Check out our Get Results quotes….
Get Results Quotes
Category: Motivation
The Opposing Forces of Motivation
Motivation lies at the heart of getting results. Without it you can’t get anything done. However motivation is made up of opposing forces, which makes progress more difficult than it otherwise would be. Let’s first look at the forces that help us move closer to our goals these forces are made up of internal and external supporting motivations.
Internal Supporting Motivations
Become Self Awareness
Self awareness is a key aspect of motivation, simply because it allows you to know why you do and don’t do certain things. If you can hack your subconscious and align your goals in such a way that they fit in with “who you are”, then the journey to achieving them will be a much easier one. This article is designed to allow you to discover and question what is going on inside your head, and force you to take a deeper look at what is helping you and more importantly. hindering you making progress towards your goals.
Take Responsibility
It is so important that you take responsibility for your results. Stop blaming your situation, your living arrangements, your job, stop blaming other people around you, like your spouse, your boss. When you pass blame to someone or something else, you also pass power, the very power you need to do something about it.
When you take responsibility, you empower yourself to find a solution and take action. It is a huge mental shift in the way you approach situations. You become a problem solver instead of a just a problem spotter. You access the creative part of your brain, rather than being in “wait and see what happens” mode, hoping for someone else to sort it out for you.
Tap into your Purpose
If you have purpose, a strong reason why you want or even need your goal, and you desire that goal so much, taking action is going to be that much easier. If you’re about to lose your home because you can’t make your next mortgage payment, you’re more likely to take that shitty job, than you would if you had a years worth of savings in your bank account. What’s changed, your purpose has. You suddenly have to do something, you have to earn some money or else. This might not be an aspirational purpose like “bringing an end to poverty” or “finding a cure for cancer” but it is a purpose, the purpose of getting money to pay your bills, so you still have a roof over your family’s head. If that purpose is strong, or as desperate enough (as in the case of the previous example) you are more likely to take action, that you might not otherwise have taken. Purpose doesn’t have to be some romanticised great deed, it just has to work for you, and get you closer to your goals.
Form good habits
Habits are formed to ease the burden on thought processes. We don’t have to mentally process every little thing we do, especially with regards to things we do on a regular basis. We form habits that we just do, without thinking about. This frees our brains to concentrate on other things.
As part of this process we often form bad habits that no longer serve us. The best way of getting rid of bad habits is by replacing them with good ones. To do this you have to begin to take action on a regular basis and do something that serves your goals. If you want to be a writer, start to write 200-300 words a day. Do this everyday for 30-60 days, after which you will have formed a habit of doing it. Then up the word count by a further 200. when you have done that everyday for a month or so, up it again.
Embrace Change and risk taking
One of the main reasons we fail to take action, is fear, we will deal with fear later in the article when discussing blocking motivations, you might want to read that part of the article first and come back to this section.
“Embracing change” and “risk taking” are the same thing. We resist change because we fear the uncertainty that “change” brings with it. Embracing change is a difficult mind shift, but an essential one, if we’re to grow into our goals.
Many people falsely believe there exists a status quo, some fictional place where everything stays the same forever. The reality of course is that everything is always changing, and change is part of life. Life and change are inseparable, so face the truth, and stop resisting it. Be excited by the opportunities that come about because of it.
Risk is also a part of life, we risk death every time we walk out the door, every time we get into the car. We risk embarrassment every time we open our mouths, we risk loss of possessions every time we leave the house empty, or every time we put something in our pocket or bag when we go out. We can try to mitigate risk but we can’t live without being exposed to it.
Live with Gratitude
I’ve included gratitude here because, gratitude adds some perspective to our thoughts. If we are grateful for what we have now, our health, our family and friends, our ability to reason, and make decisions, our ability to communicate and get on with other people, if we are grateful for everything we have, we don’t need to take the attainment of our goals too seriously, so that the fear of not attaining them, paralyses us from reaching optimal performance. We want to achieve our goals but not so badly that not achieving them means we drop into a great depression. Make life a game to be enjoyed, not one that feels like life or death depends on your success, because in most cases it really doesn’t.
External supporting motivations
External supporting motivations come from things we get from other people rather than from within us.
Incentives
Incentives can be tangible and intangible. Tangible incentives can include money rewards, a chance of winning something like a holiday or prize. Tangible incentives are used to reward us for outstanding performance at work for instance.
