Leveraging your motivation

In today’s posting I am going to share with you a strategy to increase the power of your motivation. You use this strategy when your motivation to do a certain thing, or not do a certain thing, just isn’t strong enough to accomplish what you want.

I first became aware of this strategy years ago, before I even started studying motivation, but it was so powerful that it stayed with me ever since. I heard it from a man who was giving a talk on weight loss. He works to keep from being overweight, and he shared that when he travels, he has struggles maintaining his diet. He told us when he flies his diet choices are severely limited. Soon after takeoff the stewardess will bring him and his fellow passengers lunch. As soon as he opens the package containing his lunch, he is confronted by the dessert, usually a brownie. The brownie entices him, but he knows he must resist; there are no brownies on his diet. So what he does, as soon as he sees the brownie, is open up the mayonnaise packet that comes with the lunch, and spreads the mayo all over the brownie. He knows that once the brownie is covered with mayo, it is not at all enticing, and he can eat his healthy sandwich and then throw away the brownie.

What occurs is the man knows his motivation to eat healthy and get slim is not as strong as he wishes it could be. It is strong enough to resist the brownie so long as there is a delicious sandwich waiting for him. It is not strong enough, however, to resist a brownie after he is done with the sandwich and has nothing else to eat to satisfy his urges. So what he does is leverage that limited motivation. By acting quickly, before the call of the brownie becomes overpowering, he is able to stay on his diet.

He didn’t refer to what he was doing as leveraging his motivation. Years later as I was writing my book, Motivate Yourself: A step by step guide to becoming all you can be, I remembered the story the man told and realized what he was doing was leveraging his motivation.

I also leverage motivation. On my way home from work I pass by a video rental store. I know that if I stop and rent a DVD, that once I eat my dinner that DVD will entice me and I will probably spend the evening watching it. I will not do what I know I need to do, work on my book and write in my blog. My motivation is not strong enough to resist a DVD on my television stand; not for the whole night. But my motivation is strong enough to make me keep my foot on the accelerator as I speed by the video store. Whereas I would need at least two hours of motivation to keep from watching the DVD once it were in my house, I only need ten seconds of motivation to keep myself from renting a video. That’s what leveraging motivation is all about, making limited motivation have a much stronger impact than you would expect it to have.

There are lots of ways you can leverage your motivation. By being creative, by being intentional man and taking charge of your motivation, you too can become a motivation powerhouse.

Distracters

In my most recent posting, I explained the concept of the detractor as anything that stands in your way of manifesting your vision. I shared with you that the most daunting type of detractor for me was the distracter.

When I talk about the distracter I am referring to those things that temporarily knock me off course as I pursue my vision, my goals and my tasks. Telling you what my most powerful distracter is will explain very well what a distracter is. It might be yours, too. It’s the television. In twelve step programs they tell you that sobriety or being drug free occurs one day at a time. For me, a distracter keeps me from achieving my goals, one day at a time.

A distracter doesn’t knock me off the path. It’s too subtle for that. Instead it temporarily seduces me from my path. Instead of writing a blog entry, I sit down in front of the television and watch mixed martial arts on Spike, or flip over to HBO to see whether an action movie is playing. And it doesn’t matter if I have seen it before, I’ll watch it again!

Other common distracters are alcohol, illicit drug use, going to clubs, hanging out. You know your distracter better than anyone else (except maybe your significant other).

Distracters are generally more powerful when we are supposed to be doing a task that isn’t particularly exciting. Exciting tasks have motivating appeal of there own which is likely to overcome the lure of the distracter, but a boring task may not. Even though we know the task is important, in that it will move us closer to achieving a goal, it may not have a lot of inherent appeal. Consequently, we are more likely to be distracted from tasks that involve drudgery.

It’s important that you look carefully at yourself and figure out what your distracters are, if you don’t already know. Once you know what they are, distracters are not usually too difficult to overcome. The problem is, they must continually be overcome. It’s not a one time battle. The good news is losing a battle occasionally will not keep you from achieving your dreams. That's the key, making sure it only happens occasionally.

Social Environment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Environment, The Third Factor of Self Motivation

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

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

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

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

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

The Ball in the Box Game

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

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

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

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

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

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