Welcome to my blog. Here you will find an archive of almost a year of blog postings about motivation in general and self motivation in particular.
However, I have moved my blog to my new website: www.BobAPrentiss.com
I'm pretty excited about it, so please join me there by clicking on the link.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Express your vision as an affirmation
In my Professionally Speaking Toastmasters club, a guest highly recommended a book, The Science of Getting Rich, by Wallace Wattles. The book was written back in 1910, and is the progenitor of a long series of more famous books, such as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and a recent best seller, The Secret. I had read many of its offspring, but had never heard of the original.
I searched for it on google and found it available for free download as a .pdf at http://www.xtrememind.com/science.pdf. I downloaded it and started reading it right away. It’s a quick read; I had finished it by the time I went to bed that evening.
I’m writing about it because I heartily recommend it to everyone, but also because it and its progeny have a special connection to the self motivation model. Here is the model:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
This means that your motivation is related to your vision, the change you want to make in your life, your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).
These books explain the power of affirmations and the characteristics of a good affirmation. The link these books have to the self motivation model is that when you write down your vision, that change you want to make in your life, you should write it as an affirmation to take advantage of an affirmation’s power. The power of affirmations are well known:
1. They help you focus on what you desire.
2. They reprogram your unconscious mind and open you up to powerful belief in yourself.
3. What you focus on, you will achieve.
How do you write a good affirmation? These books explain this as well. These are characteristics of a successful affirmation:
1. It is focused or targeted on you; use the word ‘I”.
2. It is stated in the positive, not the negative – focus on what you want, not what you don’t want.
3. It is stated in the present tense, as if the change has already occurred.
4. It is clear and specific.
So write your vision, that change you want to make in your life, as an affirmation. When you write your vision as an affirmation, you not only get the motivational power inherent in having a worthwhile pursuit, but you also get the life changing power from the affirmation.
We call this leveraging your vision!
I searched for it on google and found it available for free download as a .pdf at http://www.xtrememind.com/science.pdf. I downloaded it and started reading it right away. It’s a quick read; I had finished it by the time I went to bed that evening.
I’m writing about it because I heartily recommend it to everyone, but also because it and its progeny have a special connection to the self motivation model. Here is the model:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
This means that your motivation is related to your vision, the change you want to make in your life, your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).
These books explain the power of affirmations and the characteristics of a good affirmation. The link these books have to the self motivation model is that when you write down your vision, that change you want to make in your life, you should write it as an affirmation to take advantage of an affirmation’s power. The power of affirmations are well known:
1. They help you focus on what you desire.
2. They reprogram your unconscious mind and open you up to powerful belief in yourself.
3. What you focus on, you will achieve.
How do you write a good affirmation? These books explain this as well. These are characteristics of a successful affirmation:
1. It is focused or targeted on you; use the word ‘I”.
2. It is stated in the positive, not the negative – focus on what you want, not what you don’t want.
3. It is stated in the present tense, as if the change has already occurred.
4. It is clear and specific.
So write your vision, that change you want to make in your life, as an affirmation. When you write your vision as an affirmation, you not only get the motivational power inherent in having a worthwhile pursuit, but you also get the life changing power from the affirmation.
We call this leveraging your vision!
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Make a promise to yourself
On my way home I stopped at the library and picked up some videos.
I am still having a love affair with my new 42” TV and blue ray player.
After having spent the last six months watching DVD’s on my 15” lap top, I am captivated by the amazingly large and incredibly sharp picture.
But I knew I had to write and publish a blog. Well, I figured, I won’t watch a dvd until the blog is published. So when I got home I started on dinner, thinking about the blog, and thinking about which video I would watch. But I was also thinking about the business emails I needed to answer, and the video on increasing blog readership I knew I needed to watch.
Well, I thought, I can answer those emails and the blog video tomorrow. But then I remembered I wanted to go for a run tomorrow after work, after which I was to meet a friend who would break his Ramadam fast at eight… And the next night was my Apple User Group, and so it wouldn’t be till Friday when I would get to do the things I needed to do to get closer to making my dream become real. But I knew I shouldn’t wait till Friday, I should do it now.
So I was going back and forth, do I play or do I work. But then something snapped. I made a decision. And I made a promise. I said to myself, “I promise I will not watch a dvd tonight.” A load was immediately lifted from my mind. There was no more going back and forth about what I would do tonight, play or work. Once I said that, once I had made a promise to myself, there was no going back.
I knew it was all I needed to do to bring the matter to a close, but I am still amazed at how powerful the effect of making that promise was. Once I made a commitment to myself to do the right thing, doing the right thing had an additional impetus. Prior to making the promise I was weighing the two choices, do I watch a video, or do I work, and the choices were pretty much in balance. But once I made the promise, it was as if an additional weight had been added to the scale, a weight that made the choice clear; I was going to work.
I urge you to try this strategy. Next time you are caught balancing the choices, especially when you know exactly what the right choice is, try stacking the deck for the right choice, by making a commitment, a promise to yourself.
I am still having a love affair with my new 42” TV and blue ray player.
After having spent the last six months watching DVD’s on my 15” lap top, I am captivated by the amazingly large and incredibly sharp picture.
But I knew I had to write and publish a blog. Well, I figured, I won’t watch a dvd until the blog is published. So when I got home I started on dinner, thinking about the blog, and thinking about which video I would watch. But I was also thinking about the business emails I needed to answer, and the video on increasing blog readership I knew I needed to watch.
Well, I thought, I can answer those emails and the blog video tomorrow. But then I remembered I wanted to go for a run tomorrow after work, after which I was to meet a friend who would break his Ramadam fast at eight… And the next night was my Apple User Group, and so it wouldn’t be till Friday when I would get to do the things I needed to do to get closer to making my dream become real. But I knew I shouldn’t wait till Friday, I should do it now.
So I was going back and forth, do I play or do I work. But then something snapped. I made a decision. And I made a promise. I said to myself, “I promise I will not watch a dvd tonight.” A load was immediately lifted from my mind. There was no more going back and forth about what I would do tonight, play or work. Once I said that, once I had made a promise to myself, there was no going back.
I knew it was all I needed to do to bring the matter to a close, but I am still amazed at how powerful the effect of making that promise was. Once I made a commitment to myself to do the right thing, doing the right thing had an additional impetus. Prior to making the promise I was weighing the two choices, do I watch a video, or do I work, and the choices were pretty much in balance. But once I made the promise, it was as if an additional weight had been added to the scale, a weight that made the choice clear; I was going to work.
I urge you to try this strategy. Next time you are caught balancing the choices, especially when you know exactly what the right choice is, try stacking the deck for the right choice, by making a commitment, a promise to yourself.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
How I came to this where I am
I was born in the fifties, at that time one of four children (we later added two more). My dad was a janitor, and my mom, like many of the people in our town, was an attendant at the local state mental hospital.
As you can imagine, with four kids we didn’t have a lot, but my parents gave me the stuff that money couldn’t buy, like lessons on how to live your life. One of my earliest memories, I must have been around four, is of my dad, after a hard day cleaning out toilets and mopping floors, sitting at the kitchen table, working on his correspondence course in electricity. The course, as I remember it, was a series of small, maybe 6” by 8” pamphlets that instructed him and tested him on all he needed to know to become an electrician. He completed the course, became an electrician apprentice, and later a journeyman electrician.
My mom wasn’t a slouch either. She went back to school and earned her bachelors degree in social work and moved up and out of the hospital. The lesson I learned from my parents was that if you are willing to work hard at something, you will succeed. I also learned that the harder you work, the better results you'll get.
My own life has confirmed the truth of this lesson. I have found that everything I have worked hard on I have accomplished. Though I had dropped out of my first college as my grades kept getting worse and worse, I discovered when I started working hard at my subsequent colleges (which included going to classes) suddenly I was successful. I also worked hard in law school, and graduated in the top third of my class. So the lesson I learned from my folks was true in my life as well.
However, while I was finishing up my bachelors and while I was working on my JD, I had a dream, a dream to be a professional speaker. In my dream I stood in front of crowds, teaching them something that would make their lives better. I knew that was what I wanted to do. But even though I knew that was what I wanted to do, and even though I had firmly integrated the lesson from my parents, I wasn’t doing the things that I needed to do to make my dream become real. And I was frustrated, and annoyed and bored. I knew I could do it, but I just wasn’t doing it!
After years of not going after what I knew I wanted, I decided something needed to change. Luckily (if you believe in luck) I just happened to be working on my masters in education and was studying the role of motivation in learning. I realized that even though I wanted to be a professional speaker, I wasn't motivated to be one. So after learning all I could about motivation in education, I expanded my study into motivation in sports and motivation in employment.
When I gathered enough information I created my own model of motivation, based upon my studies. This first model explained how one person could motivate another, whether it was a teacher motivating a student, a coach motivating an athlete, or a boss motivating a worker.
But I knew I wasn’t done, because I wasn’t interested in motivating someone else. I was interested in motivating myself. And so I modified my model and created the model for self motivation.
I have been using this model in my life and it has made all the difference. I now take the steps I need to take to make my dream come true. I have developed a niche and my book has been written. I blog and tweet and finetune my speeches in Toastmasters. I am making my dream become real.
I urge you to use the model for self motivation. Take those dreams, desires and aspirations that lay dormant in your mind, apply motivation to them, and make your dreams come true.
I did it, and so can you.
As you can imagine, with four kids we didn’t have a lot, but my parents gave me the stuff that money couldn’t buy, like lessons on how to live your life. One of my earliest memories, I must have been around four, is of my dad, after a hard day cleaning out toilets and mopping floors, sitting at the kitchen table, working on his correspondence course in electricity. The course, as I remember it, was a series of small, maybe 6” by 8” pamphlets that instructed him and tested him on all he needed to know to become an electrician. He completed the course, became an electrician apprentice, and later a journeyman electrician.
My mom wasn’t a slouch either. She went back to school and earned her bachelors degree in social work and moved up and out of the hospital. The lesson I learned from my parents was that if you are willing to work hard at something, you will succeed. I also learned that the harder you work, the better results you'll get.
My own life has confirmed the truth of this lesson. I have found that everything I have worked hard on I have accomplished. Though I had dropped out of my first college as my grades kept getting worse and worse, I discovered when I started working hard at my subsequent colleges (which included going to classes) suddenly I was successful. I also worked hard in law school, and graduated in the top third of my class. So the lesson I learned from my folks was true in my life as well.
However, while I was finishing up my bachelors and while I was working on my JD, I had a dream, a dream to be a professional speaker. In my dream I stood in front of crowds, teaching them something that would make their lives better. I knew that was what I wanted to do. But even though I knew that was what I wanted to do, and even though I had firmly integrated the lesson from my parents, I wasn’t doing the things that I needed to do to make my dream become real. And I was frustrated, and annoyed and bored. I knew I could do it, but I just wasn’t doing it!
After years of not going after what I knew I wanted, I decided something needed to change. Luckily (if you believe in luck) I just happened to be working on my masters in education and was studying the role of motivation in learning. I realized that even though I wanted to be a professional speaker, I wasn't motivated to be one. So after learning all I could about motivation in education, I expanded my study into motivation in sports and motivation in employment.
When I gathered enough information I created my own model of motivation, based upon my studies. This first model explained how one person could motivate another, whether it was a teacher motivating a student, a coach motivating an athlete, or a boss motivating a worker.
But I knew I wasn’t done, because I wasn’t interested in motivating someone else. I was interested in motivating myself. And so I modified my model and created the model for self motivation.
I have been using this model in my life and it has made all the difference. I now take the steps I need to take to make my dream come true. I have developed a niche and my book has been written. I blog and tweet and finetune my speeches in Toastmasters. I am making my dream become real.
I urge you to use the model for self motivation. Take those dreams, desires and aspirations that lay dormant in your mind, apply motivation to them, and make your dreams come true.
I did it, and so can you.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Go the distance
After not running for too many years I decided to get physical therapy on my knee and hip. After five months of therapy, which primarily consisted of me doing exercises four times every day, I’ve started running again. I love running like no other exercise, and the social aspects of it just make it better.