Intangible incentives on the other hand are things like getting a pat-on-the-back, or a “well done”, a “thank you for your effort” from someone we respect or have done something for.
Incentives push us to behave in a certain way usually for the benefit of others, but we can use them to help us get results for ourselves. An accountability buddy for instance can spur us on, say “well done” when we do something good, and at the same time put us right when we fail to do it or do something that is counter-productive to our goal attainment.
Internal Blocking Motivations
Fear of ….
Well fear has such a grip on the human psyche, that it stops the majority of people ever pursuing their dreams. Fear is a perceived possible future devaluation of our sense of self, which simply means that we fear the thought of something that “might” happen to us or to things, people or ideas that are important to us. We fear death, embarrassment, rejection, being negatively judged by others, disappointment, being vulnerable, loss, poverty, the unknown, uncertainty, change, being let down by others, some people even fear success. In fact we fear most things. Fear is a thought about the future, and as we can’t do anything about the future, until it becomes “this moment”. Fear is nothing more than a made up thought or series of thoughts that might happen, but is much more likely not to happen. Stop focusing on what might go wrong and start dreaming about what might go right.
Limiting Beliefs and Values
We’ve all heard the stories of kids that were told they wouldn’t amount to anything, only to go on to become big successes. These people felt they had something to prove, and this motivated them to succeed, but for many, negative reinforcement can kill their motivation, and keep them trapped in mediocrity.
Social conditioning -the environment where we grow up, the people we are surrounded by, the stories we are told has a big impact on how our beliefs and values are formed through childhood and as teenagers, and these values have a major impact on our lives as adults. As the saying goes “If you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right”, the question is where did this belief come from?
Our thoughts are formed by our experiences which are shaped by our actions, reactions, and behaviours which are affected by our thoughts. It’s a cycle that feeds itself. It can be a virtuous cycle or downward spiral. If you can feed your psyche with positive thoughts, beliefs and values, this will positively affect your actions and behaviours, and this will in turn dictate the quality of your experiences and the way people react to you, for the better.
Conflicted Thoughts
If you feel conflicted about your goals you may feel you want them on the one hand, but also feel in some way you don’t want them. When you feel this way, you might sabotage your progress. you might want to be wealthy, but at the same time feel it will ruin important relationships you have presently, and this dampens your motivation to take action to pursue your goal.
Another type of conflict comes in the form of “want” versus “should” situations. If you have a goal to be thinner, and healthier, but you see a delicious looking cream cake that you really want to eat, you are going to feel torn between “wanting” the pleasure of eating the cream cake and knowing that you “should” reframe from doing so, if you are to achieve your weight loss goal. If you give in and eat the cream cake you are not just failing to moving closer to your goal, but are in-fact moving further away from it, which is likely to make you feel even worse. “Wanting”, more often than not outweighs “should” as a mental choice calculation. This is why we so often give in to temptation. The best way to overcome this is avoid situations that present such a choice in the first place. If there is no cream cake waiting for you in the fridge, you aren’t going to feel you are missing out on it.
Moving forward
Overcoming the blocking motivations by strengthening the supporting motivations is the name of the game. If we can have stronger supporting motivations and hack our blocking motivations we stand a better chance of progressing towards our goals.
Become more self aware, take responsibility, have a strong purpose, replace bad habits with good ones, embrace change and risk, be happy and grateful with the positives in your life today, get help from others and get them to reward you for good behaviour. Be less fearful of your imagination, lose those limiting beliefs and straighten out your conflicted thoughts about your goals. Do this and success is your next destination.
Check out our “Ultimate Guides” relating to business, marketing, health and wellbeing.
Self Improvement is the Secret to Success
Self improvement or self development as its also known, is key to improving the quality of your life. Jim Rohn said it best when he said “You can have more than you’ve got, because you can become more than you are. The other side of this coin is unless you change what you are, you’ll always have what you got.”
#1 Emotional Intelligence
One way to improve yourself and your results is improving your Emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is seen as a predictor of highly successful people. Individuals that are high in Emotional Intelligence tend to be emotionally balanced, in tune with their gut instinct. They have an innate ability to listen, empathise, creatively problem-solve, and understand the why behind the actions of others. Gary Vaynerchuk is a strong advocate of Emotional Intelligence, he believes it to be one of his greatest strengths, and key to his success.
