Motivation
How can you become strong motivated and stay so?
Do you ever feel that you are a superior being, just waiting to emerge? You can feel sometimes its presence, don’t you? It’s that voice that encourages you to really do something with your life. When you act in accordance with that voice, it feels like a you’re a whole new person. You feel like a god with the body of a man. You are bold and courageous. You’re strong. You‘re unstoppable.
But then you turn back to reality and soon those moments are bygones. Where did that strong voice disappeared? Could you suffer with grandstanding delusions?
It’s not hard to place yourself in a temporary emotional state. Go to any of Tony Robbins seminar and he will make you dance between the lines, feel totally motivated. Put your favorite music quickly, sit up straight, breathe strong, chest out, shoulders withdrawn. Walk strut, like a superhero. Shout “Yes!” Beat your chest a few times. You look like a dolt, but the strategy really works.
But then you go home and emotional motivation fades. Your great ideas now seem impractical. How many times has happened temporarily to be inspired with an idea like “I want to start my own business” and in a week idea to be forgotten? When you are motivated you have inspirational ideas, but fail to maintain that level of motivation during the action. So how can you achieve a strong motivation to keep it?
Emotional Motivation
According to Tony Robbins, the key motivation is the state management. This means you’re conditioned to feel a certain way through techniques such as anchoring (an emotional connection with a physical trigger, such as chest beating).
When Tony hits his chest while speaking, he activates anchors that where preconditioned. The disadvantage is that you have to continue to work and activate these anchors and recondition them regularly to keep your motivation. That means a lot of chest beating.
Another method suggested by Tony is writing on a paper the pleasure you associate with an action and the suffering that occurs when that action it’s not accomplished. Again, the idea is to stir your emotions so you’ll be motivated to do that action. This kind of motivation is usually of short duration, even when emotions involved are very intense.
Have you ever seen a motivational speaker? If it’s good he will have an emotional effect on you and will make you feel motivated. But in a day or two motivational momentum fade and you’ll return to normal. You can listen to hundreds of motivational speakers and experience an emotional yo-yo effect, but it won’t last.
I think this happens especially to people whose thinking is technically oriented. We are used to think with our head. We are all emotional creatures at some level, but our emotion detectors regularly clean our minds of everything that does not satisfy our logic.
Intellectual Motivation
I used to get frustrated when my emotional conditioning evaporate after a while. Eventually I realized that guiding by the intellect, not by emotions, it was not that bad. I just had to learn to use my mind as an effective motivational tool.
I stopped using emotional motivation techniques and I decided to see if I can get motivated by intellect. I thought that if I was not feeling motivated to follow a particular purpose, maybe there is a logical reason for not doing it. Perhaps I wasn’t using my logical enough to understand this.
I’ve noticed that when I have strong intellectual reasons to do something I usually find it difficult to take action. I am motivated to do exercise regularly because it‘s an intelligent and resonable thing. There’s noo need to get emotional excited to take me to the gym. I just simply go.
But when my mind consider a goal as inappropriate at a certain level, usually I feel stuck. I understand that this is how my mind tells me that that goal was wrong from the very beginning.
Sometimes a goal seems to make sense at one level, but when you look deeper it becomes clear that the purpose is not recommended. Let’s say you work in sales and you propose to increase your income by 20% and become a better seller. This seems a reasonable and intelligent purpose. But it’s possible to come across all sorts of internal bottlenecks when try to put this into practice. You should feel motivated, but you don’t.
The problem may be that at a deeper level, your mind knows that we do not want to work in sales at all. In reality you want to be a musician. So, no matter how you try to advance in sales, for you it will always be a motivational dead end. You’ll never convince your mind to abandon the dream of becoming a leading musician.
When you propose for small and shy goals you suffer from a perpetual lack of motivation. You can try all existing emotional motivation techniques, but you‘re wasting your time. Deep down you already know the truth.
Just gather your courage to acknowledge your true desires. Then you will need to confront with self-doubt and fear that made you self-limiting. You cant avoid this if you want to experience lasting motivation. Paradoxically, the real key to motivation is to propose goals that scare you.
I recommend you work on these blocks with your diary. Write a question such as: Why do I feel unmotivated to achieve this goal? Then write any answer comes to mind.
Often you will find that the source of your blockage is that you have goals too small. You leave your fears, excuses and limiting beliefs hold you back. Your subconscious mind knows that you settle for too little, so it won’t give you motivational fuel until you take a stand and face the fears and recognize your true heart desire. Once you finally decide to face your fears and drop the excuses, your motivation will unleash. When I apply this process I discover new goals that seem unreasonably high. I admit it, but I feel unable to reach them. However, when finally I take a stand and set goals beyond my comfort zone somehow I come to feel motivated I find in me all sorts of unexpected resources that helps.
It seems counter-intuitive that the motivation should be highest when you set goals beyond your comfort zone, but I have seen this is repeated too many times to ignore it. Perhaps we should aim for big, incredible, daring goals to feel truly motivated.
Maybe small goals are not sufficient to unleash motivational energy. If a goal seems too easy, we will not use all our internal resources. Only when we plan unreasonable objectives all internal resources emerge including motivation and enthusiasm.
When I set a goal big enough and challenging I feel motivated to follow it because my intellect fully supports me. I simply wake up doing what needs to be done. Without no chest beating.