I was in the library a couple of weeks ago, and spotted on the books for sale table (donated books) a copy of How to Train for and Run Your Best Marathon, by Gordon Bakoulis Bloch. When I was a healthy runner the marathon had been my nemesis. I am pleased with all my other PR’s (personal records), low 19’s for the 5K, 39:54 for the 10K (allegedly short, but an official time never the less). Half marathon and 30 K (18 miles) times were even better. But the marathon – don’t ask, don’t tell. I’ve only been able to complete one, as the training for my other two attempts did me in. So I never qualified for the Boston Marathon. In my circles, without a qualifying time, the other PR’s didn't amount to much.
So I bought the book. As I was paying for it, I told myself, “Well, it only costs fifty cents, so if I never use it, I won’t be that much in the hole.” But as it sat on my dining room table, day after day (I live alone, so no one complains) I kept noticing it, and eventually started reading it. I started thinking about doing a marathon.
Just tonight I noticed that the back of the book has big letters on the top, in red, saying, “Go the distance.” It means go all 26.2 miles, but for me it meant something else. It meant, “Give 100% toward your goal, qualifying for Boston.” If Ms. Bloch’s title is accurate, and I run a better marathon than I did ten years ago, I will make my goal, since the qualifying times get longer as you get older (one of the few benefits). My time in the only marathon I ran would qualify me at my present age.
As I am writing this I am thinking about my last posting, about why people don’t work really hard. The four reasons my trainer and I came up with are:
1. They are lazy
2. They aren’t familiar with working hard
3. They think they are going to hurt themselves
4. They don’t think getting really strong is important.
How does that apply to me?
#1. Nope, I’m not lazy, plus I enjoy running, especially hard.
#2. Nope, I am familiar with working hard and pushing myself.
Skipping 3 for now,
#4. Maybe, getting to Boston isn’t necessary for my wellbeing, but it is important; I’m just not sure it’s important enough to prioritize my time for the training it will require.
For me,#3 is the big one. Part of me thinks, going the way you are going now, you will be able to run in the woods for half an hour to an hour. That’s what you really enjoy. You start doing the long runs training for a marathon requires and you will hurt yourself and won’t run at all.
So I’ve got one definite applies and one partially applies. So how do I get motivated using self motivation?
#4 is easiest to deal with. All I need to do is make a decision, take control. I look at what training will actually entail. The question for me is not will it take too much time. The question is, “Will it take time away from other things that are more important to me?” The only thing more important right now is the time I spend on developing my speaking career. When I take the time to phrase the question that way, the correct way, instead of having an automatic knee jerk reaction, I am able to reflect. If the answer is yes, it will take time away from something more important, then I have made a decision. That decision is "this path is not one I want to take." Motivation means doing what’s right for you.
With respect to #3, the fear that I will injure myself, I have decided to expand my environment(the third factor of self motivation) to include chi running. Its originator/inventor, Danny Dreyer, claims it results in "effortless, injury free running." Sounds exactly what I need. So I have bought his book and his DVD and am trying it out. When I finish this posting I will go online and see if there is someone in my city who coaches it. If not I will look into attending a seminar in a near by city.I will make a coach part of my social environment.
As you can see by what I am going through, a large part of self motivation means looking at yourself, knowing yourself. That’s what so great about self motivation. You are in control; your motivational plan is totally focused on what’s important to you.
Taking charge of your motivation may involve a little more thought than just listening to a motivational tape, but the benefits greatly out weigh the additional work.
If you have some advice for a runner like me, don't hesitate in leaving a comment.
I was in the library a couple of weeks ago, and spotted on the books for sale table (donated books) a copy of How to Train for and Run Your Best Marathon, by Gordon Bakoulis Bloch. When I was a healthy runner the marathon had been my nemesis. I am pleased with all my other PR’s (personal records), low 19’s for the 5K, 39:54 for the 10K (allegedly short, but an official time never the less). Half marathon and 30 K (18 miles) times were even better. But the marathon – don’t ask, don’t tell. I’ve only been able to complete one, as the training for my other two attempts did me in. So I never qualified for the Boston Marathon. In my circles, without a qualifying time, the other PR’s didn't amount to much.
So I bought the book. As I was paying for it, I told myself, “Well, it only costs fifty cents, so if I never use it, I won’t be that much in the hole.” But as it sat on my dining room table, day after day (I live alone, so no one complains) I kept noticing it, and eventually started reading it. I started thinking about doing a marathon.
Just tonight I noticed that the back of the book has big letters on the top, in red, saying, “Go the distance.” It means go all 26.2 miles, but for me it meant something else. It meant, “Give 100% toward your goal, qualifying for Boston.” If Ms. Bloch’s title is accurate, and I run a better marathon than I did ten years ago, I will make my goal, since the qualifying times get longer as you get older (one of the few benefits). My time in the only marathon I ran would qualify me at my present age.
As I am writing this I am thinking about my last posting, about why people don’t work really hard. The four reasons my trainer and I came up with are:
1. They are lazy
2. They aren’t familiar with working hard
3. They think they are going to hurt themselves
4. They don’t think getting really strong is important.
How does that apply to me?
#1. Nope, I’m not lazy, plus I enjoy running, especially hard.
#2. Nope, I am familiar with working hard and pushing myself.
Skipping 3 for now,
#4. Maybe, getting to Boston isn’t necessary for my wellbeing, but it is important; I’m just not sure it’s important enough to prioritize my time for the training it will require.
For me,#3 is the big one. Part of me thinks, going the way you are going now, you will be able to run in the woods for half an hour to an hour. That’s what you really enjoy. You start doing the long runs training for a marathon requires and you will hurt yourself and won’t run at all.
So I’ve got one definite applies and one partially applies. So how do I get motivated using self motivation?
#4 is easiest to deal with. All I need to do is make a decision, take control. I look at what training will actually entail. The question for me is not will it take too much time. The question is, “Will it take time away from other things that are more important to me?” The only thing more important right now is the time I spend on developing my speaking career. When I take the time to phrase the question that way, the correct way, instead of having an automatic knee jerk reaction, I am able to reflect. If the answer is yes, it will take time away from something more important, then I have made a decision. That decision is "this path is not one I want to take." Motivation means doing what’s right for you.
With respect to #3, the fear that I will injure myself, I have decided to expand my environment(the third factor of self motivation) to include chi running. Its originator/inventor, Danny Dreyer, claims it results in "effortless, injury free running." Sounds exactly what I need. So I have bought his book and his DVD and am trying it out. When I finish this posting I will go online and see if there is someone in my city who coaches it. If not I will look into attending a seminar in a near by city.I will make a coach part of my social environment.
As you can see by what I am going through, a large part of self motivation means looking at yourself, knowing yourself. That’s what so great about self motivation. You are in control; your motivational plan is totally focused on what’s important to you.
Taking charge of your motivation may involve a little more thought than just listening to a motivational tape, but the benefits greatly out weigh the additional work.
If you have some advice for a runner like me, don't hesitate in leaving a comment.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Lessons on motivation from my trainer
I make a physical fitness trainer a part of my social environment. I use a personal trainer, John Fahey, because of his expertise and because he encourages me to work harder than I would by myself. Further, having a set time to work with him means I will work out even on those days I don’t feel like it.
I was talking with him the other day, in between sets, about people he had worked with who refused to worked hard. It didn’t matter how much he tried to encourage them, he said, they just refused to put out the effort.
People who don’t train hard, whether they are his clients or not, doesn’t make sense to my trainer, “Why wouldn’t you want to be as strong as you can be?”
We talked about the reasons people don’t exercise hard:
1. They are lazy
2. They aren’t familiar with working hard
3. They think they are going to hurt themselves
4. They don’t think getting really strong is important.
All these reasons come down to one reason. These people aren’t motivated to train hard. Each one of these reasons can be resolved, if the person wishes it to be resolved, by application of the model for self motivation.
This the model:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
This means that your motivation is related to your vision (How worthwhile to you is the change you want to make?), your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).
The first reason, they are lazy, has to do with factor number one, the vision. Though it’s conceivable that someone might be a lazy person in general, I believe most people are lazy just about some particular facet or things in their life. For these people, those things they are lazy about are just not important to them. They may give lip service (claim it is important) to some principal, but if it were important, the person would not merely be given lip service, they would be doing. In order for you to be motivated to do something, it has to be important to you.
The second reason for the lack of motivation, they aren’t familiar with training hard, is similar to the third reason, they think they are going to hurt themselves. In both cases, the person lacks the confidence that they are able to work hard, either at all, or at a minimum, in a healthy way.
The fourth reason is similar to the first reason. If someone doesn’t think getting really strong is important, there is no way they will be motivated. John and I disagree with this, but I think it’s more important to find the exercise you enjoy, that gives you pleasure, even if it doesn’t make you the strongest you can be.
So why am I motivated to do these ridiculous tough workouts, even though they are not pleasurable? Three reasons:
1. The payoff is great. Though I don’t like having to buy bigger suits, the bigger shoulders and lats look great. This makes working out more valuable to me, which motivates me. If I can just get rid of the love handles, I will look as good as I looked in my twenties (below the neck, anyway).
2. I like the intensity of working my hardest. My knees and hips have kept me from running as hard as I did when I was younger, so I had to find something else. This, like #1, makes it hard workouts more valuable to me.
3. Small successes. If you don’t know what a calf ham glute raise is, check it out here.
No, that’s not me, but I actually have done six of these, and that success has fueled my desire to be able to do twenty in a row. The more confident I get, the more successes I want.
Motivation is a personal decision. If you don’t want to do something, if it isn’t valuable to you, it’s going to be an uphill battle for you to get motivated. But if you want to do it, the model for self motivation will help you achieve what you desire.
I was talking with him the other day, in between sets, about people he had worked with who refused to worked hard. It didn’t matter how much he tried to encourage them, he said, they just refused to put out the effort.
People who don’t train hard, whether they are his clients or not, doesn’t make sense to my trainer, “Why wouldn’t you want to be as strong as you can be?”
We talked about the reasons people don’t exercise hard:
1. They are lazy
2. They aren’t familiar with working hard
3. They think they are going to hurt themselves
4. They don’t think getting really strong is important.
All these reasons come down to one reason. These people aren’t motivated to train hard. Each one of these reasons can be resolved, if the person wishes it to be resolved, by application of the model for self motivation.
This the model:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
This means that your motivation is related to your vision (How worthwhile to you is the change you want to make?), your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).
The first reason, they are lazy, has to do with factor number one, the vision. Though it’s conceivable that someone might be a lazy person in general, I believe most people are lazy just about some particular facet or things in their life. For these people, those things they are lazy about are just not important to them. They may give lip service (claim it is important) to some principal, but if it were important, the person would not merely be given lip service, they would be doing. In order for you to be motivated to do something, it has to be important to you.
The second reason for the lack of motivation, they aren’t familiar with training hard, is similar to the third reason, they think they are going to hurt themselves. In both cases, the person lacks the confidence that they are able to work hard, either at all, or at a minimum, in a healthy way.
The fourth reason is similar to the first reason. If someone doesn’t think getting really strong is important, there is no way they will be motivated. John and I disagree with this, but I think it’s more important to find the exercise you enjoy, that gives you pleasure, even if it doesn’t make you the strongest you can be.
So why am I motivated to do these ridiculous tough workouts, even though they are not pleasurable? Three reasons:
1. The payoff is great. Though I don’t like having to buy bigger suits, the bigger shoulders and lats look great. This makes working out more valuable to me, which motivates me. If I can just get rid of the love handles, I will look as good as I looked in my twenties (below the neck, anyway).
2. I like the intensity of working my hardest. My knees and hips have kept me from running as hard as I did when I was younger, so I had to find something else. This, like #1, makes it hard workouts more valuable to me.
3. Small successes. If you don’t know what a calf ham glute raise is, check it out here.
No, that’s not me, but I actually have done six of these, and that success has fueled my desire to be able to do twenty in a row. The more confident I get, the more successes I want.
Motivation is a personal decision. If you don’t want to do something, if it isn’t valuable to you, it’s going to be an uphill battle for you to get motivated. But if you want to do it, the model for self motivation will help you achieve what you desire.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
motivating employees
When I was researching my book on self motivation, I first studied motivation in education, next in athletics, and finally in the job setting. Though the research in these three fields mainly focused on one person motivating another person, it provided a basis for the model of self motivation that I created.
One source for my information on motivation in the employment setting was the work of Thomas L. Quick, presented in his book, The Quick Motivation Method.
