Overcoming a defeatist attitude. Part 2

In my most recent posting I shared with you how a defeatist attitude can rob you of your motivation. It does this by negatively impacting your successability, your confidence in your competence. I encouraged you to identify those things that made you feel you were not capable of achieving your dreams. It is only by knowing what those things are, that we can address them.

Once you have identified them, your social environment can be very helpful in fixing them and thereby increase your confidence. Your social environment includes all the people and organizations that surround you or that are available to you. Your social environment is helpful because it contains resources that can help you fix these problems.

Let’s look at some of the ways we can use our social environment to increase our confidence.

If your lack of confidence is because you lack certain skills, you can use resources in your social environment to gain these skills. A source for learning those skills may be as close as your present job; find out if your present employer offers on the job training. You may have to look outside your job, maybe contacting a local community college or technical school. On-line training is a wonderful resource for learning skills, as learning can take place in your own home, at a time when it is convenient for you.

Maybe your lack of confidence is because you don’t have any contacts; you feel you don’t know the people you need to in order to open the doors that need to be opened. If this is your identified problem, take advantage of organizations in your social environment in which you can network to make those important business contacts.

If your lack of confidence is due to a feeling that you just aren’t the type of person who does whatever your dream is, you need to find an organization where you can practice the traits you feel you need to develop. For example, if your dream is to be a sales person but you feel you are too shy to speak to people, join a social business club and learn in a safe environment how to mingle.

Your social environment is as big as you want it to be. There is an organization to meet just about any need you have.

Be creative in utilizing the resources in your social environment. They can give you a big boost in your motivation.

Using positive public pressure to motivate yourself.

As an author and speaker on motivation, I make it a habit to read what other people are writing about motivation. I am currently reading and enjoying a book I recently downloaded, called The Essential Motivation Handbook, by Leo Babauta and Eric Hamm. The book, which is a series of informational and inspiring essays on different facets of motivation, is available at Leo’s web site, zenhabits.net . Leo recommends that you read the book in little bits, and then put them into action. I can see the descriptive table of contents being very helpful when you find yourself unmotivated for a particular reason. Just skim through the table of contents and find the essay that relates to your problem.

When I read writings by other people I like to see how what they write fits into the model for self motivation I created. If it does, it corroborates the validity of my model. If it doesn’t, but I agree with what they have written, it creates some cognitive dissonance, but I invariably learn something new, and become better able to manifest my vision as a teacher of self motivation.

For those of you who are not yet familiar with the model for self motivation, it goes like this:

MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).

The model means that any positive impact on any of the three factors to the right of the equals sign will create an increase in your motivation. The more you are in tune with your vision, your purpose for being on this planet, the more motivated you will be. The higher your successability, your confidence in your competence, the higher your motivation will be. The better your environment, both your physical environment (the place where you do your work) and your social environment (the people and organizations that surround you) the greater your motivation.

In The Essential Motivation Handbook, I particularly liked an essay entitled “The Only Two Secrets to Motivating Yourself You’ll Ever Need.” The two secrets are positive public pressure and enjoyment. By positive public pressure, Leo means telling people, family, friends and co-workers exactly what you are going to do, and letting them create gentle, positive pressure on you to carry out your plans. By enjoyment, Leo means making the way you carry out your plans enjoyable. If your plan is to write a blog, for example, make it a blog about something you enjoy writing about, or something you are passionate about.

The two secrets fit very nicely into the model for self motivation. The positive public pressure is elicited from part of your environment, specifically your social environment. The model tells us that increasing the beneficial impact of your social environment is one way to increase your motivation. Leo presents some great strategies for utilizing your social environment to positively impact your motivation.

The second secret, enjoying your work, relates to the vision. I can’t imagine anything giving you more joy than becoming who you were meant to be, living up to your potential. The more personally meaningful and valuable your vision is, the more motivating it will be.

Motivation is what makes the difference between merely having dreams and living your dreams. What dreams do you have that you would like to live?

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Leveraging motivation with your social environment

In an earlier posting, I discussed the concept of leveraging your motivation. I explained it was a strategy you could use to increase the power of your motivation. When your motivation to do a certain thing just isn’t strong enough to accomplish what you want, you do an intermediate thing for which you do have enough motivation, and that intermediate thing accomplishes the bigger thing.

I’ll give an example. I know if I have a DVD in my house, it may take more motivation than I have to not watch it, and instead work on my blog. I will need lots of motivation to resist it. If I want to work on my blog for two hours, it will take two hours of motivation to resist that DVD, because for those two hours, the DVD in my house will be tempting me. I drive right by the video store on my way home from work, so it would be very easy for me to just pull into the video store and pick up a DVD.

What I do instead is use motivational leveraging by driving by the video store without stopping. I do have enough motivation to not stop at the video store and rent a DVD. It only takes ten seconds of motivation to keep driving past the video store. But those ten seconds of motivation are leveraged into the two hours of motivation that a DVD in my house would have required. The result is the same, two hours of work on my blog, but it took a lot less motivation.

I recently became aware of another way to use motivational leveraging. It involves my social environment. Unlike my physical environment, which is my physical surroundings, my social environment consists of the people and organizations that surround me.

A great way to use motivational leveraging in your social environment is with coaches and trainers.

I hired a coach, John Fahey, for my strength training. I use this man for three reasons. The first is for his superior knowledge. He is a fanatic about weight training and is constantly studying and trying out different methods of weight training. We use kettle bells like the Russians do. I pay him instead of having to read all the literature and trying out the methods myself. The second reason I use John is to make sure my form is good. With bad form I don’t get the results I get with good form, and I am more likely to injure myself. The third reason I use him is to leverage my motivation. I know I don’t have enough motivation to go to the gym and stay there for an hour and a half working out, but I do have enough motivation to drive to his house twice a week if I have an appointment with him. Therefore, I have two standing appointments, so I manage to get to his house at the appointed times.

Once I am there, he will encourage me and inspire me to keep working, and will, in fact, push me to increase my weights and my reps. The limited amount of motivation I have, strategically applied, has far greater results than it would have applied directly to working out. The proof is in the larger sport jacket sizes. In my eight years at a local gym, I stayed at a size 38. In the two years I have worked with John, I have grown two jacket sizes; I am now a 42. The growth is mainly in my shoulders, and some in my chest.

Another part of my social environment is my consultant/publicist for my book, Wendy Kurtz. I pay her for her knowledge and experience as well, of course, but also to increase my motivation. She is the reason I post two blogs every week, every Sunday and Wednesday. I have enough motivation, without her, to maybe blog once a week, but she encourages me and inspires me, and keeps my focused on my vision, helping people achieve their dreams by teaching them how to motivate themselves.

These are just two examples of how I use my social environment to leverage my motivation. There are opportunities in your social environment to leverage your motivation.

Trainers and consultants cost money, but it is money well spent if it helps move you further on your path to achieving your dreams. But if you absolutely cannot afford to hire a coach, a peer partner can work very well. As your peer partner motivates you, you motivate your peer partner. You can also join clubs and organizations which can increase your motivation as you work on your vision.

What ways can you think of to leverage your social environment? Please leave a comment to share your way with fellow readers.