Tag: motivation

20/20 Resolutions

The time has come to dust off those old resolutions and get ready to promise yourself many of the same things that you resolved to do last year.

But not only is it a New Year it is New Decade too. So instead of those vague ideas, let’s get serious and achieve those resolutions, making 2020 a year we can all be proud of.

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For starters;

WHAT do you want to achieve this year? Before we set those ambitions and goals the first resolution must be to be smart about our resolutions! Get yourself a journal or diary and write down exactly what it is you want to achieve.

Writing things down helps fix them in the memory, it helps us keep a record of our achievements and it helps us see where we are slipping behind, giving us a bit of motivation to get going again throughout the year.

Now focus on WHAT it is you want to achieve. It is important that we be as specific as possible.

Personally, after a year of having to focus on employment related activities, I have resolved to write more, specifically to write at least one of these blogs every month. Look at your own goals, if you resolve to be healthier this year ask yourself what that means – does it mean losing weight, does it mean becoming fitter, does it mean eating healthier?

What does the end result of your resolution look like? The more you can think about exactly what you want to achieve the easier it is to plan ahead, to write down the markers you need to reach on the way to that successful outcome.

Then ask yourself WHY.

We can easily make vague promises to ourselves but unless we think about WHY, we can be doomed to fail. The why gives us the motivation to succeed, understanding how our resolutions will make our lives better helps us focus on achieving the WHAT because we know how much better we will feel once we have reached our goal.

Now HOW, WHEN & WHERE

There are many paths to achieving success, dependent on our own individual strengths and weaknesses. You know yourself better than anyone else, which means you know the best way to reach your goal. Start by mapping out the HOW, the things you need to do to get the WHAT done. What is your first step? If you want to lose weight, for example, do you start by throwing out all the junk food in the house or do you start by signing up with a diet club or do you search out that old gym membership card that has been draining your bank account without ever being used? Think about your strengths and use them to kick-start your journey.

The WHEN is not only about the finishing line. It is about laying down the markers along the way to help you measure your progress. You may want that sleek beach body by the time you go on your summer holiday but where do you want to be by 31st Jan? Or 29th Feb? Setting those smaller timeline goals really help us to achieve the bigger one by the time we want it done. If we are a bit behind at one point it gives us the incentive to make more effort to ensure we have caught up by the next time point.

The HOW, WHEN & WHERE are the engine that powers us toward success.

Don’t forget the WHO.

WHO do we need to support us and WHO may be impacted by what we are planning to do? We do not live our lives in isolation and, while we need to focus on what is good for us, we also need to recognise there are other people in our lives. If we decide we need to do an evening class or a diet club or more frequent gym visits, we may need to talk to others as our actions may have an effect on family life. The WHO also includes like-minded friends and family who can join us or provide some sort of support to us on our road to achievement.

If you have a goal for the New Year, perhaps a longer term one for the New Decade, take time to think through the WHAT, WHY, HOW, WHEN, WHERE & WHO. Plan that route to success as a means to helping you through the inevitable ups and downs that life throws in our paths. Having that map helps us stay focused and on track.

Use 20/20 vision for your 2020 success.

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Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be

Have you ever remembered a fantastic childhood holiday, where the place you visited was this wonderful world full of joy and wonder?

Then, as an adult, revisited the same place with hope in your heart only to be disappointed as it is nothing like you remember?

On one hand, time changes places, especially in the UK where many traditional seaside towns have suffered from the rise in overseas holidays, but, on the other hand, you have changed too. That child, who could see wonder in the simplest things, has grown with many more life experiences that has lifted the lid on those things we once found fascinating.

However, if you have never revisited that place, your memory of that holiday remains intact despite the fact the reality is now far different.

It is this latter that can cause us problems in our present life.

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Not that it is an individual thing. We live in a society that seems to glorify an imagined past. It seems, for example, that every generation has a problem with “the youth of today”. When you take a look back through the last 60 years or so, the 50’s saw the older people complaining about the youth culture of rock & roll because “it wasn’t like that in my day”. Yet, today, those who grew up in the rock and roll generation complain about current youth culture “because it wasn’t like that in my day”, forgetting they were demonised by older people in their day!

Back on an individual level we can, sometimes, get stuck in past beliefs and actions that no longer really work for us today.

We believe we can’t do something because back in the past we failed at doing it, we don’t do something because back in the past we had a bad experience doing the same thing etc.

But that was in the past and things are different now – you are a different person now because, over the years, you have gained much more knowledge and experience of life.

Our past can hold us back yet, very often, what we remember is not quite the reality or what happened. We synthesise memories, if we have a good memory it is usually because we only focus on the good aspects of what happened, similarly bad memories zoom in only on those aspects which were bad.

If we go back to our fantastic childhood holiday, can you remember the specifics of the whole week (or however long it lasted)? You can probably recall the sense of enjoyment but could you remember all the dull parts that inevitably happen in a week? Maybe you remember the sights and sounds of the amusement arcade but can you recall that you were only in there because it was raining outside?