In Quick’s model the boss decides what the positive choice is in a particular situation, and then the boss motivates the employee to view that same choice as positive to the employee as well. The boss does this by increasing the motivational value of that particular choice. Quick has five pointers for increasing the motivational value of a choice:
1. People have reasons for what they do.
2. Whatever people choose to do, they do it to gain something they believe is good for them. The achievement must be sufficiently important for them to choose it.
3. The person has to perceive he or she can attain the goal.
4. The conditions under which the job (the activity) is done (the situation) can affect its value to the doer or his expectation of success.
5. The manager can increase the employee’s motivation by increasing the value of the goal to the employee, increasing the employee’s expectation of reaching it, and enhancing the situation surrounding the performance.
There are similarities between Quick’s five pointers and the model for self motivation.
The first pointer is the underlying assumption for the vision, that people need a reason to do what they do. The second pointer states that the reason people do a certain thing is because it is important to them; it is valuable.
The third pointer is similar to successability, the person’s confidence in their competence. If the person does not think he is capable of achieving the thing they want to do, they will not be motivated to try.
The fourth pointer relates to the power of the environment in which the person is doing his work. In the self motivation model we deal with both the physical environment (the place where the work is done) and the social environment (the people and organizations available to the person).
The fifth pointer explains that the boss can increase the worker’s motivation by fine tuning the other four pointers, that is, by making the goal more valuable to the worker, by increasing the worker’s expectations of success, and by enhancing the environment.
In the self motivation model, rather than having someone outside of us take these steps to increase our motivation, we are in charge of doing it. By taking charge of our own motivation in this way we can be assured that what we are moving toward is what is truly valuable to us, and not just valuable to someone else.
That’s what taking control of your life is about, making your own decisions, pushing your own buttons, and making your dreams come true.
What in your life do you want to take control of? If you would, leave a comment below sharing your answer to this question.
One source for my information on motivation in the employment setting was the work of Thomas L. Quick, presented in his book, The Quick Motivation Method.
In Quick’s model the boss decides what the positive choice is in a particular situation, and then the boss motivates the employee to view that same choice as positive to the employee as well. The boss does this by increasing the motivational value of that particular choice. Quick has five pointers for increasing the motivational value of a choice:
1. People have reasons for what they do.
2. Whatever people choose to do, they do it to gain something they believe is good for them. The achievement must be sufficiently important for them to choose it.
3. The person has to perceive he or she can attain the goal.
4. The conditions under which the job (the activity) is done (the situation) can affect its value to the doer or his expectation of success.
5. The manager can increase the employee’s motivation by increasing the value of the goal to the employee, increasing the employee’s expectation of reaching it, and enhancing the situation surrounding the performance.
There are similarities between Quick’s five pointers and the model for self motivation.
The first pointer is the underlying assumption for the vision, that people need a reason to do what they do. The second pointer states that the reason people do a certain thing is because it is important to them; it is valuable.
The third pointer is similar to successability, the person’s confidence in their competence. If the person does not think he is capable of achieving the thing they want to do, they will not be motivated to try.
The fourth pointer relates to the power of the environment in which the person is doing his work. In the self motivation model we deal with both the physical environment (the place where the work is done) and the social environment (the people and organizations available to the person).
The fifth pointer explains that the boss can increase the worker’s motivation by fine tuning the other four pointers, that is, by making the goal more valuable to the worker, by increasing the worker’s expectations of success, and by enhancing the environment.
In the self motivation model, rather than having someone outside of us take these steps to increase our motivation, we are in charge of doing it. By taking charge of our own motivation in this way we can be assured that what we are moving toward is what is truly valuable to us, and not just valuable to someone else.
That’s what taking control of your life is about, making your own decisions, pushing your own buttons, and making your dreams come true.
What in your life do you want to take control of? If you would, leave a comment below sharing your answer to this question.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Need motivation to quit smoking?
Disclosure: I am not a smoker, never was. I never could see spending all that money, having my clothes smell, suffering through a cross country air flight unable to feed my addiction, putting my body though the health issues involved, and putting up with the ostracizing that non-smokers inflict on smokers. (Like I said, I am a non-smoker; these are just some of the complaints I have heard from my brothers.)
But maybe you are a smoker. And maybe you aren’t happy about the daily expense of your “habit” and all the other non monetary costs you have to suffer to maintain this habit. And maybe you have quit, maybe several times, but you’ve never been able to stay quit. Sounds like you have never been motivated to make the change you want in your life permanent.
Can the self motivation model be used to make this change? Yes, it can. Any change you want in your life can be made using the model.
Let’s look at how this could be done.
The self motivation model looks like this:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
This means that your motivation is related to your vision (How worthwhile to you is the change you want to make?), your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).
The first step is to state the vision, the change you want to make in your life. In order for your vision to be motivating it has to be to be clearly stated and it has to be valuable to you. You can’t get much clearer than this: “I do not smoke.” To make this vision valuable to you, you should write out the benefits of making the change, and the detriments of not making the change.
Benefits of making the change:
*I can use the money I save by not purchasing cigarettes to take a vacation.
*I won’t have to get my clothes dry cleaned as often (saves cash and time)
*I will be better able to taste the food I eat.
*Add your own items here
Detriments of not making the change
*I increase my risk for strokes
*I get winded when I exercise
*I limit the field for a significant other
*Add your own items here.
Next we look to successability, our confidence in our ability to make the change.
One way to increase successability is to break down the change into its component parts, the steps we need to make to accomplish the change. Breaking it down makes the change not seem as daunting. For example, we can break down I am not smoking into:
*I julienne some carrots, so that when I get the urge to smoke, I will eat a piece of carrot instead.
*I place a rubber band around my cigarette pack so when I reach for it, I will see the rubber band which will force me to make a conscious decision, smoke or not smoke.
*I quit buying cigarettes so I am forced to mooch and become a pariah.
*I buy a nicotine patch, so abstaining is easier.
*Add your own items here
Finally we look to our environment. To make our physical environment (the place where we are making the change) help us make the change, we remove all ash trays to a high shelf, so that any time we want to smoke, we need to pull out a kitchen chair to reach the ashtray.
Our social environment (the people and organization available to us) can be very helpful in making this change. We can enlist friends to help us stay cigarette free. We can ask our smoking friends not to give us cigarettes when we mooch. We can join a smoking cessation program. We can enlist a medical professional to help us in our desired change.
Quitting an addiction like smoking can be very difficult, but using the model for self motivation will keep you moving toward your goal.
If you have quit smoking or some other addiction, please share with your fellow readers a strategy or two you used, by leaving a comment below.
But maybe you are a smoker. And maybe you aren’t happy about the daily expense of your “habit” and all the other non monetary costs you have to suffer to maintain this habit. And maybe you have quit, maybe several times, but you’ve never been able to stay quit. Sounds like you have never been motivated to make the change you want in your life permanent.
Can the self motivation model be used to make this change? Yes, it can. Any change you want in your life can be made using the model.
Let’s look at how this could be done.
The self motivation model looks like this:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
This means that your motivation is related to your vision (How worthwhile to you is the change you want to make?), your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).
The first step is to state the vision, the change you want to make in your life. In order for your vision to be motivating it has to be to be clearly stated and it has to be valuable to you. You can’t get much clearer than this: “I do not smoke.” To make this vision valuable to you, you should write out the benefits of making the change, and the detriments of not making the change.
Benefits of making the change:
*I can use the money I save by not purchasing cigarettes to take a vacation.
*I won’t have to get my clothes dry cleaned as often (saves cash and time)
*I will be better able to taste the food I eat.
*Add your own items here
Detriments of not making the change
*I increase my risk for strokes
*I get winded when I exercise
*I limit the field for a significant other
*Add your own items here.
Next we look to successability, our confidence in our ability to make the change.
One way to increase successability is to break down the change into its component parts, the steps we need to make to accomplish the change. Breaking it down makes the change not seem as daunting. For example, we can break down I am not smoking into:
*I julienne some carrots, so that when I get the urge to smoke, I will eat a piece of carrot instead.
*I place a rubber band around my cigarette pack so when I reach for it, I will see the rubber band which will force me to make a conscious decision, smoke or not smoke.
*I quit buying cigarettes so I am forced to mooch and become a pariah.
*I buy a nicotine patch, so abstaining is easier.
*Add your own items here
Finally we look to our environment. To make our physical environment (the place where we are making the change) help us make the change, we remove all ash trays to a high shelf, so that any time we want to smoke, we need to pull out a kitchen chair to reach the ashtray.
Our social environment (the people and organization available to us) can be very helpful in making this change. We can enlist friends to help us stay cigarette free. We can ask our smoking friends not to give us cigarettes when we mooch. We can join a smoking cessation program. We can enlist a medical professional to help us in our desired change.
Quitting an addiction like smoking can be very difficult, but using the model for self motivation will keep you moving toward your goal.
If you have quit smoking or some other addiction, please share with your fellow readers a strategy or two you used, by leaving a comment below.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
A visual image of motivation
When I think about motivation, I get a visual image related to trains. I love trains, perhaps because my dad always set up the Lionel’s at Christmas time to circle around the tree. To get to work I have to go through a railway crossing and it’s a great start to my day if I need to stop for a train, so long as I am in the front of the line and get to really see it.
This is the image I get when I think about motivation. There’s a whole string of railcars in a siding. There are flatcars, tankers, gondolas and boxcars. Each one is filled with some commodity. The flatcar has logs on it, the tanker is filled with vegetable oil, the gondola is filled with grain and who knows what treasures are in the boxcars.
Then a locomotive backs into the siding, and gets hooked up to the string of cars. The locomotive reverses direction, and, slowly at first, and then picking up speed, it pulls the cars out of the siding.
Without the locomotive, the cars just sit in the siding, the commodities in them useless, without value. But with the locomotive, the railcars are taken to markets where the commodities can be bought and sold. With the locomotive, the commodities have value.
And that’s how it is with motivation. We all have our dreams, our aspirations, the important changes we want to make in our lives. There are dreams of a better paying, more fulfilling job, dreams of a healthier life style, or of a loving relationship. These dreams sit in the siding of our minds. Without motivation, they just stay in our minds, and, like the commodities in the railcars left in the siding, they are useless, without value.
But when we apply motivation to them, we push them out of our minds, we push them into the universe, and we manifest those dreams in our lives. We make them become real. Our lives become the markets where our dreams and aspirations gain their value.
This is what motivation does for us. And this is why learning how to motivate yourself is so important.
This is the image I get when I think about motivation. There’s a whole string of railcars in a siding. There are flatcars, tankers, gondolas and boxcars. Each one is filled with some commodity. The flatcar has logs on it, the tanker is filled with vegetable oil, the gondola is filled with grain and who knows what treasures are in the boxcars.
Then a locomotive backs into the siding, and gets hooked up to the string of cars. The locomotive reverses direction, and, slowly at first, and then picking up speed, it pulls the cars out of the siding.
Without the locomotive, the cars just sit in the siding, the commodities in them useless, without value. But with the locomotive, the railcars are taken to markets where the commodities can be bought and sold. With the locomotive, the commodities have value.
And that’s how it is with motivation. We all have our dreams, our aspirations, the important changes we want to make in our lives. There are dreams of a better paying, more fulfilling job, dreams of a healthier life style, or of a loving relationship. These dreams sit in the siding of our minds. Without motivation, they just stay in our minds, and, like the commodities in the railcars left in the siding, they are useless, without value.
But when we apply motivation to them, we push them out of our minds, we push them into the universe, and we manifest those dreams in our lives. We make them become real. Our lives become the markets where our dreams and aspirations gain their value.
This is what motivation does for us. And this is why learning how to motivate yourself is so important.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Don't let the blame game rob you of your motivation.
In the model for self motivation, a detractor is anything that robs you of your motivation. And, just as different things motivate different people, so too do different things rob the motivation of different people. Consequently, we all have our unique detractors.
There are, however, some detractors that are more universal. One of these universal detractors I call the blame game. Although in the media it is more commonly related to politics, many of us do the blame game in our personal lives as well. The blame game is what happens when you look outside yourself for the causes of your problems.
Here are some of the things you might hear when the blame game is being played:
That other guy didn’t do what he was supposed to do.
It’s the economy.
My car wouldn’t start, so I couldn’t …
I don’t have enough time to…
I couldn’t get my computer to work.
My dog ate my homework.
