Back when I worked in sales we had bi-weekly meetings whose purpose was primarily to keep us motivated. During those meetings we were supposed to talk about various things, but we ended up just getting a motivational talk 95% of the time. Motivation was one of the most important factors in being able to exist in such a rough business.
But we were all aware of the shallow and temporary nature of the motivation one gets from something like a motivational speech. So while we fed off of these meetings, speeches, and other shallow forms of motivation, all the guys and girls in the office also read books like Think and Grow Rich and listened to audio tapes of people like Tony Robbins. We did this because we were aware of the ultimate level of motivation and these were the resources that could help us identify our source for deep or great motivation and harness it to become successful.
The word we typically used to identify this deep or ultimate level of motivation was our "reasons" or your "why". We'd constantly meet successful people both from our own office and abroad, and each and every one of them always said the same thing: you need to know why you do what you do.
This could be your son, your daughter, your wife, husband, a combination. One of my friends was working for his recently passed mother because he wanted to make her proud. You might have noticed a trend here: our deep or ultimate motivators are people. Specifically, those people closest to us. Our loved ones.
Next, as an extension of that, you wanted something from the work that you're doing for yourself and for those loved ones. But that didn't mean your goal was "I'm working to put food on the table". Sure, that's motivating, but only slightly. So instead of, "I'm working to put food on the table", it would be more like, "I want to become financially independent and be able to provide for my family anything they ever need. Money will no longer ever be an issue." That's a dream.
This worked like a charm. As I mentioned, all of the most successful sales people, who built teams in the hundreds and thousands and made 6-7 figures preached the same thing:
1.
You need to know why you're doing what you're doing. You need to find your reasons. Is it your son? Think "if this person wasn't here, would I be here or have the same drive?".
This is why you want what you want. The root cause of all or the majority of your motivation.
2.
Dream BIG, set big, compelling, yet sensible goals. You need to dream big. Know what you REALLY want. Sure, you want to support your family, but if you could have whatever you want, if you could become wildly successful, what is it that you would do with that success? If you could have or become anything in life, what would it be?
This is what you want. This is the dream, the thing you entice yourself with constantly.
3.
That reason or reasons need to be CRYSTAL CLEAR. You need to know EXACTLY what you want, not a general idea. There can be no doubt in your mind of what you want.
This is the vision. A clear formulating of your dream into a vision for your life in the future.
4.
You need to keep those reasons in front of you CONSTANTLY. They need to be up on the back of your office door in the form of a dream board, they need to be in your pocket in written to be read once if not twice a day.
This is the fuel that powers the machine. Even the greatest dream can be forgotten easily if it isn't kept in front of you and visualized constantly.
These are the most important factors of motivation period. Whatever anyone else says, no matter any scientific study, these were the principles that worked for thousands upon thousands of those salesmen that poured into the company year after year.
But what if it's a smaller everyday task? Of course, this can seem unimportant, but even big dreams are a collection of smaller actions. You need to find motivation wherever you can get it, so here's a short list of a couple useful tips for generating motivation while doing your thing:
1.
Tackle small tasks first. This will build your confidence and make you want to do more. Motivation is very much like an old train. You need to keep tossing coal into the burner in order to keep the train going. If you stop, the train stops. In any given day if you can learn how to generate a little energy or confidence you can build on that easily.
2.
Don't think so much. Sometimes you just need to shut your mind off and do it. If you decided previously that something is the right thing to do, but you're having a hard time pushing yourself to do it, then put everything down, stop thinking, and get up and do it. Whether you need to walk, talk, call, type, or execute something, get up and start doing it without thinking. This is sort of a forceful suppressing of the mind which shouldn't be used often, but it works.
3.
Practice mindfulness. Moving on from the last point, one of the ways we become unmotivated is that we talk ourselves out of things. We always make things bigger in our heads than they really are.. By practicing mindfulness you'll begin to quiet your mind and give yourself a healthy tool which allows you to get out of the trap of your mind and fully into the present moment to do whatever it is you need to do.
4.
Have fun. Don't overlook this point. Two people can do the same thing and one will find joy in it while the other will find it boring. Don't take anything for granted even the smallest task. Appreciate every little thing in life and find out how to enjoy the daily tasks that you wouldn't normally find enjoyable. Trust me, this is a big deal. And, it works. The first place I'd start towards making this possible is point #3 Practice mindfulness. Look deeply into what you do during your work. See what you typically overlook and draw a deeper connection to the work that you do. Finding joy in your work or practice can generate huge amounts of motivation. In fact, if you love what you do, this can often be all or most of what you need.
A few last notes about motivation. I talked about these earlier but I want you to keep these points in mind when thinking about motivation:
- Motivation is like a train. It's progressive. That is, if you do some small and simple tasks then you'll develop some speed (motivation) and be further motivated to do larger things. Learn how to get yourself going in the morning with varying tasks and you'll learn how to generate motivation for the rest of the day.
- The deeper the motivation, the better. The deeper, the greater the motivational factor the more motivation that's generated and the more often it's going to work. Even the best motivational factor (our son or daughter, for instance) won't always motivate you, so you need more than just your "why" in place, but that is by far the single most important thing you can do towards keeping and building motivation.
- One avenue of motivation isn't enough. As I just mentioned, your ultimate "why" is the most powerful force you have towards keeping motivated. But you'll need more. YouTube videos in the morning (there's some great ones), music that pumps you up, pictures that generate specific emotions, thinking about various aspects of your dream/vision. You need to have a bag of tricks available at all times.
