Number 1: Wallowing in Self Pity
And the number one behavior that will drive you away from your natural motivated state, is to spend a lot of time feeling sorry for yourself. It’s a big no-no if you want to feel hope or ambition or self-worth, so be on constant alert.
An especially effective way to keep self pity alive is to begin identifying yourself as a victim. Thinking of all the people who have wronged you (or your population demographic) over the years. Nursing steady feelings of anger, resentment, unfairness and even rage is one of the best possible ways to keep yourself feeling helpless and pitiful.
If such feelings appear, you must instantly remind yourself of all the reasons why you’re good enough, smart enough, and worthy enough.
Filling your mind with these thoughts will give hope and motivation a place to grow. —-
SO THERE YOU HAVE THEM, the top five behaviors that will keep you down in the dumps, down where all your energies are focused on despair and hopelessness, instead of soaring with the eagles. So remember to check for these five behaviors whenever you are feeling unmotivated.
Read MoreThe Problem With Affirmations
Cheryl had run into a stubborn little glitch with her affirmation practice. “When I say the word ‘productive,’ she told me, “I feel like I’m lying to myself.”Each time Cheryl affirmed that she was productive; it stirred up in her a deep feeling of incongruity — what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. This basically means she was trying to believe two things that contradict each other.
Ken’s incongruity, on the other hand, was connected with the word “young.” he had no problem with “youthful,” but his mind kicked up uneasy feelings any time he tried to inject “young” into his self image.
“After all,” he explained, “at age 71 I’m NOT young. And I wouldn’t want to go back to my younger days for anything in the world. They were fun, but trying times… it took me years to gain the peace and knowledge I have now.”
Cheryl and Ken are typical. Almost everyone who tries to introduce new ideas into their self image will stir up inner conflict. And yet, we are usually surprised when this dissonance arises.
Change = Conflict
As part of our socialization process, most of us are trained to avoid conflict wherever possible. But when conflict does happen, we’re taught by example to try and dominate the strange new idea and chase it away, rather than welcoming it. In other words, we tend to argue rather than to negotiate and find common ground.
Take any two people. Inevitably, differences of viewpoint arise between them, and when this happens, doesn’t each one usually insist that their idea is right while the other’s is flawed? Most people rather be right than happy. How often do both partners listen respectfully and try to work out a way for both of them to be right? We do see peaceful relationships, but they’re few — certainly not in the high percentages.
And just as each party usually insists that the other is wrong, so does your mind: “What I believe is not a belief… it’s RIGHT.” This leads us to skip right over any opportunity to examine our established ideas. After all, they don’t NEED examining… we already know they’re right.
It’s this unconscious, unquestioning arrogance about the infallibility of our own beliefs that keeps us stuck in one spot, not moving forward, not knowing why.
Could Your Feelings Be Telling You Something?
But is it a good idea to ignore your feelings? When your intuition tells you something is wrong, it might be good to pay closer attention, not ignore it.
In most societies, we’re taught to huddle around our positive feelings while steering clear of our negative ones. So what happens when we begin suggesting to ourselves that we’re productive, young, rich, or slender, and this brings out a cognitive dissonance? This feeling of incongruity between our suggestion and our reality makes us uncomfortable.
That feeling is disagreeable, so instead of allowing the two ideas time to marinade and settle things between themselves, we emotionally stop the affirmation. Whilst this restores the quiet within us, we virtually remain stuck.
Incongruous Feelings Are Your “Work-on-This” Sensor
How many times have you been affirming something like “I am rich” or maybe “I am growing in abundance and prosperity,” only to have the inner you laugh at the dea?
Perhaps you’ve had the same experience. If you have — and if you ended up quitting — then you were throwing away some of the best feedback the inner you will ever bring you. Your inner you isn’t telling you that you’re lying, and it’s not telling you to stop. It’s telling you that this is an area of extra sensitivity; that it’s going to need extra patience, time and help from the conscious you.
It’s saying, “I don’t know what I’m doing here… yet. And I don’t know how to make this shift… yet. So please don’t judge me too harshly if I can’t make this change immediately.” It’s saying there are feelings of insecurity and maybe a little defensiveness. This means you may want to rid yourself of the idea that “negative” feelings are always negative. More often they’re requests for patience, understanding and soft-handed persistence.
The Real Meaning of Incongruity
The inner you is not telling you to back off or to quit. Instead, it’s pointing out exactly what you should be working on. This is priceless information, because once you know where your sensitive spots or “problems ideas” are located, you’ll know exactly where to apply your focus.
You’re no longer on a hit-or-miss basis. In other words, once you know the location of a block, it becomes much easier to ease your way through it.
First rule: Don’t be timid. Test lots of ideas, suggestions and affirmations. The ones that cause you discomfort and make you feel like a liar… those are usually your “quick-win” zones.
But don’t use force… just let your suggestions and affirmations flow in, steadily and gently. If necessary use a journal to connect heart and action to mind. You’re not “making” anything happen. You’re just giving two seemingly opposing ideas the chance to work out the best compromise. All resolving will be done at your other than conscious level.
How About Some Techniques.
If you’re familiar with NLP, you may want to use anchoring, reframing or the swish pattern. And if you’ve never heard of these before, do a quick Google search. You’ll find reams of information on the subject.
Another excellent technique that I’ve used extensively is EFT. This involves tapping on certain acupressure points.
So if you find your mind is filled with words and concepts that are weighed down with associations of hopelessness or negativity, now you know what to do with them. You can begin changing them immediately. Once you’ve learned to change the emotions attached to common ordinary words, you’ve learned how to select your own personal character traits.
Indeed, when you control beliefs, you control your very destiny.
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