In the blame game sometimes we blame other people and sometimes we blame circumstances. The reason we play the blame game is to excuse ourselves, to avoid responsibility for our own perceived shortcomings.
One of the problems with the blame game is you spend time excusing mistakes that would be better spent correcting them. The bigger problem with the blame game is that when you blame other people or the situation, you are admitting that you are not in control, that these other people or the situation is in control. This means you are giving up your power. Giving up your feeling of power adversely impacts your motivation because it lessens your confidence in your competence, your successability.
Furthermore, when you give up your control, you turn off your creativity; you feel that nothing you can do will make a difference, so why come up with new ideas.
The fact that sometimes there may be some validity to the finger-pointing doesn’t make finger-pointing any more effective.
The solution is simple. Be aware; take charge of your life. When you find yourself playing the blame game, pause and ask yourself, “If I couldn’t use that excuse, what would I be doing differently?”
Then go ahead and do it.
There are, however, some detractors that are more universal. One of these universal detractors I call the blame game. Although in the media it is more commonly related to politics, many of us do the blame game in our personal lives as well. The blame game is what happens when you look outside yourself for the causes of your problems.
Here are some of the things you might hear when the blame game is being played:
That other guy didn’t do what he was supposed to do.
It’s the economy.
My car wouldn’t start, so I couldn’t …
I don’t have enough time to…
I couldn’t get my computer to work.
My dog ate my homework.
In the blame game sometimes we blame other people and sometimes we blame circumstances. The reason we play the blame game is to excuse ourselves, to avoid responsibility for our own perceived shortcomings.
One of the problems with the blame game is you spend time excusing mistakes that would be better spent correcting them. The bigger problem with the blame game is that when you blame other people or the situation, you are admitting that you are not in control, that these other people or the situation is in control. This means you are giving up your power. Giving up your feeling of power adversely impacts your motivation because it lessens your confidence in your competence, your successability.
Furthermore, when you give up your control, you turn off your creativity; you feel that nothing you can do will make a difference, so why come up with new ideas.
The fact that sometimes there may be some validity to the finger-pointing doesn’t make finger-pointing any more effective.
The solution is simple. Be aware; take charge of your life. When you find yourself playing the blame game, pause and ask yourself, “If I couldn’t use that excuse, what would I be doing differently?”
Then go ahead and do it.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Select, don't settle
Back in the 60’s Barney’s New York, at that time a clothing store, ran an advertising campaign based on the slogan, Select, don’t settle. The advice rings just as true today as it did then.
Too often we settle on less than what we truly want. We may create good reasons for doing it. Maybe we settled on a job that offered us security, even though the work didn’t excite us. Some of us have accepted a position, “temporarily”, while we are looking for the perfect position, but after a couple of years we stopped looking. Or maybe we settled on a particular relationship, not because we loved the other person, but because we felt comfortable around that person.
Look at the definition of the word settle and you will see why this is a problem: "a gradual sinking to a lower level.” That’s exactly what we do when we settle, we accept something less than what we are capable of, or something less than we want and feel we deserve.
Settling like this adversely impacts your motivation because it robs you of your opportunity to have a worthwhile pursuit. According to the model for self motivation, the more worthwhile your pursuit is, the more motivated you will be. The converse is just as true, the less worthwhile your pursuit is, the less motivated you will be. Settling means you are doing something that is not as worthwhile as what you could be doing.
Settling seldom involves taking a risk; we certainly don’t risk not getting it; it’s already in the bag. Selecting, on the other hand, generally means taking a risk. Maybe we won’t get it; and then we will be disappointed or embarrassed. Maybe we will get it, but won’t like it. Or maybe we won’t be successful once we do get it. Selecting, rather than settling, is risky.
But taking a risk is necessary if we want to have the optimum life, to live life to the fullest.
Do you really want to cheat yourself out of a fulfilling life? When you think you might be settling, ask yourself, “How close to the target do I want to stand?” If you find yourself standing right on top of the target, so there is no way you can miss, make a commitment to go after what you really want, with gusto. Make a promise to yourself, in the words of Ken Christian, author of Your Own Worst Enemy, Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement, to “consciously aspire to a higher standard, one worthy of your possibilities, in everything you do.”
Too often we settle on less than what we truly want. We may create good reasons for doing it. Maybe we settled on a job that offered us security, even though the work didn’t excite us. Some of us have accepted a position, “temporarily”, while we are looking for the perfect position, but after a couple of years we stopped looking. Or maybe we settled on a particular relationship, not because we loved the other person, but because we felt comfortable around that person.
Look at the definition of the word settle and you will see why this is a problem: "a gradual sinking to a lower level.” That’s exactly what we do when we settle, we accept something less than what we are capable of, or something less than we want and feel we deserve.
Settling like this adversely impacts your motivation because it robs you of your opportunity to have a worthwhile pursuit. According to the model for self motivation, the more worthwhile your pursuit is, the more motivated you will be. The converse is just as true, the less worthwhile your pursuit is, the less motivated you will be. Settling means you are doing something that is not as worthwhile as what you could be doing.
Settling seldom involves taking a risk; we certainly don’t risk not getting it; it’s already in the bag. Selecting, on the other hand, generally means taking a risk. Maybe we won’t get it; and then we will be disappointed or embarrassed. Maybe we will get it, but won’t like it. Or maybe we won’t be successful once we do get it. Selecting, rather than settling, is risky.
But taking a risk is necessary if we want to have the optimum life, to live life to the fullest.
Do you really want to cheat yourself out of a fulfilling life? When you think you might be settling, ask yourself, “How close to the target do I want to stand?” If you find yourself standing right on top of the target, so there is no way you can miss, make a commitment to go after what you really want, with gusto. Make a promise to yourself, in the words of Ken Christian, author of Your Own Worst Enemy, Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement, to “consciously aspire to a higher standard, one worthy of your possibilities, in everything you do.”
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Make yourself a positive part of your social environment
In the model for self motivation, environment is one of the three factors. This means that your environment impacts your motivation. If your environment stinks, so will your motivation. If you fix your environment, you will improve your motivation.
Your environment has two parts, your physical environment and your social environment. Your physical environment is where you actually do the work on your vision, the change you want to make in your life. Your social environment consists of all the people and organizations that surround you or are available to you.
The people in your social environment can impact your motivation negatively or positively. If you surround yourself with people who think you are stupid or that your vision is something you aren't capable of, your motivation will suffer. If, on the other hand, you surround yourself with people who think highly of you, and who encourage you and even assist you in the change you want to make, your motivation will increase.
Your role in enhancing your motivation is clear: surround yourself with loving, supporting people, and avoid the negative people.
One problem people often mention to me is when the negative people are in their own family, in which case avoiding them can be a struggle. In a future blog I’ll write about what to do when you face this problem of non-supportive family members, but for today’s blog I want to write about a more insidious problem, this problem happens when that negative person in your environment is you. I have a lot of familiarity with this. I can be my strongest critic. I’ll ask myself, “Why would anyone want to read what you have to say about motivation?” or I may tell myself, “You’re too lazy – you never follow up on what you start.”
I suppose psychologists could help us figure out why we are so critical of ourselves. Maybe it's because we've heard negative messages about ourselves from others for so long we no longer need to hear them from outside, we have integrated them into our beings. When there is no negativity from family members, we provide it for ourselves. Maybe in your family the message wasn’t directed at you; maybe your parents were very critical of themselves so you learned it from them. Who knows?
If you are like me and the most negative person in your social environment is yourself, there is bad news and good news. The bad news is that this negative person (yourself) is worse than a shadow. A shadow is only around in the day time, when the sun is out. But if you are the negative person in your life, you are around 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Whenever you need some good old criticism, you are there to provide it.
But here's the good news. The good news is that you are in control. You may not be able to make your brother stop calling you fat, or make your mother stop saying you are lazy, but you do have total control over what you say to yourself. It may be difficult to get you under control, but one thing is for sure. You have more control over yourself than you have over anyone else.
So how do you do it? How do you stop being your own worst critic? Here’s six simple tips to becoming your own cheer leader:
1. Any time you find yourself becoming critical of yourself, stop and take a deep breath. Critically examine your self criticism. Nine times out of ten you will find it is overly harsh, or even unwarranted.
2. Re-experience your past successes. Get in touch with your experiences with success by writing success stories, each recalling a situation that occurred in your life of which you are proud, a situation that reflects positively on you. It could reflect positively on your character, or on your skill, or on some other characteristic. Refer to these stories when you are feeling extra critical of yourself.
3. Every evening, in bed, before you fall asleep, acknowledge what you accomplished that day.
4. Give yourself continual positive feedback, “pats on the back.”
5. Don’t take yourself so seriously. You really aren’t special enough to deserve a full time critic :-)
6. Take advantage of the positive people in your social environment; if it isn’t filled with supportive people, change it.
The Bible says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The corollary to that is, “Don’t do to yourself what you would not do to others.” You wouldn’t say such negative things to anyone else; don’t do it to yourself!
If there are strategies you use when you are feeling extra critical about yourself, why not share them with your fellow readers by leaving a comment.
Your environment has two parts, your physical environment and your social environment. Your physical environment is where you actually do the work on your vision, the change you want to make in your life. Your social environment consists of all the people and organizations that surround you or are available to you.
The people in your social environment can impact your motivation negatively or positively. If you surround yourself with people who think you are stupid or that your vision is something you aren't capable of, your motivation will suffer. If, on the other hand, you surround yourself with people who think highly of you, and who encourage you and even assist you in the change you want to make, your motivation will increase.
Your role in enhancing your motivation is clear: surround yourself with loving, supporting people, and avoid the negative people.
One problem people often mention to me is when the negative people are in their own family, in which case avoiding them can be a struggle. In a future blog I’ll write about what to do when you face this problem of non-supportive family members, but for today’s blog I want to write about a more insidious problem, this problem happens when that negative person in your environment is you. I have a lot of familiarity with this. I can be my strongest critic. I’ll ask myself, “Why would anyone want to read what you have to say about motivation?” or I may tell myself, “You’re too lazy – you never follow up on what you start.”
I suppose psychologists could help us figure out why we are so critical of ourselves. Maybe it's because we've heard negative messages about ourselves from others for so long we no longer need to hear them from outside, we have integrated them into our beings. When there is no negativity from family members, we provide it for ourselves. Maybe in your family the message wasn’t directed at you; maybe your parents were very critical of themselves so you learned it from them. Who knows?
If you are like me and the most negative person in your social environment is yourself, there is bad news and good news. The bad news is that this negative person (yourself) is worse than a shadow. A shadow is only around in the day time, when the sun is out. But if you are the negative person in your life, you are around 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Whenever you need some good old criticism, you are there to provide it.
But here's the good news. The good news is that you are in control. You may not be able to make your brother stop calling you fat, or make your mother stop saying you are lazy, but you do have total control over what you say to yourself. It may be difficult to get you under control, but one thing is for sure. You have more control over yourself than you have over anyone else.
So how do you do it? How do you stop being your own worst critic? Here’s six simple tips to becoming your own cheer leader:
1. Any time you find yourself becoming critical of yourself, stop and take a deep breath. Critically examine your self criticism. Nine times out of ten you will find it is overly harsh, or even unwarranted.
2. Re-experience your past successes. Get in touch with your experiences with success by writing success stories, each recalling a situation that occurred in your life of which you are proud, a situation that reflects positively on you. It could reflect positively on your character, or on your skill, or on some other characteristic. Refer to these stories when you are feeling extra critical of yourself.
3. Every evening, in bed, before you fall asleep, acknowledge what you accomplished that day.
4. Give yourself continual positive feedback, “pats on the back.”
5. Don’t take yourself so seriously. You really aren’t special enough to deserve a full time critic :-)
6. Take advantage of the positive people in your social environment; if it isn’t filled with supportive people, change it.
The Bible says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The corollary to that is, “Don’t do to yourself what you would not do to others.” You wouldn’t say such negative things to anyone else; don’t do it to yourself!
If there are strategies you use when you are feeling extra critical about yourself, why not share them with your fellow readers by leaving a comment.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
You failed. Now what?
A lot of people are writing about the fear of failure, and all the possible causes of it. But what happens if it’s no longer just a fear, but a reality? What if we grabbed for the brass ring and it slipped out of our hand. Our grasp was not sure enough.
What do we do with these feelings that almost all of us have faced in our lives? Do we just roll over and play dead? We’re know we are supposed to get back up on the horse, but sometimes it’s hard.