Gratitude
One way of tapping into your Emotional Intelligence is to give gratitude for what you already have. Lets call it an appreciation perspective. If you live a life of striving, it’s really easy to get lost in that striving. You are always looking to the future to find happiness, and as a result you are internally torn between where you are now and where you want to be.
This can lead to negative emotions, even chronic negative emotions such as anger, frustration, despair. Such emotions can adversely impact the quality of your life, even ruin it. While motivation is indeed key to driving action, you shouldn’t allow it to get out of control.
I recommend using gratitude to help you gain perspective. We can all benefit from remembering we are here by the grace of god. Our lives can be cut short at any moment, that alone is worth a great deal of gratitude. If you are healthy, mentally and physically, again you have a great deal to feel blessed about. If you find it hard to internalise such gratitude simply by thinking about it, do a few weeks volunteering at a local kids cancer unit, hospice, or care home to gain some much needed perspective.
Manage Stress
Another way of managing Emotional Intelligence is by managing Stress. Stress is caused by a fear of “a future potential devaluation in your sense of self”. You might fear there is a gap in your ability and the requirements of a future event, in other words you might fear you aren’t going to be strong enough, smart enough, wealthy enough, or good enough to cope with something that might (or might not) happen sometime in the future. Often the worry is greater than the actual event. Stop telling yourself stories and embellishing the downsides and worst case scenarios, instead be aware of the risk and try to mitigate it as much as possible, there are always ways around obstacles. Worry and fear are thoughts and only exist in your mind. When the event comes round you will either find you can deal with it much better than you anticipated, or that it doesn’t turn out to be half as bad as you thought it would be. This happens ninety nine times out of a hundred.
Become Self Aware
Another way of improving Emotional intelligence is by being Self aware. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses. Knowing what you like to do and don’t like to do. Instead of burying your head in the sand and trying to ignore these things, be honest and open with yourself. Confront them head on and work out the best way to either overcome them or find a work-around solution.
Self Reflection
Something that is closely related to self awareness is self reflection. Honestly auditing yourself, your thoughts, your actions, your performance, your results good and bad. Stand up to them. There is no failure in life, failure is a chance to learn something, make yourself better and move on.
Work on self first then observe others
To improve emotional intelligence you need to work first on yourself. Once you open yourself up to honest analysis, you will see with greater clarity what shapes the actions of other people around you. You will understand their motives better. You will pick up on the subtle signals and be able to read between the lines. You should as a result be more empathetic, more open to communication, by listening better you learn much more. Empathy is one of the greatest skills you can develop in your personal and business life.
Develop a Feedback Loop
As part of your growth, you should be open to, even encourage constructive criticism from people you trust. Encourage a feedback loop that helps you improve your game. Now this part comes with a caveat. You should have a strong sense of what you are about, who you are, what you want. Otherwise you can easily be manipulated into following other peoples agendas, or take on their insecurities and fears.
Its also important to understand that you are not going to get on, or be liked by everyone you meet, there will always be haters. “Haters gotta hate” as the saying goes, and it’s important to not let these people chip away at your self-esteem simply because they don’t want you to get on in life, or want to bring you do a peg or two. Ignore the views of these people, they don’t understand you and their opinion isn’t relevant, they probably have their own internal issues shaping their view.
Encourage honest, constructive feedback from people you genuinely trust and respect. Close family are not usually good for this because often they project their own fear and insecurities onto you and what you are trying to do, they don’t want you to get hurt so tell you not to do it. Instead of turning to family, try to find mentors or role models that have done what you want to do and encourage them to share their experience, and advice with you.
Assume the Best in Others’
Assuming the best in others is another way of improving your emotional intelligence. The human condition is driven by the need to avoid pain and desire to be more. This condition makes people irrational, isolated, and selfish. Most people operate in this mode almost unconsciously. It is their self preservation instincts that are ruling their behaviour, and we shouldn’t mistake this to be who they are. People are good at heart, they are possessed by their Ego’s, for more about this check out my wellbeing guide.
Become a Giver
One last point about emotional intelligence is one of becoming a Giver. Give back, or just give. The world would be so much better if people were more giving. Giving of their time, their attention, their love, their patience, their understanding. Looking at each of your relationships from a “what can I give to this person” will open up a vastly more expansive life than you currently live.
