Bridging the Gap

In the last couple of posts we’ve been talking about the evaluation, intentionally taking time to see how we are going on our path to manifesting our vision. One strategy we use in the evaluation is called bridging the gap.

When we refer to the gap we are talking about the distance or difference between what we had planned to occur and what really did occur. If we have used the three step process for successability, we have clarity as it relates to what we planned to have occurred (see the posting on clarity). This makes it easy for us to see if there is a gap, and if there is, easy to determine exactly what it is.

As part of your motivation plan, you have written down your goals and your tasks. Are you accomplishing your goals? If you aren’t, that is your gap. Are you completing your tasks? If not, then that is your gap. If you are accomplishing your goals, is your vision becoming manifest? If not, that is your gap.

Once you have identified your gap or gaps, it is time to bridge the gap, find out why you have a gap, and figure out how to close that gap, how to make happen what you have planned on happening. Make sure you don’t forget the Drucker ratio when you examine the gap. Instead of asking why something went wrong, ask how you can make it right.

Use your vision > goal > task paradigm to assist you in bridging the gap. If you are completing your tasks, but the goals aren’t being met, than you need to redefine your tasks. If you are completing your goals, but your aren’t manifesting your vision, you need to create new goals, are maybe restate them more clearly. If you aren’t completing your tasks, you need to figure out why. Are they too difficult? Are there things blocking you from completing them?

Perhaps you missing some skills you need to accomplish your goals. What type of training can you get to add those skills. Are there changes to your environment, either physical or social that will help you bridge the gap?

What you want to do with this strategy of bridging the gap is come up with solutions that are clearly stated and achievable, that will get you back on your path to manifesting your vision.

Using the Drucker Ratio in the Evaluation

When we institute a practice evaluation into our self motivation system, we need to keep in mind its purpose. What purpose does evaluation have on our motivation, and how can we use an evaluation to positively impact our motivation. The most obvious reason is to improve our system of self motivation, and so we set up an evaluation that will be effective in doing that.

But the evaluation should also be structured to enhance your motivation; that is, it becomes a factor in how motivated you are as you do the evaluation and afterwards. We do this by making the the evaluation enhance our successability, our confidence in our competence.

One of the ways we ensure that the evaluation will enhance our successability is by making sure we use what I call the Drucker ratio. Peter Drucker was one of the foremost thinkers and writers about people as they interact with the places they work. One thing he wrote about was how managers treat their workers. He posited that the average worker does good work about 90% of the time and inadequate work about 10% of the time. (I think he got the numbers pretty accurately about me!) Consequently, he argued, when a manager is talking to a worker about the worker’s performance, 90% of what he says should be positive. The ratio of the positive feedback to negative feedback, he argues, should be the same as the ratio of good work to inadequate work. How many of us have worked for managers who followed the Drucker ratio? Bosses like that are not real common.

But luckily for us, we control the type of manager we are to ourselves. We control the type of evaluation we give ourselves, when they are positive and when they are negative. We want to maintain the Drucker ratio when we do self evaluations of our movement toward our vision. We want to encourage ourselves and foster high successability, confidence in our competence. It is a simple concept, but so many of us are quick to dump on ourselves when we mess up.

We certainly do need to be honest with ourselves, and call attention when we are not moving forward, so we can make corrections, but we also need to celebrate the good things we are doing.

By maintaining the Drucker ratio in our evaluations, we increase our motivation and keep moving forward toward our vision.

Ongoing Improvement

If you have been reading my postings, it may have become apparent to you that in order to become motivated and stay motivated, you need a system, a plan. Haphazard attempts at getting ourselves motivated are not going to work. There are just too many things going on in our lives that distract us and turn us away from our path to expect motivation just to happen. Only by having a system will you be able to keep yourself motivated.

However, the focused activity does not stop after you have created your plan, you need to establish a way to make sure not only that the plan continues to work, but also allows you to improve the plan, as you gain experience and wisdom about yourself. The way we guarantee this ongoing improvement is through evaluation. All highly functioning businesses establish a process for ongoing improvement, through self evaluation.

We’ll talk in future blog postings about how to do an evaluation. Today we will talk about when to do an evaluation, the timing of your evaluations.