If you are in this predicament, here are four strategies that might help.
Strategy 1: Accept that in order to do something really well, in order for you to get better and better, you need to continually put yourself in a position to fail and, when you do fail, to correct for the failure.
As Mario Andretti said, “If things seem totally under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”
Realize that the bigger the change you want to make, the more difficulties you will face. There will be missteps, road blocks and dead ends. Prepare yourself for this, and do what you have to do. To do something really well, you are going to have to take risks. An old English proverb states that a smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.
Strategy 2: Know that every mistake merely means an unwanted result. Every mistake is but on opportunity for learning.
Stay aware of the positive aspects of what we call failure. The naval ships in World War Two had these amazingly big guns, which would fire shells at targets on the land. The gunner who aimed the gun had two controls. The first control moved the gun left and right. The second control raised and lowered the gun. When the gunner thought he was on target he would fire the gun. He observed what occurred and modified what he did based on the result. If the shell went to the left of the target, he moved the gun to the right. If the shell went to the right of the target, he moved the gun to the left. If the shell went over the target, he lowered the gun. If it fell short of the target, he raised the gun. The gunner didn’t get upset when he missed the target and call himself a failure. He corrected for the error. Each time he did this, he got closer to the target. He only had to hit it once.
Failures allow us to fine tune and correct. Sometimes it is the only way to hit the target. So thank your failure for the lesson it taught you, and use the “failure” to get closer to your target.
Strategy 3: Pat yourself on the back, because failure means you are taking risks. If you easily achieve everything you try without failing, you’re probably not pushing your limits; you’re probably standing right on top of the target.
We don’t want to be one of those people who stand right on top of the target. We want to be risk takers, moderate risk takers, so we achieve something of importance.
You won’t ever run into a road block unless you are moving.
Strategy 4: Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.
The song Pick Yourself Up by Jerome Kerns and Dorothy Fields, from which this strategy is taken, is one of the most inspirational songs I know. Don’t lose your confidence if you slip, the song goes, be grateful for a pleasant trip.
As the American poet Maya Angelou said, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”
Use these four strategies when you are feeling in the dumps because something didn’t work out as you had planned, and remember what Abraham Maslow, the father of motivation, wrote about failure. “One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities.” When Maslow wrote of one’s possibilities, I like to thing he was writing about vision, these wonderful changes we all want to make in our lives.
What do we do with these feelings that almost all of us have faced in our lives? Do we just roll over and play dead? We’re know we are supposed to get back up on the horse, but sometimes it’s hard.
If you are in this predicament, here are four strategies that might help.
Strategy 1: Accept that in order to do something really well, in order for you to get better and better, you need to continually put yourself in a position to fail and, when you do fail, to correct for the failure.
As Mario Andretti said, “If things seem totally under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”
Realize that the bigger the change you want to make, the more difficulties you will face. There will be missteps, road blocks and dead ends. Prepare yourself for this, and do what you have to do. To do something really well, you are going to have to take risks. An old English proverb states that a smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.
Strategy 2: Know that every mistake merely means an unwanted result. Every mistake is but on opportunity for learning.
Stay aware of the positive aspects of what we call failure. The naval ships in World War Two had these amazingly big guns, which would fire shells at targets on the land. The gunner who aimed the gun had two controls. The first control moved the gun left and right. The second control raised and lowered the gun. When the gunner thought he was on target he would fire the gun. He observed what occurred and modified what he did based on the result. If the shell went to the left of the target, he moved the gun to the right. If the shell went to the right of the target, he moved the gun to the left. If the shell went over the target, he lowered the gun. If it fell short of the target, he raised the gun. The gunner didn’t get upset when he missed the target and call himself a failure. He corrected for the error. Each time he did this, he got closer to the target. He only had to hit it once.
Failures allow us to fine tune and correct. Sometimes it is the only way to hit the target. So thank your failure for the lesson it taught you, and use the “failure” to get closer to your target.
Strategy 3: Pat yourself on the back, because failure means you are taking risks. If you easily achieve everything you try without failing, you’re probably not pushing your limits; you’re probably standing right on top of the target.
We don’t want to be one of those people who stand right on top of the target. We want to be risk takers, moderate risk takers, so we achieve something of importance.
You won’t ever run into a road block unless you are moving.
Strategy 4: Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.
The song Pick Yourself Up by Jerome Kerns and Dorothy Fields, from which this strategy is taken, is one of the most inspirational songs I know. Don’t lose your confidence if you slip, the song goes, be grateful for a pleasant trip.
As the American poet Maya Angelou said, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”
Use these four strategies when you are feeling in the dumps because something didn’t work out as you had planned, and remember what Abraham Maslow, the father of motivation, wrote about failure. “One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities.” When Maslow wrote of one’s possibilities, I like to thing he was writing about vision, these wonderful changes we all want to make in our lives.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Motivation and the five steps to financial control
In my last blog I gave five steps to help you regain control of your finances. In this blog I will show how those five steps were developed to motivate you to make this important change in your life. Even though all too many people want to make this major change in their lives, they need motivation to start making the change, and motivation to keep the change in place. The model for self motivation can help them make this dream come true.
This is the self motivation model:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
This means that your motivation is related to your vision (How worthwhile to you is the change you want to make?), your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).
Step One and Step Two are focused on the vision, the change we want in our life, regaining control of our finances. Step One, the why for this change, is focused on making us determine how this change we want to make in our life is worthwhile. The more worthwhile a change is, the more motivated we will be to make it happen. So we write down all the positive reasons for implementing the change, and all the negative things that will happen if we fail to implement the change.
Step Two is focused on getting clear on exactly what our vision means. The clearer we are in our pursuits, the more motivated we will be.
Step Three, describing in detail how we are going to make this dream come true, addresses the second factor of self motivation, successability. By breaking this large, overwhelming dream into its component parts, we see that it is really a series of tasks that we feel confident we are perfectly capable of doing. The more confident we are, the more motivated we become.
Step Four, making a conscious decision to take charge of our financial life, is similarly motivating. It means we see ourselves as powerful and confident. When we don’t feel in control, when we aren’t making our own decisions, either because we are letting someone else make them for us, or because no decisions are being made, we are listless and unmotivated.
Step Five, finding resources to assist us in making this dream come true, is addressing factor three, environment. The three resources suggested in the posting are but the tip of the iceberg. Taking a hard look at your social environment will reveal many more.
No matter what dream you are pursuing, whether it deals with your finances, your health, your relationships, whatever, the self motivation model can be used to make it come true. It’s a great tool!
This is the self motivation model:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
This means that your motivation is related to your vision (How worthwhile to you is the change you want to make?), your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).
Step One and Step Two are focused on the vision, the change we want in our life, regaining control of our finances. Step One, the why for this change, is focused on making us determine how this change we want to make in our life is worthwhile. The more worthwhile a change is, the more motivated we will be to make it happen. So we write down all the positive reasons for implementing the change, and all the negative things that will happen if we fail to implement the change.
Step Two is focused on getting clear on exactly what our vision means. The clearer we are in our pursuits, the more motivated we will be.
Step Three, describing in detail how we are going to make this dream come true, addresses the second factor of self motivation, successability. By breaking this large, overwhelming dream into its component parts, we see that it is really a series of tasks that we feel confident we are perfectly capable of doing. The more confident we are, the more motivated we become.
Step Four, making a conscious decision to take charge of our financial life, is similarly motivating. It means we see ourselves as powerful and confident. When we don’t feel in control, when we aren’t making our own decisions, either because we are letting someone else make them for us, or because no decisions are being made, we are listless and unmotivated.
Step Five, finding resources to assist us in making this dream come true, is addressing factor three, environment. The three resources suggested in the posting are but the tip of the iceberg. Taking a hard look at your social environment will reveal many more.
No matter what dream you are pursuing, whether it deals with your finances, your health, your relationships, whatever, the self motivation model can be used to make it come true. It’s a great tool!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Five steps to regaining control of your finances
Too many people are becoming mired in more and more debt. Many of them are starting to see how their life’s blood is being sucked away, and want to be shown a path toward financial freedom, a place where they control their finances, instead of their finances controlling them.
In today’s posting I will give five steps to financial freedom, steps by which you can seize back control of your finances. In my next posting I will explain the science behind the five steps, showing how they fit into the model for self motivation.
Step One: Write down why you want to regain control of your finances. What will you gain? reduced stress? the ability to buy things you need? a feeling of pride at how responsible you are? Also write down what will happen if you fail to make this change. Will you have to file bankruptcy? Will you lose your house?
Step Two: Determine exactly what regaining control of your finances means in your situation. How will you know when you have regained control of your finances. Does it mean reducing your debt? Does it mean living below your means so you can be paying off your debt? Write down what will be occurring in your life when you have succeeded.
Step Three: Write down a clear description of how you are going to make this change happen. Make a plan. Write down all the steps you can think of that will help you make this change. Will you cut up your credit cards? Will you track your spending for a certain period of time? How long? Will you make a budget? Will you set aside a set percent of each pay check to use toward your debt? Will you need to take an additional, part time job for a while to catch up on your debt? Will you contact your creditors to try to work out a payment plan?
Step Four: Be in charge. Suze Orman says in The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, “True financial freedom is not only having money, but having power over that money as well.” Make a conscious decision that you control your financial life. You are the boss!
And last, but by no means least:
Step Five: Find resources that will help you make this change. The worse the economy gets, it seems, the more resources there are for those who need help getting back on their feet. Here are three:
1. Credit counseling is a big resource, but make sure you do your research. Check out the Federal Trade Commission’s website for what you need to know before you retain a credit counseling company: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre13.shtm
2. The federal government can be of assistance. Go to usa.gov and type into the search screen “debt relief” for information and direct assistance.
3. If you are facing foreclosure, contact your state’s bar association for the names of attorneys who have volunteered to assist people with your problem.
Getting control of your finances will be a struggle, but by applying these five steps, and working hard, it’s a struggle you can win.
In today’s posting I will give five steps to financial freedom, steps by which you can seize back control of your finances. In my next posting I will explain the science behind the five steps, showing how they fit into the model for self motivation.
Step One: Write down why you want to regain control of your finances. What will you gain? reduced stress? the ability to buy things you need? a feeling of pride at how responsible you are? Also write down what will happen if you fail to make this change. Will you have to file bankruptcy? Will you lose your house?
Step Two: Determine exactly what regaining control of your finances means in your situation. How will you know when you have regained control of your finances. Does it mean reducing your debt? Does it mean living below your means so you can be paying off your debt? Write down what will be occurring in your life when you have succeeded.
Step Three: Write down a clear description of how you are going to make this change happen. Make a plan. Write down all the steps you can think of that will help you make this change. Will you cut up your credit cards? Will you track your spending for a certain period of time? How long? Will you make a budget? Will you set aside a set percent of each pay check to use toward your debt? Will you need to take an additional, part time job for a while to catch up on your debt? Will you contact your creditors to try to work out a payment plan?
Step Four: Be in charge. Suze Orman says in The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, “True financial freedom is not only having money, but having power over that money as well.” Make a conscious decision that you control your financial life. You are the boss!
And last, but by no means least:
Step Five: Find resources that will help you make this change. The worse the economy gets, it seems, the more resources there are for those who need help getting back on their feet. Here are three:
1. Credit counseling is a big resource, but make sure you do your research. Check out the Federal Trade Commission’s website for what you need to know before you retain a credit counseling company: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre13.shtm
2. The federal government can be of assistance. Go to usa.gov and type into the search screen “debt relief” for information and direct assistance.
3. If you are facing foreclosure, contact your state’s bar association for the names of attorneys who have volunteered to assist people with your problem.
Getting control of your finances will be a struggle, but by applying these five steps, and working hard, it’s a struggle you can win.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Motivation and the Job Search
One very common change people want in their lives has to do with their employment. This is an extremely stressful change, in fact a job change is one of the top stressors, coming after only a death in the family and a divorce. It’s no wonder that so many of us are hesitant to seek a better job, even if we are unhappy in our present one.
I am frequently asked whether you can use the self motivation model to find a job. My response is that the self motivation model can be used for any change you want to make in your life, even a change involving your job, whether it means finding a job by someone who doesn't have one, or someone who wants a better one.
Recall the self motivation model is:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
This means that your motivation is related to three factors, your vision (How worthwhile to you is the change you want to make?), your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).