#2 Having a Strong work Ethic
Having a strong work ethic is also vital when it comes to self improvement. If you’re not willing to invest the time and effort in working on yourself, than you’ll just have to be content with where you are and what you have now. Gary Vaynerchuk advocates “working your ass off” to get what you want in life. “Hustling” your way towards you goal, instead of watching every episode of House of Cards. If you’re not where you want to be, the only way to get there is, to take action, massive action. The maths is simple, there are 24 hours in a day, if you sleep for 8, that leaves 16 hours. If you work 9 of those hours, you still have 7 hours to work on developing yourself.
While having a good work ethic is important, it’s not just about putting the time in but rather it’s about working smart. It’s about being effective rather than busy. Jim Rohn says “Don’t spend major time on minor things”, and this is so true. Success won’t come from hustling 16 hours a day unless you’re doing the right things during that time.
In his book “The One Thing”, Gary Keller offers up a great focusing question that you can ask yourself and keep asking yourself to make sure you’re not wasting your time on unimportant activities. “What’s the one thing you can do now, such by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary”. I’m not going to go into detail about this question here. If you want a detailed explanation, check out the book for yourself below
The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
#3 Work on your strengths
Focus on developing your strengths rather than wasting time on bringing your weaknesses up to speed. Gary Vaynerchuk advocates “doubling down on your strengths and punting your weaknesses”. It’s good advice, even though it goes against the conventional advice of working on your weaknesses. Why is it good advice? Well because generally your strengths will be the activities you are naturally inclined towards. They are likely to be things you enjoy doing, and as a result will be more willing to do going forward. There is generally a reason why you do what you do and don’t do what you don’t do. It comes back to self awareness and knowing yourself better.
So it’s vitally important to know what you’re good at and not so good at. for instance, not everyone is cut out for business and being an entrepreneur, just because it’s the sexy thing to do at the moment, doesn’t mean you should do it. Be honest with yourself.
Stay in your lane, make your knowledge deep and narrow, rather than wide and shallow. To stand out you should aim to be exceptional at one thing rather than average at a lot of different things.
Summary
So there you have it, work hard to improve yourself. Consider it a lifelong project, one that you will never actually finish, but which keeps you pushing yourself to be a better person throughout your entire life. Be a master of what you know and a student of what you don’t know. Never take the view that you know all that you need to know, never. Be open to new ideas, open to new ways of doing things. Don’t be content with doing things the best you can do them, but aim to do them the best way they can be done. Most of all enjoy your personal journey of self improvement.
Check out our Ultimate guides for some self help information.
Why Did You Fail To Achieve Your Goal?
So why is it you aren’t getting results? Why did something not work out for you? Why did you fail to achieve a goal?
Is it because you aren’t capable? You haven’t got the necessary skills to be effective? You just can’t figure out what went wrong,? Well if you said yes to any of these questions, you might be tempted to throw your hands in the air, give it up as a fail, and move onto something else.
Stay stuck
The trouble with this approach is, you will inevitably reach this point again, maybe not in relation to what you have done this time, but for sure, you will for something else, and what will you do then, give up and move onto something else and so it continues. You’re hitting the outer barrier of your capability and failing to push past it. If you can’t break through this barrier you’ll have to be content with your present situation. Be grateful for what you have, and settle for that, and many people do just that, they settle.
Lack of resources
When asked why they failed to achieve something, or why they did not achieve their goal, people often say that they didn’t know enough, didn’t have the knowledge, know-how, didn’t have enough time, money, or they didn’t get the right support from colleagues, family members or friends. What they mean by this is they didn’t have the resources. Time, money, knowledge, motivation, and support are all resources.
RESOURCEFULNESS is what counts
The truth is, it’s not a lack of resources that’s the problem, although these may indeed be lacking, but it’s resourcefulness which is missing, and this is the defining factor of failure. Resourcefulness comes from being in touch with your emotions. It’s emotions that drive you to take action.
We must tap into our passions and desires, find inspiration to pursue a cause bigger than us, we must desire the end goal enough to be driven forward, and have enough grit and determination to push through any obstacle that we will inevitable encounter.
Find MEANING in what you do
How do we do this? Well for a start we must make our actions meaningful by aligning them to a meaningful goal. Each action should contribute to the acquisition of that goal, steady but sure. Aim for a goal that is deeply desired, with great passion. A goal that challenges us, and is specific enough that we can clearly define it to ourselves.