There are two ways to time your evaluation; you should use both ways. The first is on a regularly scheduled basis. Every week, two weeks, or month, your choice, you need to sit down and figure out how you are doing. Are you moving forward on your goals? If you find out you aren’t, you will now know you need to figure out why. If your evaluation shows that you are bumping into one particular ongoing problem, this knowledge will allow you to take steps to stop that from happening.

The second way to time your evaluations is on an “as-needed” basis. Evaluations are needed when something good happens, and when something bad happens. When something good happens, we need an evaluation to find out why the good thing happened, so we can make it happen again. We don’t want to lose the benefit of that lesson. We also need to take time to bask in the good feelings that will arise when it happens, and also to see if there are benefits from the good thing that maybe we don’t see at first blush.

When something bad happens, we also need to find out why, so we can avoid it happening in the future. We also may need to take some time to heal over any pain that results when things don’t go according to plan.

As intentional man, we don’t let things happen, we make things happen. A proper evaluation is one way we do that.

Social Environment

My last posting dealt with physical environment. Today’s will deal with social environment.

Social environment means all the people and the collections of people who surround you and with whom you come in contact and the interactions you have with them. We use the term very broadly. There are so many different types of people in your social environment. Some examples are role models, mentors, professional organizations, family, friends, service clubs, peer partners, counselors, teachers, trainers, seminars. The list goes on and on.

As intentional men, our goal is to use our social environment to enhance our motivation. My vision is me as a public speaker, training people how to motivate themselves so they can become all they are capable of being. A large part of my social environment is Toastmasters, an organization that has given me, and continues to give me, experience, skill and camaraderie. If you are interested in public speaking, or just wish to get more comfortable speaking in public, check it out at www.Toastmasters.org. I belong to two clubs, one is a regular club and the other one an advanced club, the members of which are all professional speakers.

I am also a member of a marketing group. This group, through its newsletter and by interactions with other members, teaches me the skills I need to market myself as a speaker and an author. Having these two things, Toastmasters and my marketing group, in my social environment enhance my motivation.

I continually become more and more conscious of my social environment. My physical environment has pretty much stayed the same for the past two years, with the exception of the purchase of a new computer. Other than that, I use the same desk, in the same room, in the same house. My physical environment works well for me as it is, so changing it is not necessary, except for maybe once in a while cleaning up the mess.

My social environment, however, is continually in flux. I recently contracted with a publicist/expert/counselor. She is very experienced in book publishing and public speaking. She knows people who can do the things I need doing, like setting up an appropriate web page. She also is a source of encouragement. This woman is a new part of my social environment, one that definitely enhances my motivation.

No matter what your vision, there are ways for you to enhance your motivation by working on your social environment.

Physical Environment

The third factor of self motivation is environment, both physical environment and social environment. Today’s posting deals with physical environment.

Physical environment is usually what we think about when we hear the word environment. It’s a place. It’s the place where you do the work that is required to manifest your vision. But it’s more than just the place; it also includes the things in that place. For many people the place will be an office, whether outside or inside their home. For others it might be in their car, for example, a person who does outside sales. A library could be a physical environment, for a researcher. The place or places where you pursue your vision is your physical environment.

As intentional man your goal is to make your physical environment enhance your motivation. There are several ways you can do this. The first way is to set up your physical environment so that you are more productive. This increases your successability, your confidence in your competence.

My physical environment, the place, consists primarily of my office in my home. In my office I have a desk, on which is a computer. I have a wide screen monitor which lets me have two documents open at the same time, next to each other on the monitor. This makes the constant editing I have to do so much easier. I have a built in book shelf next to my desk, on which I keep the books related to the work I do to manifest my vision. They are right at hand whenever I need to look up something. My physical environment, both the place and the things in it, make me more productive and thereby increase my motivation.

Another way to make your physical environment enhance your motivation is to make it inspiring. Posters are a great way to make your physical environment motivating. Many different inspirational posters are available at any mall. But inspiration can come from something as simple as an advertisement from a magazine. I have above my desk a Smith Barney advertisement I cut out of a magazine. It shows a new Town Car backing out of the drive way of a very nice, upper middle class home. In the back ground you can see the sun is just coming up. The ad reads, “Luck? There’s blind luck, dumb luck and then there’s get-up-every-morning-at-5:30-and-sweat-the-details-luck.” I may not want a Town Car, but the beautiful house looks real attractive, and these words remind me that to achieve my dreams I need to work hard; luck is not going to do it.

