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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

  1. Autonomy – The urge to direct our own lives.
  2. Mastery – The desire to get better and better at something that matters.
  3. 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:

  1. nature abhors a vacuum
  2. elimination feels like deprivation
  3. elimination feels like we are doing something bad
  4. if you just eliminate a behavior, who knows what will replace it
  5. 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.