Seek MASTERY
We must understand and believe that ability is not fixed or gifted, but comes from practice, repetition and the pursuit of excellence. Having a growth mindset will motivate progress, and help banish thoughts of having limitations. Be a master of what you know and an apprentice of what you don’t. Seek functional excellence in your chosen pursuit, and know that the only limitations we have are those we impose on ourselves or allow others to talk us into believing.
Be Creative
Being creative is about remaining open minded, and having the ability to stand back and see things from a different perspective, making the most of your resources (strengths, abilities, knowledge, tools, networks), You need to be able to look at your situation from a variety of angles and perspectives and then make use of what you have at your disposal to help resolve your problem. Look for ways to apply unrelated ways of doing things to your situation. Many innovative new products or services have made use of this approach, rather than trying to come up with something completely new. Why try to reinvent the wheel, when you can build on the work done by others.
Be Proactive
Take responsibility, if you try to blame others, you relinquish your power to take the initiative. Be on the front foot, rather than waiting for things to drop in your lap or come to you.
Be Connected
Being connected to information and people is a must. If you have the ability to acquire tools, and techniques and find, organise and more importantly use information effectively, you increase your ability to solve problems outside your current span of knowledge and capabilities.
If you are able to utilise other peoples’ resources, people like family, friends, colleagues, and/or associates, you increase your resourcefulness exponentially. It’s often the shortest and easiest path to getting a positive conclusion, but is a skill that needs to be developed and nurtured over time.
Start NOW!
To get better results, be more resourceful, by being determined to acquire the necessary resources to get the job done, no matter what, find a way. Find resources that will improve your KNOWLEDGE, MOTIVATION and PRODUCTIVITY. Where will you find these? Well check out our ULTIMATE RESOURCE GUIDES currently covering Weight loss, Business and Marketing, they’re a great place to begin.
Is Fear holding you back?
Fear results from a perceived devaluation of self, which also includes anything we’re attached to, such as ideas, beliefs, people, memories, our body’s, even our favourite football team etc. Fear is an evolutionary emotion that triggers our fight or flight response to keep our “self” alive (preserve life).
Although we can still face life threatening situations, they are less common than they were when we fighting sabre tooth tigers.
Because we absorb things we value into our “sense of self”, we can feel the same fear that we experience when our life may actually be threatened, in none life threatening situations, such as talking in public, and watching our favourite team participating in a penalty shoot out.
In life, fear can hold us back from pursuing our Goals by fooling us into thinking, we won’t be good enough, or we’ll be happier staying where we are.
In business, fear of taking action can be a result of a perceived devaluation of our sense of self:
• Failing, and not being as capable as we would like to believe we are (feel bad due devalued “sense of self”)
• Not being able to cope with the demands of our success (devaluation of “control” due to loss of control, “harmony” and devaluation to “family life”)
• Having to spend all our time working (devaluation of “family” and “leisure time”)
• Fear of the unknown (possible devaluation of “harmony” or “comfort zone”)
Manage FEAR and conflicts by identifying them, acknowledging and working through them to resolution. If your goal doesn’t accommodate what you fear you will lose in achieving it, you will remain torn.
There is always a way to achieving a goal and resolving any fears you may have in the acquisition of that goal, which are, after all, only real in your mind.
Jim Carey said it best
“There is a huge difference between a dog that is going to eat you in your mind and an actual dog that is GOING TO EAT YOU”.
Check out iamspirituality.com for more information about how your emotions work, and listen to Jim Carey’s speech below for some inspiration in following your goals. Choose Love over Fear.
If you would like to read more articles focused on FEAR, click here.
For more about MOTIVATION.
Pedometer Apps – Measuring Your Fitness Progress
A great way to monitor your walking or running progress it to use a Pedometer. Even better, use a Pedometer App on your phone so you have it on you all the time. A great FREE solution is the Pedometer Android App by Tayutau which can be found on Google play here.
You can easily share screenshots like the one above on social media with a couple of clicks.
A useful added feature is the ability to look at daily, weekly and monthly charts.
Having the Pedometer App running in the background, will drain your battery quicker than normal, but is worth having an insight into how many steps you actually take in a day.
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.
Getting Results: The role MOTIVATION has to play in Success
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