Your physical environment may be the dining room table after the kids have been put to bed. It doesn’t matter. Whatever your physical environment, there are steps you can take to make it more motivating for you. It’s well worth your while spending some time thinking seriously about the changes you can make in your physical environment to enhance your motivation.

Environment, The Third Factor of Self Motivation

The third factor of self motivation is environment. This recognizes that your environment plays a large part in how motivated you are. Your environment can increase your motivation, or it can decrease your motivation. It’s up to you, because ultimately you control your environment.

In my book, Motivate Yourself, I tell about a wonderful speech my friend Mykassa Dixon made at a Toastmasters speech contest. (Mykassa won). Mykassa’s speech was about Mr. Bouncy Ball. Mykassa actually had a ball with him on the speaking platform and bounced it onto the floor which was about a foot lower. Mykassa explained how the in order for the ball to bounce back it had to bounce on the right environment. If he tried to bounce it on sand, for example, that would be the wrong environment; it would not bounce back. Mykassa had shared with the audience a major disappointment he had experienced and was explaining how he was able to bounce back from that disappointment, with the proper environment.

In my model for self motivation, I go one step further than Mykassa did. I believe in order to do anything, not just bounce back, we need to have the right environment.

What’s interesting about Mykassa’s speech, as it relates to self motivation, is that the speech itself, on the surface, is talking about physical environment, the ball won’t bounce back on sand or on water, but it will bounce back on wood or cement. The physical environment in his speech, however is actually a metaphor for the people in his environment; the support, understanding and encouragement they give him help him to bounce back from his major disappointment.

What makes this interesting is that when we deal with environment in self motivation, we are dealing with both our physical environment, the place where we pursue our vision, and our social environment, the people we surround ourselves with on our journey. Both types of environment can have a major impact on our motivation.

The Ball in the Box Game

In my last posting I stated that motivation is at the highest level with tasks of a moderate risk, neither too high, nor too low. In this posting I will tell you about a game I call the ball in the box game, a game I do in my workshops. My game is based upon a game used by a researcher in motivation, Richard DeCharms. Each player when it is his turn is given eight balls. They are told that the first four balls are practice and the second four count. The goal of the game is to get two of the final four balls into a box I have placed about twenty feet away. The player is instructed that he is to use the four practice balls to determine the distance away from the box that he wishes to use for his four final balls. He gets to choose the distance for his final four balls. He can try different distances during the practice balls, but once he chooses a distance for the four final balls he cannot change his mind.

DeCharms’s research showed there are three possible choices, 1) very close so the player cannot miss, 2) far enough away that he is unlikely to get any balls in the box, and 3) somewhere in between 1) and 2) so as to make getting two of the balls into the box challenging, but possible.

Psychological testing of the participants by DeCharms showed that the people who chose 1), very close to the box, fear failure. They fear failure so much that they are afraid to take any risk. They succeed, but at what? At nothing. By taking the path of least resistance, they guarantee they won’t fail, but they also guarantee they won’t ever accomplish anything worth while.

People who chose 2), very far away from the box, his research showed, fear the appearance of failure. They stand so far away that even if they miss, they haven’t really failed, because what they were doing was impossible. By doing this they avoid responsibility when they fail.

People who chose 3), a moderate distance from the box, far enough to make it challenging, are what DeCharms called the reasoned risk takers. Research shows that this is the way a person who is successful in their life plays the ball in the box game. A successful person in his life sets the bar high enough so he will have to work to achieve success, but low enough so that success is possible. Once he succeeds, he sets the bar just a bit higher.

This is how we set the level of risk in the goals and tasks we establish so that we keep our motivation high. By keeping our motivation high, we will continue to move forward toward manifesting our vision.

The Proper Level of Risk

In my earlier posting I shared that there were two major factors that affected your confidence in your competence or what we refer to as your successability. The first factor is clarity and the second is the proper level of risk. In this posting I want to share with you what the proper level of risk means.

