You need to plan your motivation.

The fundamental principle underlying the self motivation model is you are in charge. This is good news, but it’s also bad news. The good news is that you have total responsibility for your motivation. The bad news is you have total responsibility for your motivation.

Unlike in so many other parts of your life, when it comes to your motivation, there’s no one else for you to rely on. When you went to school, you weren’t the only one in charge of your motivation. Your teacher played a big role in it. For most of us in our jobs, we aren’t the only one in charge of our motivation. Our boss or our manager plays a big role in it.

But when it comes to achieving your dreams, there isn’t a teacher or a manager to make sure you stay on task. That job is up to you! So how do we carry out this so important assignment, being in charge of our motivation?

The old saw, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” is nowhere more true than in motivating yourself. You cannot count on motivation just happening. It hasn’t “just happened” yet, has it?

So be your own boss, and give yourself the assignment to make a motivation plan, and to write it down. Creating your motivational plan may turn out to be the one assignment you do that ensures that you achieve your dreams.

What does a motivational plan entail?

First and foremost it includes your vision. Your vision is you manifesting your potential, becoming the reason you are here. The vision is first as you must have a worthwhile pursuit to become motivated and to keep your motivation high. Nothing is more worthwhile than becoming all you can be.

Second, your motivation plan includes some means of keeping your sucessability, your confidence in your competence, at a high level. One way to keep it at a high level is with the three step process for successability, discussed in an earlier blog:

vision >>> goals >>> tasks.

Add into your motivation plan other strategies that will help you keep your successability high.

The third part of a motivation plan is the environment. Your plan should include specific strategies you can implement to make your environment enhance your motivation. Your strategies should involve both your physical and your social environments.

The fourth part of a motivation plan is a process for continued improvement. By including such a process, you make sure that your motivation plan will keep getting better and will grow to meet changes in your life.

In order to become and stay motivated we must become intentional men and women. Being intentional men and women means we spend time figuring out who we are, our likes, our dislikes, and the things that motivate us. The motivational plan is where that all comes together.

Why not make a promise to yourself today to spend some time learning who you are? The motivational plan is a good place to start.

No man can walk down two paths

Successability, the second factor of self motivation, means confidence in your competence. The model for self motivation tells us that the more confident you are in your abilities, the more motivated you will be. There are two ways you can use this information to increase your motivation. The first is by doing things that will increase your confidence. The second is by not doing those things that decrease your confidence.

A great way for you to increase your confidence is by simply being successful, experiencing success. The expectancy value theory tells us a person will be motivated to undertake activities for which the person has a positive expectancy for success.

One thing that most people agree on is that if you spread yourself too thin, if you get involved in too many projects, you may have trouble being successful in any of them. This has been a lesson I have had to learn over and over again. Some might say I am easily distracted, but I prefer to see myself as simply curious, extremely curious. I am fascinated by so many different things. I actually pursue relatively few of them, but when I do pursue one, I take my pursuit seriously. My most recent pursuit was teaching myself options trading. Options trading is complicated. It’s also a dangerous pursuit if you haven’t educated yourself thoroughly. The most dangerous thing about it for me, however, was that I found teaching myself options trading took time away from what I knew I wanted as my primary pursuit, becoming the expert on self motivation.

Knowing what my primary pursuit is keeps me from squandering my time on other pursuits, and makes me more successful in my primary one. Guess how I know what my primary pursuit is? You’re right if you said it's my vision. My vision is what is most important to me. I very carefully and critically look at how I am spending my time. If I am spending time on pursuits that I need to spend on my vision, I need to get back on track.

I don’t mean to suggest that we all need to have one-track lives. My life should not be just about becoming the expert on self motivation. But becoming that expert has to be a priority in order for it to happen. So I spend some time on my photography, but I’ve stopped teaching myself options trading, I no longer study classical guitar, and no longer build stained glass windows.

I know myself well enough to know I will fall off the wagon again, and start on yet another fascinating pursuit. It’s who I am. But as intentional man, I also know I will eventually see the pursuit is taking up time that I need to spend on my vision. I worked hard to find my vision, and because it is my vision, I know it will motivate me to get back up on the wagon and start spending my time on my true path.

Do you find there are just too many fascinating things going on all the time? How do you keep focused on your true path? Please share with me and the other readers what you do to keep going on your path, by leaving a comment.

The role of intent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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