Too much has been made out of motivation. W-A-A-A-A-Y too much. The truth? Motivation just isn’t all that complicated when you take a closeup look at it. In its simplest terms, motivation is a desire and decision to do a task… and that desire and decision are strong enough to drown out the urge to wander off and do other things.

To put it another way, when we want this more than we want that we move to make it so.

With the new year coming up in another month, a lot of us will be setting new goals, starting important new projects, and making a list of new year’s resolutions. To help you get ready well in advance, I’m starting a new series of articles and teleseminars on motivation and goal setting. Also a new BullsEye Club for training in simple, easy self motivation, but more about that later…

So – to better understand how motivation works, let’s first take a look at how DE-motivation functions. In other words, let’s examine what we do when we motivate ourselves to be DEmotivated.

You’re facing a task that you’re not exactly eager to do – maybe it’s taking out the trash. As you think about it, you’re aware of your long-standing feelings about the chore: Your reluctance, your distaste for handling the trash, your feelings that “man, I don’t LIKE doing this.” Those feelings all come bubbling up as soon as the thought of trash crosses your mind.

(Note – your particular “hate task” may not have anything to do with trash. It might be making the beds, or washing the dishes, or mowing the lawn, or washing the car, or picking up the clothes lying around.)

But why do those feelings of reluctance come bubbling up so easily? No mystery there… it’s long practice, pure and simple. You’ve felt this way about trash since you can remember (and may have even absorbed those feelings from parents or older siblings when you were still too young to be aware of it).

In other words, it’s a habit.

Your habitual thinking makes you exactly who you are today. Including your avoidance of taking out the trash (and other prejudices).

And motivation to jump in and tackle what we DO want is exactly the same process.

Now let’s put that simple bit of knowledge to use. Today, guest author Kerry Sullivan gives us a sure-fire method for…

Motivation – How to Get it Done
By Kerry Sullivan

How often have you heard someone say, “I don’t feel like it,” or “I have no motivation?” Yet these same people want the motivation to finish whatever it is they lack motivation for. We have all been in those shoes. We sometimes lack the drive to get something done.

There are situation where we all have high motivation. Hunger is often a good example of this. When you are famished and ready to eat your own body weight in food, chances are you’re pretty good at devouring some food and solving your hunger.

The great news is that you can use this type of high motivation to have high motivation for anything. For you to get motivation, a specific pattern happens in your head. When this pattern is initiated you get motivated.

Here is how you figure out your own pattern. I will use myself as an example. When I’m hungry my thought pattern operates like this:

1. I state either out loud or in my head, “I’m hungry!” or “I need food!”
2. I then start visualizing different types of food choices.
3. I then associate the taste and a picture of the food with a good feeling of having my hunger satisfied.
4. I then take action to feed myself and walk to the kitchen.

Let’s say I now have little motivation to take out the trash. I can take the same thought pattern and give myself motivation. Example:

1. I state in my head or out loud, “I need to take out the trash,” or “I want to take out the trash.”
2. I visualize myself taking out the trash.
3. I associate a good feeling with taking out the trash, such as “when it’s done, I will feel as though I have accomplished something.”
4. I get up a take out the trash.

You can now do the same thing. Write out what steps you go through in your head for things that you have high motivation for.

You may have more or fewer steps than I do. Your steps may be very different than mine, too, as everyone’s motivation strategy is uniquely theirs and perfect for them. Before you act to get something done, there will be some type of mental pattern going on. This pattern is represented by your senses as a visualization–touching, feeling, sound and/or smell.

You will put the senses together in your head in order to complete that for which you are highly motivated.

When you lack motivation the pattern is not the same. Thus, you only need to put your motivation pattern into place to get your motivation back, and then . . . shazam! You got your motivation “A” game.

For more on how to live at your highest level go to http://www.heretorock.com

Back to Charles:
Learning from and using your own patterns is the best, most sure-fire shortcut in existence for getting things done. We don’t need any magical, mystical, super-advanced, hyper-jargon-wonkie technique to motivate ourselves. We’re already motivating ourselves every day of our lives.

It has, however, become such an automatic, habitual, easy thing to do that we don’t pay it much attention. Then, when we want to deliberately and consciously motivate ourselves to do something we consider difficult, we feel sort of powerless simply because we’ve lost conscious touch with how to do it. We’ve been on automatic too long.

Once we get back in touch with our natural abilities, it all becomes simple again. Try it and see.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

Related Posts:

1. Self Motivation Is Super Simple! Part 6
2. Self Motivation Is Super Simple! Part 2
3. Self Motivation Is Super Simple! Part 3
4. Self Motivation Is Super Simple! Part 5
5. Self Motivation Is Super Simple! Part 4
6. Jim Rohn – Interview on Self Motivation (Part 1)
7. Is Self Motivation Difficult?
8. Daily Motivation For A Happy Life