Motivation is at an optimal level, that is the highest level possible, with tasks of a moderate level of risk. Both high risk challenges and low risk challenges are related to a decrease in motivation. To optimize your motivation, you need to set your risk at a moderate level.

One way to do this is by carefully setting up what are called mastery experiences, experiences in which you are successful. You need to be careful because if you only experience easy successes, you train yourself that success is easy, which can result in you being less able to handle difficult situations. When you experience more difficult successes, on the other hand, you build resilience, and train yourself that success is a result of sustained effort. Hard work and struggle makes you stronger. You want to avoid extremely difficult challenges if you can, however, as you are likely to fail. Failure, though it can be a great learning experience, if it occurs too often, will rob you of your motivation.

In my next posting I will share how we walk that line between easy successes and difficult successes, and an interesting game called the ball in the box game.

Achieving Clarity

In my last posting I explained how clarity was necessary for us to feel confident that we are able to achieve the goals that are necessary for us to manifest our vision. When we do feel this confidence we will be motivated to achieve our goals.

The best way I have found to achieve clarity is a strategy I developed called the three step process for successability. You can use this process anytime you are doing something and wish to enhance your motivation. Anything you want to achieve, you can perform using this three step process.

The steps in the three step process for successability are:
vision >>> goals >>> tasks

Vision is that part of our potential that we desire to manifest. To manifest that desire you set up a series of goals the achievement of which will result in you becoming who you really are. When you have achieved the goals, you will have manifested your potential. To achieve each of these goals requires a series of tasks, steps that we need to take to achieve each of our goals. A task is a behavior, that is, an action taken by a person. You can observe someone performing a task. “Losing 15 pounds” is not a task; you cannot observe someone losing 15 pounds. “Writing down what I eat” is a task; you can observe someone writing down what they eat.

Each of our tasks may involve subtasks.

The benefit of doing the three step process is that it increases our clarity, because we write down the vision we want to manifest, we write down the goals that are necessary for us to manifest our vision, and we write down the tasks we need to complete to achieve each goal. When we write it down, we have clarity. What could be clearer than words on a piece of paper that you can hold in your hand, that you can see any time you want to? You know exactly what you need to do. That’s clarity.

Doing the three step process for successability increases our clarity which in turn increases our motivation.

The process of motivating yourself something you can learn. Come back next week and learn more strategies.

Successability and the need for clarity.

The second element of self motivation is successability, a word I define as your confidence in your competence, that is, how certain you are that you have the ability to achieve that worthwhile pursuit, your vision. The more confident you are in your ability, the more motivated you will be to pursue your vision. The lower your opinion of your competence, the less likely you will be to pursue it.

There are two factors in particular that strongly impact how confident you will be. The first is clarity; the second is the proper level of risk. In today’s blog I will discuss clarity.

The more definite you are as to exactly what you want to achieve and the steps you need to take to achieve it, the more motivated you will be. Your vision needs to be clearly stated. All your goals need to be clearly stated. Each of your tasks need to be clearly stated. What I write stated, I mean written down. Your mind might be a good place for you to think about your vision, goals and tasks, but until you write them down, they are not definite, they are subject to your memory, your perceptions, and your biases. So that is the first strategy for achieving clarity in your pursuits, writing everything down. Some people like to do this in a journal, a book they keep solely for their work on self motivation. Others like to do their work on a computer.

As I am writing this, I am realizing that clarity doesn’t just apply to being specific in my vision, my goals and my tasks. It also applies to the work I am doing to complete my tasks and achieve my goals. My vision is me as a professional speaker, a teacher, leading workshops, making presentations, and writing books … helping other people achieve their dreams. One of my goals, by which I will manifest this vision of me, is to write a book on self motivation. The book has been written and now I need to start marketing it. But I am a bit confused as to how to market it. Consequently, I see myself stumbling, being hesitant in my marketing. I know I need to get clarity, write out a detailed marketing plan. Once that plan is written I know I will once again be recharged and will move forward toward my dreams.

In my next blog posting I will offer some strategies as to how you can achieve clarity in your work toward manifesting your vision.

