Blog posts covering Knowledge, Motivation and Productivity | Get Lasting Results with Mike

Force Yourself to Take Action

Check out the video above, delivered by Mel Robbins about forcing yourself to take action.

Video summary:

100 million people living in America say they are dissatisfied with their lives, that’s an awful lot of dissatisfaction. What do they and you want? It doesn’t have to sound good to other people, just be honest with yourself. If you want to lose man boobs to be able to attract a mate, then that’s fine, as long as it means something to you. Pick something.

How you get what you want? Well it’s really simple but not easy.

We live in unprecedented times, a world of information at our fingertips, we have it in the form of books (electronic and paper versions), or search engines like Google and Bing, which are easily accessible from our mobile phones and computers. There are literally thousands of blogs or websites giving you step by step instructions about how to do just about anything that’s ever been done before. So why aren’t you getting what you want? It comes down to one word. a small four latter word that is the route of your problems. The word is “Fine”. People ask you “How are you doing?” you reply, “I’m fine!”. Really, are you fine? Fine says you don’t have to do anything about it, you’re okay where you are. The result is you stay in your comfort zone. You don’t push yourself, you stay put.

Experts have calculated the odds of your very existence, taking into account all the wars and disasters that have ever happened, as being 1 in 400 trillion. Wow those odds are amazingly long, you are amazing just for being here. You are full of great ideas and impulses, but when you have one you do nothing about it. You press the snooze button, because your comfortable where you are. Let’s be real, any area of your life that you want to change, you will never feel like it when it comes to actually taking action, you’ll always prefer to procrastinate.

Activation energy as it’s been labelled by science, is required to get you to do anything new, anything outside your normal routine. Try this exercise tomorrow, set your alarm 30 minutes earlier and get up and start your day. You will come face to face with the physical force required to change behaviour. Getting out of a warm bed into a cold room requires much the same effort as taking exercise, dieting, or whatever else you want to do/achieve that’s new.

Your parents used to make you do the stuff you didn’t feel like doing, as adults it’s our own responsibility to make us do the things we don’t feel like doing, but you have to force yourself, it’s simple but not easy.

You brain is split into two halves, one side is autopilot and the other is the emergency brake. Everything outside our normal routine, anything new, usually results in the tendency to pull the emergency break and move back into autopilot (normal routine).

You’re bored because of routine and habit and doing the same things over and over again in autopilot. Your body is wired to send you signals, for instance if you need food, your brain tells you you’re hungry, if you need sex your brain tells you you’re horny. When you’re bored or dissatisfied, your brain is telling you one of your most basic needs isn’t being met, your need for exploration and growth.

Force yourself out of your head and into the world, out of your comfort zone. If you’re in your head you’re behind enemy lines. You will never feel like taking action. Those first 3 seconds you get out of bed, blow big time, but once you’re up it’s okay. Get outside, that’s where the magic is, where the 1 in 400 million exist. Act within 5 seconds to marry action with the idea/impulse, otherwise your emergency brake gets pulled and you do nothing. Practice the 5 second rule by acting within 5 seconds of the idea/impulse and see what changes happen.

Productivity: Getting things DONE

Are you feeling bogged down with an ever-growing list of things to do on your “to do list”?

“What should I start with?” you may ask. We can often feel overwhelmed to such a degree we do nothing. We procrastinate, bury our heads in the sand, we’re filled with indecision, even suffer anxiety.

We worry about, the doing, more than we, do the doing. What’s next on my list? Without a clear plan you’ll find you fill your time on non-important tasks, effectively paper shuffling your way to nowhere. The problem with “to do lists” are they are filled with activities and tasks that don’t really matter. How many of the tasks on your to-do list actually move you closer to your goal(s)? Ok some of the things we have to do day to day, like paying the bills, and buying groceries, have to be done, but where possible try to make these automated so you don’t have to waste time doing them yourself.

If you have goals you want to achieve you have to spend more time doing things that move you closer to those goals. We all have goals even if we don’t officially acknowledge them or write them down. In reality, the clearer your goals are in your conscious, and the more focused they are (not too many goals at once, diluting your time) the easier it will be to plot your route to achieving them.

It’s important to be knowledgeable about how to achieve your goals, what steps you need to take to get you from start to finish. It can often be easier to work backwards from goal completion to where you are now, asking yourself “what would I have to have done previously, to be at this point of my progress?. If you don’t know what needs doing in-between the start and finishing line, you have some research to do (that’s your next step). Once you have a clear picture of the steps/stages from start to finish, it will be much easier to know your next move as you progress towards your goal.

Getting Results: The role MOTIVATION has to play in Success

Get Results: motivation — Get Results: Motivation

Motivation is probably the single biggest area of consideration when looking to get results, to become a success, get things done, or make things happen. Why is that you may ask? Well under the umbrella of motivation come things like fear, internal conflict, inaction and plain laziness, not to mention how we are impacted by the people around us, and their effect on our motivation levels.

It really can be a minefield or mindfield as l prefer to call it. Because most, if not all motivation is in our minds. It comes to us via our inner dialogue. It’s partly due to our social conditioning, and our personal history.

Motivation has a number of components ranging from being emotionally moved enough to take action, to overcome fears that hold us in imagined constraints.

Although there is much more to it than simply using words to find inspiration, words can help us think more positively and constructively, indeed can raise our spirits and prevent the negativity of our minds from paralysing us from taking action in pursuit of our goals. I’ve including some motivational quotes to help add some positivity to our thought processes. It’s a small but meaningful start to increasing motivation. Please sign up for more in-depth insights into Getting Results here