VISION
Let’s look first at your vision. Ask yourself, “How important is finding a new job to me?” If the change you want to make doesn’t feel important to you, you are unlikely to take the steps you need to take to make it happen. You won’t be motivated. But there are ways to make a prospective change feel more valuable to you, which will result in enhancing your motivation.
One way is writing down all the positive points about a new job. Will it pay more? Will there be more prestige? Will it be more interesting and fulfilling? Will there be more job security? More potential growth? Write down all the positive reasons for having a different job.
Sometimes just as important to making a change feel more worthwhile is to write down all the bad things about your present job. Are you bored? Are you frustrated with management? Are the office politics driving you crazy? Write down all the negative things that are occurring by your failure to get a new job.
Why do I say write them down? So you can use the written words as tools to keep yourself motivated as you make the change. When you are feeling lazy and not up to working, looking at the two lists can often give you the nudge you need to get going.
Sometimes we are hesitant to change jobs because we believe that moving to another business or agency will just mean more of the same. If that’s so, maybe you need to figure out what job you would really like to have. Taking such a job would definitely be a worthwhile change.
SUCCESSABILITY
Next we look at successability. In poor economic times, many unemployed people have given up searching for jobs; they don’t have any confidence that they can be successful in their job search. Without confidence, they are not motivated to even look.
If we are in this unfortunate state, how do we get back our confidence? Perhaps the best thing we can do is get clear exactly what we want in a new job, and get clear on the steps we need to take to make that desired job ours.
Clarity increases our confidence in two ways:
1) We can’t feel confident we will be successful if we don’t even know what success entails.
2) We can’t feel confident we will be successful if we don’t know how to achieve that success.
Using the three step process to successability described in my blog posting of October 21, 2009, is a great way to get clarity. If you want clarity, I urge you to visit that posting.
ENVIRONMENT
In this posting I’m going to focus primarily on how to use your social environment to motivate you to do the work necessary for this job change.
The positive, motivation building elements in your social environment we call your resources. Here are just a couple of the many resources available for people looking for jobs or making career changes:
Job counseling: having someone guiding you on your path and helping you recognize your positive traits is powerfully motivating.
Skills Training: Do you need training to make you more desirable to employees? Explore possibilities such as on the job training in your present job. Look for skills training at your local community college or training facilities. New job skills will also make you more confident in your ability to find that new job, which will further enhance your motivation.
Networking opportunities: We have all heard, “It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.” So make sure you are the one who knows that special person that will land you the job. Brainstorm to figure out where the people you need to know congregate. Maybe it’s the local better business bureau. Maybe it's monthly meetings of a related professional association. You may feel a bit uncomfortable if this is not something you have done in the past. Take baby steps. Tell yourself you are just going to the first meeting to observe. If someone initiates contact with you, be warm and open. This may be the person you need to know, or this person may know that person and be willing to introduce you.
If you have been dreaming about getting a job, finding a better job, or changing your career, using the self motivation model can help you make your dream come true.
I am frequently asked whether you can use the self motivation model to find a job. My response is that the self motivation model can be used for any change you want to make in your life, even a change involving your job, whether it means finding a job by someone who doesn't have one, or someone who wants a better one.
Recall the self motivation model is:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
This means that your motivation is related to three factors, your vision (How worthwhile to you is the change you want to make?), your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).
VISION
Let’s look first at your vision. Ask yourself, “How important is finding a new job to me?” If the change you want to make doesn’t feel important to you, you are unlikely to take the steps you need to take to make it happen. You won’t be motivated. But there are ways to make a prospective change feel more valuable to you, which will result in enhancing your motivation.
One way is writing down all the positive points about a new job. Will it pay more? Will there be more prestige? Will it be more interesting and fulfilling? Will there be more job security? More potential growth? Write down all the positive reasons for having a different job.
Sometimes just as important to making a change feel more worthwhile is to write down all the bad things about your present job. Are you bored? Are you frustrated with management? Are the office politics driving you crazy? Write down all the negative things that are occurring by your failure to get a new job.
Why do I say write them down? So you can use the written words as tools to keep yourself motivated as you make the change. When you are feeling lazy and not up to working, looking at the two lists can often give you the nudge you need to get going.
Sometimes we are hesitant to change jobs because we believe that moving to another business or agency will just mean more of the same. If that’s so, maybe you need to figure out what job you would really like to have. Taking such a job would definitely be a worthwhile change.
SUCCESSABILITY
Next we look at successability. In poor economic times, many unemployed people have given up searching for jobs; they don’t have any confidence that they can be successful in their job search. Without confidence, they are not motivated to even look.
If we are in this unfortunate state, how do we get back our confidence? Perhaps the best thing we can do is get clear exactly what we want in a new job, and get clear on the steps we need to take to make that desired job ours.
Clarity increases our confidence in two ways:
1) We can’t feel confident we will be successful if we don’t even know what success entails.
2) We can’t feel confident we will be successful if we don’t know how to achieve that success.
Using the three step process to successability described in my blog posting of October 21, 2009, is a great way to get clarity. If you want clarity, I urge you to visit that posting.
ENVIRONMENT
In this posting I’m going to focus primarily on how to use your social environment to motivate you to do the work necessary for this job change.
The positive, motivation building elements in your social environment we call your resources. Here are just a couple of the many resources available for people looking for jobs or making career changes:
Job counseling: having someone guiding you on your path and helping you recognize your positive traits is powerfully motivating.
Skills Training: Do you need training to make you more desirable to employees? Explore possibilities such as on the job training in your present job. Look for skills training at your local community college or training facilities. New job skills will also make you more confident in your ability to find that new job, which will further enhance your motivation.
Networking opportunities: We have all heard, “It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.” So make sure you are the one who knows that special person that will land you the job. Brainstorm to figure out where the people you need to know congregate. Maybe it’s the local better business bureau. Maybe it's monthly meetings of a related professional association. You may feel a bit uncomfortable if this is not something you have done in the past. Take baby steps. Tell yourself you are just going to the first meeting to observe. If someone initiates contact with you, be warm and open. This may be the person you need to know, or this person may know that person and be willing to introduce you.
If you have been dreaming about getting a job, finding a better job, or changing your career, using the self motivation model can help you make your dream come true.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Fight the fear by leveraging your courage
Everyone talks about fear and of how fear can keep us from making our dreams come true.
The problem with fear is that is wreaks havoc on our successability, the second factor of self motivation. So long as we are afraid, we are not going to be motivated to pursue our dreams.
My favorite quote about fear is from Ambrose Hollingworth Redmoon. Redmoon was a beatnik, a hippie, and a former manager of legendary rock bank Quicksilver Messenger Service. The last three decades of his life he spent in a wheel chair after a car accident in the Bay Area left him a paraplegic.
Redmoon said:
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one's fear. The timid presume it is lack of fear that allows the brave to act when the timid do not. But to take action when one is not afraid is easy. To refrain when afraid is also easy. To take action regardless of fear is brave.”
Redmoon’s point is: don’t let fear rule you. Be conscious, make a decision. Decide whether you want to make your fear more important than your vision. If you do, so be it. At the very least, you should consciously make the choice.
This is great advice, but what do we do if we just aren’t brave? Is there something we can do when the choice we continually seem to be making is to let fear win, to let our fear overpower our dream, and block us from making this change we desperately want to make in our life? Are we stuck in the misery of only wishing for our dreams?
No, we are not. If we look deep down in ourselves, we will see that there is courage there, maybe not a lot, probably not as much as we would like there to be. But it is there, and the answer to our problem is to leverage the courage we do have.
Fear is an emotion. It’s like instinct, it serves an important purpose in the wild when it results in an immediate response that may save the life of the animal. A deer is grazing, it smells a wolf, it feels fear and immediately runs. Because of the fear, the deer lives to graze another day.
But people need to treat fear differently. Fear can serve the purpose of alerting us to possible danger. But then we enter that uniquely human part of ourselves, the place of reflection, in which we rationally look at the fear and decide what action we are going to take. This is what separates man from beast, and gives us so much power.
One action we can decide to take is to leverage the courage we do have. To leverage our courage, we need to take the dream that we are too scared to go after, and break it down into a series of steps that we are brave enough to take.
Let’s take an example.
Our vision is to start our own company. This is the change we want to make in our life; we want to be our own boss. This is pretty scary stuff, even for a brave person. But when we break it down into its parts, each part is not that scary. Let’s look at some of those parts:
1. Figure out what business we want to start. (not too scary yet, and maybe lots of fun)
2. Research our prospective business (lots of work, but still not too scary)
3. Put together a business plan (even more work, but still not too scary)
4. Make a time line of the steps we need to take to implement the business plan.
5. Start implementing, one step at a time.
Two things are often what scare us: the enormity of the change we want in our life and not knowing what the change involves.
By breaking that major change into its component parts we negate both these things, which makes the change feel much safer, and helps motivate us to make our dreams come true.
The problem with fear is that is wreaks havoc on our successability, the second factor of self motivation. So long as we are afraid, we are not going to be motivated to pursue our dreams.
My favorite quote about fear is from Ambrose Hollingworth Redmoon. Redmoon was a beatnik, a hippie, and a former manager of legendary rock bank Quicksilver Messenger Service. The last three decades of his life he spent in a wheel chair after a car accident in the Bay Area left him a paraplegic.
Redmoon said:
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one's fear. The timid presume it is lack of fear that allows the brave to act when the timid do not. But to take action when one is not afraid is easy. To refrain when afraid is also easy. To take action regardless of fear is brave.”
Redmoon’s point is: don’t let fear rule you. Be conscious, make a decision. Decide whether you want to make your fear more important than your vision. If you do, so be it. At the very least, you should consciously make the choice.
This is great advice, but what do we do if we just aren’t brave? Is there something we can do when the choice we continually seem to be making is to let fear win, to let our fear overpower our dream, and block us from making this change we desperately want to make in our life? Are we stuck in the misery of only wishing for our dreams?
No, we are not. If we look deep down in ourselves, we will see that there is courage there, maybe not a lot, probably not as much as we would like there to be. But it is there, and the answer to our problem is to leverage the courage we do have.
Fear is an emotion. It’s like instinct, it serves an important purpose in the wild when it results in an immediate response that may save the life of the animal. A deer is grazing, it smells a wolf, it feels fear and immediately runs. Because of the fear, the deer lives to graze another day.
But people need to treat fear differently. Fear can serve the purpose of alerting us to possible danger. But then we enter that uniquely human part of ourselves, the place of reflection, in which we rationally look at the fear and decide what action we are going to take. This is what separates man from beast, and gives us so much power.
One action we can decide to take is to leverage the courage we do have. To leverage our courage, we need to take the dream that we are too scared to go after, and break it down into a series of steps that we are brave enough to take.
Let’s take an example.
Our vision is to start our own company. This is the change we want to make in our life; we want to be our own boss. This is pretty scary stuff, even for a brave person. But when we break it down into its parts, each part is not that scary. Let’s look at some of those parts:
1. Figure out what business we want to start. (not too scary yet, and maybe lots of fun)
2. Research our prospective business (lots of work, but still not too scary)
3. Put together a business plan (even more work, but still not too scary)
4. Make a time line of the steps we need to take to implement the business plan.
5. Start implementing, one step at a time.
Two things are often what scare us: the enormity of the change we want in our life and not knowing what the change involves.
By breaking that major change into its component parts we negate both these things, which makes the change feel much safer, and helps motivate us to make our dreams come true.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Six ways to use your social environment to motivate you
Of the three factors of motivation, environment, especially your social environment, may be the easiest one to positively impact. The model for self motivation tells us that positively impacting your social environment will increase your motivation. Your social environment includes the people and organizations that surround you or are available to you.
Here are six ways you can use your social environment to increase your motivation:
1. Find yourself a peer partner: Having a companion on your path to making your vision come true will make the voyage so much better. So find yourself a companion. He or she doesn’t need to have the same vision as you do, in fact they don’t even need to have a vision. But if they do, you will be their companion on their path as well.
A peer partner will be there to encourage you when you get distracted, and be a sounding board for you when you don’t know which fork to take. Your peer partner may be a spouse or other significant other, a friend, or maybe someone you met at a class or seminar. Find someone who will help you, and not impede you. Trust your instincts.