Will and Desire

Earlier this week I was reading an article by Eknath Easwaran in the Blue Mountain Journal (for information, go to www.easwaran.org). The article, Will and Desire, made me think about the first element in my model for self motivation, the vision. Easwaran writes that a person’s desire can be compared to a river. If the person has many desires, it is like the trickling of many little creeks, flowing all over the place with no direction. He contrasts this with a person with one all consuming desire who can be compared to a mighty river like the Colorado. Like the Colorado River which carved the Grand Canyon out of solid rock, so too can a person with a focused desire do miraculous things.

In order for a person to be motivated, he or she needs a worthwhile pursuit. In the self motivational model that worthwhile pursuit becomes the vision. The vision is our authentic self, the manifestation of our potential, our gifts. Authenticity is extremely motivating, as if our unconscious knows that it is being called into play. When we are authentic, we get in touch with our true, heart felt, desire.

In order to manifest that potential, that authentic person, and satisfy that heartfelt desire, many of us are going to have to first find out what our potential is and discover who that authentic person truly is. To assist us in that discovery, we undertake the vision quest, with its four strategies, my waking dreams, my inventory, my philosophy statement and look to your desires.

The vision quest is so important, because when we take the vision quest and discover our authentic selves we stop being a whole bunch of little creeks, wandering all over the land, and feeling frustrated because nothing ever gets accomplished.

Instead we become a roaring river.

The role of intent

The key to self motivation is being in control of the three elements of self motivation: the vision, successability and environment. We do this by exercising our intent, by acting intentionally, rather than acting automatically.

Animals other than humans act only on instinct. There is a stimulus, which triggers an action. It’s automatic. Instinct works very well in the animal kingdom. The zebra smells the lion (stimulus) and immediately runs (action). Were the zebra to reflect on the proper course of action, hmmm, maybe the lion will eat my fat friend next to me, he would likely be eaten himself.

Humans will frequently act this way as well. Humans, however, have the capacity to act otherwise, to act with reflection. Reflection occurs in the space between stimulus and action. Rather than two steps, stimulus and action, there are three steps. In step one, there is a stimulus. In step two the person reflects on what action to take. In step three the person takes the action. It is in middle step that motivation occurs.

A person who acts without reflection, without that center step, I refer to as automatic man.

As self motivators, we want to avoid being automatic men. Being automatic men means we are being controlled by things and people outside ourselves. Instead we need to stay in touch with that middle step, and stay aware that we have the power to choose the action we take.

Being in control of our actions has two positive impacts on our motivation. One, it lets us takes steps to increase the positive impact of each of the three elements of self motivation, vision, successability, and environment. Two, exercising control or autonomy in our lives automatically increases our motivation.

In future postings, I will write about how you can exercise your intent to increase the motivational impact of each of the three elements.

Why you would want to motivate yourself.

As I wrote in an earlier blog, most of the research I read on motivation dealt with motivating someone else, the teacher motivating the learner, the coach motivating the athlete, the manager motivating the employee. Motivating another person has its place, certainly, but it seemed to me if I could motivate myself, this would be more powerful for me. My research showed this idea was correct.

I saw in my own life that getting my motivation from another person has at least two problems. My dream was becoming a public speaker. I already had a job doing something else, so I had to do my work on my public speaking after a hard day at the office. If it was a real hard day, I would much rather just eat my dinner, and watch TV. I just wouldn’t be motivated to work on my dream. Occasionally I would go see a motivational speaker, and would be motivated for a couple of days, maybe even a week if the speaker was real good, working on my new career every night, but two weeks later, or a month later, I would I would go back to my old ways, kicking back watching the tube. The problem is the motivational speaker is not always going to be there to make sure you stay on track.

Well, you might respond, can’t you listen to the speaker on a CD? Yes you can, but only if you are motivated to put the CD on. But there is another reason that the speaker, whether live or on a CD,. is not going to be all that helpful in the long run. The reason is that each one of us is unique. We have different likes; we have different dislikes. And similarly, the things that motivate us are different as well. What motivates you is not what motivates me. Unfortunately, no one else is going to take the time to figure out what motivates each one of us to achieve our particular dream. That job is ours!