2. Join a support group: No matter what your vision, that change you want to make in your life, there is probably a support group full of people with the same desire as you. A support group can provide you with many benefits, for example, a safe place to try out and practice new behaviors, access to wiser, more experienced people, and a feeling of belonging.
3. Choose a role model: A role model is a person whom you want to emulate. Sometimes the role model is doing exactly what you want to be doing, but it’s not necessary. A role model might possess a positive attribute that you believe would help you make the change you want in your life. You don’t need to know the person you choose as a role model. It may be someone you read about. Practice acting out the positive traits your role model has. When you are faced with a decision, ask yourself what your role model would do.
4. Find a mentor: Unlike a role model, you do have a personal relationship with a mentor. That person not only knows you, but agrees, orally or tacitly, to serve as a guide to you on your path to your vision.
There are many resources for finding a mentor. Your support group is an excellent source for a mentor.
5. Enlist family and friends in your journey: Your social environment includes your family and friends. You may be surprised at how supportive your family and friends are of your dreams. It’s worth taking the risk to find out how supportive they are. If they are supportive, look what you have gained. If the response is belittling or less than supportive, you know you need to look somewhere else.
6. Pursue training opportunities. A self examination may reveal there are skills you lack that make it difficult to make the change you have identified as your vision. If this happens, you will need to pursue training opportunities. Investigate your local community college or university to see if they offer the training you need. Other sources for skills acquisition include trade associations, networking groups, on the job training, coaching, seminars, and continuing education classes. Don’t let the lack of a skill rob you of your motivation.
As you can see, there are many ways to utilize your social environment. Something in your social environment might turn out to be the very thing you need to make your dreams come true.
Please feel free to leave a comment for your fellow readers on how you have used your social environment to achieve a goal you had.
Here are six ways you can use your social environment to increase your motivation:
1. Find yourself a peer partner: Having a companion on your path to making your vision come true will make the voyage so much better. So find yourself a companion. He or she doesn’t need to have the same vision as you do, in fact they don’t even need to have a vision. But if they do, you will be their companion on their path as well.
A peer partner will be there to encourage you when you get distracted, and be a sounding board for you when you don’t know which fork to take. Your peer partner may be a spouse or other significant other, a friend, or maybe someone you met at a class or seminar. Find someone who will help you, and not impede you. Trust your instincts.
2. Join a support group: No matter what your vision, that change you want to make in your life, there is probably a support group full of people with the same desire as you. A support group can provide you with many benefits, for example, a safe place to try out and practice new behaviors, access to wiser, more experienced people, and a feeling of belonging.
3. Choose a role model: A role model is a person whom you want to emulate. Sometimes the role model is doing exactly what you want to be doing, but it’s not necessary. A role model might possess a positive attribute that you believe would help you make the change you want in your life. You don’t need to know the person you choose as a role model. It may be someone you read about. Practice acting out the positive traits your role model has. When you are faced with a decision, ask yourself what your role model would do.
4. Find a mentor: Unlike a role model, you do have a personal relationship with a mentor. That person not only knows you, but agrees, orally or tacitly, to serve as a guide to you on your path to your vision.
There are many resources for finding a mentor. Your support group is an excellent source for a mentor.
5. Enlist family and friends in your journey: Your social environment includes your family and friends. You may be surprised at how supportive your family and friends are of your dreams. It’s worth taking the risk to find out how supportive they are. If they are supportive, look what you have gained. If the response is belittling or less than supportive, you know you need to look somewhere else.
6. Pursue training opportunities. A self examination may reveal there are skills you lack that make it difficult to make the change you have identified as your vision. If this happens, you will need to pursue training opportunities. Investigate your local community college or university to see if they offer the training you need. Other sources for skills acquisition include trade associations, networking groups, on the job training, coaching, seminars, and continuing education classes. Don’t let the lack of a skill rob you of your motivation.
As you can see, there are many ways to utilize your social environment. Something in your social environment might turn out to be the very thing you need to make your dreams come true.
Please feel free to leave a comment for your fellow readers on how you have used your social environment to achieve a goal you had.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Motivation and exercise Part 1
If you surf the web like I do, you have read lots of information about how much exercise we are supposed to have. I’ve read you need one hour every day of exercise that increases your heart rate. At the other extreme, I have read walking for half an hour three times a week is all anyone needs. Other sites will tell you that you need strength training in order to keep your bones healthy.
I’m not going to try to resolve all those conflicting pieces of information, but I think we can all agree you do need some physical activity, on a regular basis. But sometimes, even if we take a minimalist approach, we just don’t do what we know we are supposed to do, which is get a reasonable amount of exercise. I read somewhere that at least a quarter of the people don’t exercise at all.
The problem is simple, we aren’t motivated to exercise. What’s the solution when we aren’t motivated? The solution is to get motivated, by applying the model for self motivation.
Here’s the model for self motivation:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
What the model means is that in order to increase your motivation, which is on the left of the equals sign, you need to positively impact at least one of the three factors of motivation, which are on the right side of the equals sign. The three factors are your vision, that important change you want to make in your life, your successability, which is your confidence in your competence, and your environment.
That’s how we apply the model. We use our intent to change one or more of the factors of motivation. Let’s take them one at a time. Today we will talk about vision.
Vision: Vision is the change you want to make in your life. It is that on which the motivation is to be focused, the movement we are looking for. In order for your vision to be motivating, it has to be a worthy pursuit. But being worthy, or valuable is not enough; it has to be worthy to you. Being worthy to someone else doesn’t cut it. Just because your spouse, your boy friend, your best friend, or even your family doctor thinks it would be beneficial to you to get some exercise doesn’t make it valuable to you.
The first strategy we use to increase the value of a change we want to make in our lives is called valuing the vision. In this strategy we write down all the benefits that the change can bring to our lives.
Because the vision is defined as “a change that we want in our life that will make our lives so much better,” we list all the ways this change will make our lives so much better.
There are many benefits to exercise. Here are a bunch:
1. makes you look hotter
2. lowers cholesterol
3. strengthens your bones
4. helps you lose weight
5. reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke
6. makes you smarter
7. fights depression
8. lowers blood pressure
9. fights insomnia
The second strategy we use to increase the value of our vision it to make it fun or at least pleasant. We are going to value a sport more if we enjoy it. The most obvious way to do this is to find some exercise that you enjoy. Try new sports, with the understanding that it is okay to quit if you don’t like it, so long as you try something else. Investigate team sports. The social aspect of team sports might may them more enjoyable, so might the competition.
My most enjoyable exercise is running. Unfortunately I enjoyed it a little too much when I was younger, and now I am having to rehab my left hip and knee. So I work out with kettle bells. the two major benefits for me are the social aspect, and reason number one, it’s making me look hotter ☺
That’s how we apply the first factor of self motivation, the vision, to our task of getting some exercise. In my next posting I will be discussing how we apply the other two factors to this same goal.
See you then.
I’m not going to try to resolve all those conflicting pieces of information, but I think we can all agree you do need some physical activity, on a regular basis. But sometimes, even if we take a minimalist approach, we just don’t do what we know we are supposed to do, which is get a reasonable amount of exercise. I read somewhere that at least a quarter of the people don’t exercise at all.
The problem is simple, we aren’t motivated to exercise. What’s the solution when we aren’t motivated? The solution is to get motivated, by applying the model for self motivation.
Here’s the model for self motivation:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
What the model means is that in order to increase your motivation, which is on the left of the equals sign, you need to positively impact at least one of the three factors of motivation, which are on the right side of the equals sign. The three factors are your vision, that important change you want to make in your life, your successability, which is your confidence in your competence, and your environment.
That’s how we apply the model. We use our intent to change one or more of the factors of motivation. Let’s take them one at a time. Today we will talk about vision.
Vision: Vision is the change you want to make in your life. It is that on which the motivation is to be focused, the movement we are looking for. In order for your vision to be motivating, it has to be a worthy pursuit. But being worthy, or valuable is not enough; it has to be worthy to you. Being worthy to someone else doesn’t cut it. Just because your spouse, your boy friend, your best friend, or even your family doctor thinks it would be beneficial to you to get some exercise doesn’t make it valuable to you.
The first strategy we use to increase the value of a change we want to make in our lives is called valuing the vision. In this strategy we write down all the benefits that the change can bring to our lives.
Because the vision is defined as “a change that we want in our life that will make our lives so much better,” we list all the ways this change will make our lives so much better.
There are many benefits to exercise. Here are a bunch:
1. makes you look hotter
2. lowers cholesterol
3. strengthens your bones
4. helps you lose weight
5. reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke
6. makes you smarter
7. fights depression
8. lowers blood pressure
9. fights insomnia
The second strategy we use to increase the value of our vision it to make it fun or at least pleasant. We are going to value a sport more if we enjoy it. The most obvious way to do this is to find some exercise that you enjoy. Try new sports, with the understanding that it is okay to quit if you don’t like it, so long as you try something else. Investigate team sports. The social aspect of team sports might may them more enjoyable, so might the competition.
My most enjoyable exercise is running. Unfortunately I enjoyed it a little too much when I was younger, and now I am having to rehab my left hip and knee. So I work out with kettle bells. the two major benefits for me are the social aspect, and reason number one, it’s making me look hotter ☺
That’s how we apply the first factor of self motivation, the vision, to our task of getting some exercise. In my next posting I will be discussing how we apply the other two factors to this same goal.
See you then.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Motivation and weight loss
One of the biggest struggles I see people have is losing weight. At the same time, success at losing weight is one of the most public successes you can have. Lose 50 pounds and everyone knows about it. When I was a little boy I was what my mother lovingly referred to as “husky.” Once I hit seventh grade and started wrestling, I quickly lost 35 pounds and was never overweight again. But, possibly because of my earlier condition, I have always been especially interested in how people lose weight, and invariably after complementing a person on how good they look, I will ask what their secret is.
This may sound like a commercial, but in over 50% of the answers Weight Watchers is mentioned. Why is Weight Watchers so successful? I believe it is because of its effective use of motivation, in particular the second and third elements of motivation, successability (your confidence in your competence) and environment, especially social environment.
Let’s look first at how Weight Watchers positively impacts your social environment. Your social environment is comprised of the people and organizations that surround you or are available to you. It can include peer partners, role models, mentors, and people and organizations that teach skills and knowledge. From your social environment you get support, encouragement, experience, models, access to skill acquisition, and information.
When you join Weight Watchers you join one of the biggest, if not the biggest, organizations of people just like you, people for whom being overweight is or was a major issue in their lives. The gatherings are led by meeting leaders. These people, all of whom have lost weight with Weight Watchers and maintained that weight loss, serve as teachers, but also serve as proof that the program works and that you, too, can be successful.
You get support and encouragement from your fellow members in a caring environment. Members are provided information on many issues, such as stress eating and nutrition. Skills are taught, such as how to prepare healthy meals for the family, meals that will be enjoyed by the family yet serve your needs.
Even after you lose the weight, you can stay in the organization, fee free, so long as you maintain your healthy weight, maintaining that healthy social environment.
Your successability is also enhanced by this skill training, giving you confidence that you can achieve your goal. Your confidence is further enhanced by Weight Watcher goal-setting. You are encouraged to set as your first weight-loss goal 5% of your current weight. This is a goal that is attainable without a major struggle, at the same time being one of which you can be rightly proud, and which will therefore motivate you to achieve further losses.
The point system you follow in Weight Watchers tells you exactly what you need to do, thus achieving clarity, one of the two major aspects of successability. All you need to do is stay within your points range.
Weight Watchers is text book motivation.
If you have adopted strategies that have helped you either take off weight or maintained a weight loss, why not share them with other readers by leaving a comment below. Be part of their social environment, and help them get motivated.
This may sound like a commercial, but in over 50% of the answers Weight Watchers is mentioned. Why is Weight Watchers so successful? I believe it is because of its effective use of motivation, in particular the second and third elements of motivation, successability (your confidence in your competence) and environment, especially social environment.
Let’s look first at how Weight Watchers positively impacts your social environment. Your social environment is comprised of the people and organizations that surround you or are available to you. It can include peer partners, role models, mentors, and people and organizations that teach skills and knowledge. From your social environment you get support, encouragement, experience, models, access to skill acquisition, and information.
When you join Weight Watchers you join one of the biggest, if not the biggest, organizations of people just like you, people for whom being overweight is or was a major issue in their lives. The gatherings are led by meeting leaders. These people, all of whom have lost weight with Weight Watchers and maintained that weight loss, serve as teachers, but also serve as proof that the program works and that you, too, can be successful.
You get support and encouragement from your fellow members in a caring environment. Members are provided information on many issues, such as stress eating and nutrition. Skills are taught, such as how to prepare healthy meals for the family, meals that will be enjoyed by the family yet serve your needs.
Even after you lose the weight, you can stay in the organization, fee free, so long as you maintain your healthy weight, maintaining that healthy social environment.
Your successability is also enhanced by this skill training, giving you confidence that you can achieve your goal. Your confidence is further enhanced by Weight Watcher goal-setting. You are encouraged to set as your first weight-loss goal 5% of your current weight. This is a goal that is attainable without a major struggle, at the same time being one of which you can be rightly proud, and which will therefore motivate you to achieve further losses.
The point system you follow in Weight Watchers tells you exactly what you need to do, thus achieving clarity, one of the two major aspects of successability. All you need to do is stay within your points range.
Weight Watchers is text book motivation.
If you have adopted strategies that have helped you either take off weight or maintained a weight loss, why not share them with other readers by leaving a comment below. Be part of their social environment, and help them get motivated.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Using money to motivate
Dan Pink has a unique presentation where someone (I’ve been told it isn’t him) draws on a white board, illustrating what he is saying. He has a fascinating one on “What motivates us” which is found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=player_embedded
It’s definitely worth a watch.
Based on his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Pink tells us that study after study debunk the common perception in individuals and in much of the business world that money rewards are effective motivators. According to these studies, after a certain point money rewards only work for repetitive physical labor. For complicated work that requires creativity and thought, higher money rewards actually result in worse performance. The best thing to do about money, he says, is to pay people enough so it is not an issue for them.
For me the highlight occurs in the last couple of minutes of the video where he says there are three things, he refers to them as factors, that motivate us:
- Autonomy – The urge to direct our own lives.
- Mastery – The desire to get better and better at something that matters.
- Purpose – The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.
What fascinates me about this is that this means the greatest motivation comes from within. Ultimately the motivation – the decision to move- comes from the mover, not from an outside agency.
This does not mean one person can’t set up a motivational environment, by focusing on these factors, in which other persons will be more likely to motivate themselves. Teachers, for example, can do it by setting up their class rooms and their teaching so that the students exercise control over their learning. When my son was little, he went to a Montessori school. The class room was set up so the children could serially visit one of many “stations” and do “work” that helped the student develop a particular skill. The student chooses which station to work at, and how long to stay at the station before moving to another station.
Employers can do it by seeking input from their workers as to best practices, the basis of many of the more “enlightened” forms of management, such as those espoused by followers of W. Edwards Deming, the economist who helped Japan become a economic power after World War II.
That we have the power to motivate ourselves, is, by itself, motivating, because it empowers us, and allows us to direct our own lives. But don’t wait for others to set up environments so that we can motivate ourselves. Set up those environments yourself. Control your own motivation.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
To change, replace, rather than eliminate
When I was working on my masters in instructional design, one of the required courses involved change management, managing change in our lives and our organizations.
We were studying this because the purpose of much of education is to get people to change what they are doing. Think of all the education our state departments of health do to get people to change: change from smoking to not smoking, change from eating junk food to eating healthy food, change from being sedentary to getting exercise.
Change is also what we deal with in self motivation, making a change in our lives that will make our lives so much better. We call this desired change our vision.
Change management is a very important discipline with lots of research being done, tons of data collected and analyzed. Out of all the information given to me, the one point that stuck with me more than anything is if you want to make a change in your life, don’t eliminate a non-desired behavior; replace it with a desired behavior.
As an example in my life, my wife thought we were eating too much animal protein. She wanted to institute a policy of two “non-meat” days. That sounded rather harsh to me, and sort of like a judgment. I suggested instead that we institute a policy of two vegetarian days.
There seems to be several reasons why we want to replace rather than eliminate:
- nature abhors a vacuum
- elimination feels like deprivation
- elimination feels like we are doing something bad
- if you just eliminate a behavior, who knows what will replace it
- replacing opens you to exploring possibilities; elimination doesn’t
It sounds like it shouldn’t be important, but when I phrased the negative “meatless days” in the affirmative as “vegetarian days” I immediately started thinking of different recipes we could use to implement this new policy. No longer was I complaining, “No more meat.” Instead I was saying, “Let’s see if we can’t make that tofu curry with pineapple that we always order at the Thai restaurant in Sarasota.”
It reminds me of what I always hear about affirmations – always express them in a positive way. Don’t say “I won’t lose my temper.” Instead say, “I am calm and in control.” The rational for doing this is that we attract what we think about and talk about. How much better it is to attract calmness and control, than a lost temper.
Monday, July 5, 2010
A case study in the self motivation model, Part Three
I shared with you in my last posting how I maximized the motivating power of my vision by making it clear, and making it worthwhile to me. In this posting I will share how I maximized the motivational power of my successability and environment.
As a reminder, the model for self motivation is:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
Vision is that thing you want to accomplish, the change you want to make in your life; successability is your confidence in your competence; and environment is the place you do your work (physical environment) and the people and organizations that are in your life or that are available to you (social environment). Anything you do to one of the three factors on the right will automatically impact your motivation.
Remember from my last posting the vision I came up with: The change I want is a large number of qualified followers to my Twitter account. I want this change because when the book is completed and printed I want to be able to get the word out through Twitter to people who are interested in buying a book that will teach them how to make their dreams come true, or who are able and willing to get the word out about my book to those who are interested in such a book. A qualified follower is someone who fits in either or both of those two categories.
I shared earlier I didn’t feel confident about my ability to get a large number of qualified followers. I didn’t even feel confident about getting a small number of unqualified buyers. I knew I could make a large favorable impact on my motivation by taking steps to improve my successability. I know two things will improve my confidence in my competence, clarity and a moderate degree of risk. I decided to improve it by achieving clarity.
A great strategy for achieving clarity is the three step process for successability. The steps in the three step process for successability are:
vision >>> goals >>> tasks
The first step was done; I had my vision. But what were my goals, those accomplishments which would result in my vision coming true? I didn’t even know what they were. But I did know what I needed to do next. I needed to figure out what I needed to do to build such a group of followers. Sometimes you will have the same goals I had. They are temporary goals, place holders until I figure out what I needed to do to make my vision come true. Here they are:
1) figure out what my goals are,
2) accomplish them.
Now I had my two goals. Prioritizing them is not really an issue, since I can’t accomplish my goals until I figure out what they are. Consequently, I have my first goal, figure out how to get a large quantity of qualified followers on Twitter.
As you can see, what the three step process for successability did for me, and what it can do for you, is force you to figure out where you are going, rather than just proceeding without a plan.
I clearly don’t know how to increase the number of my qualified followers. I lack that skill. When you find yourself in a similar position, lacking a skill or knowledge, immediately look to your environment, the third factor of self motivation, for resources to gain that skill or knowledge. Once I looked at my environment, I quickly reached the third step, I had my task. My task was to make an expert in Twitter a part of my environment. I would learn from my expert what my further goals were and how to achieve them. But rather than having her personally come into my social environment, which I could have done by hiring her as a consultant, or by taking her teleseminar, I purchased her book and made it a part of my physical environment. My second task will be reading the book and putting it into action.
As I wrote in my last posting, it’s not complicated becoming motivated. That’s why we have a model, so that anyone can do it.
Follow the model and you will get motivated.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
A case study in the self motivation model, Part Two
I shared with you in my last posting that I was having trouble motivating myself to get serious about tweeting. I decided to share with you how I am now using the self motivation model to motivate myself to get start using Twitter effectively.
As a reminder, the model for self motivation is:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
Vision is that thing you want to accomplish, the change you want to make in your life; successability is your confidence in your competence; and environment is the place you do your work (physical environment) and the people and organizations that are in your life or that are available to you (social environment). Anything you do to one of the three factors on the right will automatically impact your motivation.
I first looked at the factor vision. One way for me to increase the motivational power of my vision is to make it worthwhile to me. To be perfectly honest, I am tweeting because someone whose opinion I strongly respect suggested it would be important in marketing my book. But remember what I wrote in my last post about something being important to another person? It doesn’t make a bit of difference. If it isn’t important to you, it won’t be motivating.
So what makes it important to me? Why is it a worthwhile undertaking? At this point I get stuck because I don’t really know what the undertaking is. First I need to decide exactly what the change is that I want. Vision is a change you want to make to make your life better.
I need clarity in exactly what my undertaking, my vision, is. So I grab a pen and this is what I write down. The change I want is a large number of qualified followers to my Twitter account. I want this change because when the book is completed and printed I want to be able to get the word out through Twitter to people who are interested in buying a book that will teach them how to make their dreams come true, or who are able and willing to get the word out about my book to those who are interested in such a book. A qualified follower is someone who fits in either or both of those two categories.
I think that is clear. And because it is clear, I see immediately why it is worthwhile to me - because I want to sell my book. It will be a very good book and will be helpful to many people, changing their lives for the better. But if no one knows about it, no one will buy it, and I’ve wasted four years of my life and I haven’t been able to help anyone make their dreams come true. Building a list of qualified followers is exactly the marketing I need to make all my hard work worthwhile.
That takes care of my work with vision. My vision is clear and it is worthwhile to me. I’m already feeling motivated, because I have a better handle on why I am learning all about Twitter. Motivating yourself is not brain surgery. It’s really that easy.
Please join me in my next blog posting as I share how I am using the remaining two factors of the self motivation model, successability and environment, to motivate myself to effectively use Twitter in my life.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
A case study in the self motivation model, Part One
I’ve been trying for a while to get myself to do some serious tweeting (@motivateyou) but am having a bit of a struggle. I’ve downloaded information off the internet showing me how to tweet and how to build a following, but it’s not working. There always seemed to be something more important or fun (like mowing the lawn) that needed doing.
Sound familiar?
Yup, I wasn’t motivated. Me! Mr. @motivateyou who writes a blog about motivating yourself. So after three months of this … yes, three months, I decided I needed to take a look at this problem, and share in my blog how I addressed this issue. I decided I would apply the self motivation model to my issue, to motivate myself about tweeting. I think it is called walking the talk.
The model for self motivation is:
MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).
Vision is that thing you want to accomplish, the change you want to make in your life; successability is your confidence in your competence; and environment is the place you do your work (physical environment) and the people and organizations that are in your life or that are available to you (social environment).
My initial gut feeling was that where I can make the most impact is in the first factor, the vision. I don’t think I have a good handle on why Twitter is important to me. But as I was writing that, I realized that successability is probably impacting me as much. I wasn’t very confident that I would be successful in using Twitter; when I sign on to my account I felt like one of the nerdy kids trying to get recognized by the cool clique. That feeling didn’t make me want to do much with Twitter. So I wasn’t. Two out of three, so far, although I knew I could also make some changes in my environment to increase my motivation.
In this posting I will address how to make the vision motivating, and in my next posting the work I will share the work I did on vision, and in a following post, the work I am doing on successability and environment.
The two keys to maximizing the motivational power of the vision are:
- Make it worthwhile to me
- Make it clear to me
Let’s talk about these one at a time.
Key #1 Make my vision worthwhile to me.
In order for the vision to motivate you, it must be worthwhile or valuable to you. This is really two different requirements 1) worthwhile, and 2) to you.
It doesn’t really matter if it is valuable to another person. Unless you make it worthwhile to you, personally, it will not motivate you. If you are trying to make a change in your life because someone else thinks it is important, that will not be enough to motivate you, even if that other person has let you know that it is important to them, sometimes many times, no matter how many times you promise that other person you will try. Unless it is important to YOU, you will not be motivated to make the change.
This does not mean we won’t be motivated to make changes other people want us to make; it just means we are going to get in touch with why it is important to us. The bottom line is, we need to know why it is important to us to make the change.
Key #2 Make my vision clear to me.
The more clear we are as to what the change is that we want to implement in our lives, the more motivated we will be to make the change. A fundamental truth in motivation is that clarity is motivating. We see this in successability, the second factor, and it is true as well in vision, the first factor. Make sure you know exactly what change you want to make in your life and you will be more likely to accomplish it.
Please join me in my next blog posting as I share how I am using the model to motivate myself to effectively use Twitter in my life.
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