And that ‘s why we want to be our own motivational speaker, so that we can be there, 24/7, and so we can create a plan of motivation that is uniquely ours, not a generic speech aimed at the masses.

In my next posting on this blog I will be sharing with you the role of intent, the role you will need to play in motivating yourself.

My interest in self motivation

I wanted to take a step back in this blog posting and talk a bit about me, and how I came to be interested in self motivation.

I was never a particularly motivated child. I did well in elementary, middle and high school, getting by on the brains I inherited from my mom. I never worked hard at anything, at least that I can remember, except for Latin. The only reason I worked hard at Latin was because there was only four people in the class, so you were guaranteed to be called on to read at least twice a week. Consequently, you never knew when that would happen. If you weren’t prepared …

I never really cared about any of my subjects, but did what was necessary to get decent grades, which luckily wasn’t a lot. My mother’s lament was always, “Bob, you aren’t working up to your potential.” I heard that a lot.

Based upon my performance on the PSAT (my mom was an excellent test taker as well), I got a scholarship to a good school outside of Chicago to major in engineering. The application to take the PSAT asked what my professional goals were, so since I was good in math and science, I wrote down engineering. Did I know what an engineer did? Nope. Did I ever talk to an engineer? Nope.

At this college I wasn’t able to get by on just my brains - hard work was required - and I flunked out. Eventually I returned to school, got my bachelors, went to law school and passed the bar. By this time I had at least learned how to work harder. But I still wasn’t really interested in much of what I was learning.

After being a lawyer for 15 years I decided I wanted to be a psychologist. I checked around at two near by universities, but the PhD programs were extremely difficult to get into, and I was a single parent, and … I never made the effort it would have required to get accepted.

Eventually I enrolled in an online masters program in instructional design. I wasn’t in a relationship at the time, so I had time on my hands and thought it might be a good substitute for becoming a psychologist. Running through all of the classes was the concept that you needed to build motivation into the design of your instruction.

This was an amazing concept for me. I don’t remember any of my teachers ever trying to motivate me. I became fascinated with motivation. I expanded my knowledge of motivation into fields other than education, motivation in sports and motivation in the employment setting. I slowly came to realize that the reason I was sort of floating along, living a pleasant hassle free existence, was that I wasn’t motivated. Instead of making choices, I had been floating with the current.

Motivation would change all that.

Do you have a dream that you just can't seem to get moving on? Maybe it involves a career change, or a change in your personal life. If so, I would love to hear about it. Just leave a comment below, by clicking on the word comments.

Overview of the model for self motivation.

After studying motivation in education, and employment and sports, I saw some commonalities in the models of motivation in these three disciplines. One thing I found especially interesting was that most of these models were focused on one person motivating another person. In sports it was the coach motivating the player, in employment it was the boss motivating the employee, and in education it was the teacher motivating the student.

But I wanted a model in which a person motivated him or herself, not someone else. So I examined those commonalities and thought about them for a long while, and came up with my own model, a model focused on self motivation.

The model I came up with states that self motivation is influenced by three things, what I call factors. I labeled those three factors, the vision, successability, and environment. The model states that when you positively impact any of the three factors, you will positively impact your motivation.

In future blog entries I will explain what each of these factors means, and explain how you can positively impact each one so you can keep your motivation at a high level. Keeping your motivation at a high level means you will achieve your dreams.

Why can't I get motivated?

Do you have a special dream? Maybe it involves a better paying, more stimulating job? Maybe it has to do with a healthier life style? Or maybe a healthy, loving, caring relationship?

Do you find that despite your best efforts, you just don't seem to be able to get it together to make this dream real in your life?

Do you know you have the abilities you need to make it real, but for some reason, you don't stick with it?

Do you wish you were motivated to start moving forward, and keep moving forward?

Are you frustrated and annoyed with yourself, and maybe just a bit depressed about it?

You are not alone. I was exactly where you are right now. And it's not your fault. And it wasn't my fault either. No one had taught me the simple trick of how to motivate myself. And no one has taught you. But I figured it out, and now I can teach you, as well.

It's not hard. Just keep reading future blogs. If you have any questions about motivating yourself, just leave me a comment.