We do the same with bad past experiences, over time the memory becomes a single specific event that impacts on how we act today. We delete many of the other things that happened at the time because they were less memorable yet they still may have been involved in the cause of the event, or may, if we recalled them, make the actual event seem less bad than we now remember it!

“I can’t because in the past…” is not something we actually say to ourselves. We simply just don’t do it. Most of the time this is not a problem but, occasionally, we may find that our reluctance to do something, because of an event in the past, can impact on our lives today. We may have trouble with relationships as a result of past relationship experiences, we may have self confidence issues when we have had past failures, we may feel guilty when we cannot do what other people want us to do something as we had an issue when we did that thing once before or we may feel constrained by life because, once, we were held back from being our true self.

It becomes more problematic as we get older as, obviously, we have a lot more memories and because those older ones are a lot more distant making them more synthesised and less attached to reality.

Where we find ourselves reluctant or unable to do something, we should take the time to ask ourselves why. Was it because of a past event?

If so, then we need to ask ourselves, how reliable is that memory? Then move a little deeper, what were the circumstances that created that memory? Are the circumstances the same now? How much more do I know now than I did then?

Also ask yourself, what is different from then to now? Firstly, of course, you are different from that time but also the world is different, we can more readily find out more information, we can find out how others have overcome their reluctance to do something. Knowledge and technology have advanced so much that whatever happened in the past the world is a different place now.

If we want to lead a better life today, we need to recognise that the past can hold us back sometimes. We should never let go of the past because it is that which makes us who we are today but we should acknowledge that was then and we live in the now.

5 Tips for When Sh*t Happens

I have said it before and will probably say it again,

Sh*t happens!

Life will always throw “slings and arrows” at us yet we can deal with them rather than let life dictate to us.

In my own life, this week, the place I work is now scheduled to close, so I will have to find a new employment soon (unfortunately blog writing does not pay the bills!). It is something completely out of my control and something that I, and those I work with, will have to deal with over the coming months.

It is not just employment that can cause sudden change, our health could suddenly change forcing unwelcome change in the way we live, change can be forced on us by others close to us for any number of reasons and just the world in general can impose on our lives in ways that force us to do things differently.

There are, however, a few ways we can come out on top rather than let the world drag us down.

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1) OWN IT

Us humans are fickle creatures, we do not like change. More precisely we do not like change that is forced on us.

If though, the change is our choice, we are always much more enthusiastic about it.

So, if circumstances in your life change beyond your immediate control, embrace the opportunity and take ownership of the change you can control. Why waste your time, energy and sanity worrying about things you have no control over? It is far better to  focus  on the things you can control.

As I am writing this the London Marathon is happening and you can see many of the wheelchair athletes and individual runners who have had to face life changing challenges yet still have found ways to succeed in completing the 26-mile course. We should all be inspired by the way they have grasped their futures despite what life has thrown at them.

2) WALLOW IN SUCCESS

It is very easy, when sh*t happens, to wallow in negativity, “why do these things happen to me” “there is nothing I can do” “things can’t possibly get better” etc.

Yet throughout our lives there are ups and downs.

Take some time to think about those “ups” in the past, the times when you did somethings you felt really proud of, the times when you achieved something that you had worked hard for, the times when you felt fantastic.

Write all those goods things down so if you feel the weight of what is happening pressing down you can fight back with those positive things you know you are capable off.

3) FORGE YOUR PATH

Having reflected on the successes and achievements you have an excellent base to start planning where you go next. Your future is always in your own hands so it pays to plan the way forward, especially when you have been forced to change from the path you thought you were on!

Start by having a bit of a brainstorming session. Write down everything you want, it does not matter how outlandish or impossible they may seem, it is about stretching your mind to explore possibilities and, what may seem outlandish or impossible right now, may, in years to come, become achievable eventually.

How many of those “ups” you wrote down would you like to do again or pursue further?

Once you have done that, sort the list in the order of which are the easier things to do to the hardest.

Begin to build ideas about where you want to go in your life and develop goals that are about you.

4) TAKE ACTION

What was the easiest thing to do on your list?

DO IT

Maybe it is writing/updating your C.V.. searching out courses to further your education, or seeking out ways to improve your health and fitness. Whatever it is, make the effort.

That aside, it is about taking control when faced with dealing circumstances beyond your control. I am sure we can all think of times when we allowed circumstances to take control of our lives, as we were thrown around by waves of change feeling completely at the mercy of others and the world around us. We soon become lost, which in turn, affects our mental well-being.

By taking action we stop that, we start to focus on the direction we want to go. Our energies are used positively, and for ourselves rather than battling against the sea of change.

5) IT’S GOOD TO TALK

While these tips have focussed on how we react and what we do with our own lives, we do not live in isolation. Others may be in the same situation and we, hopefully, have others around us who will provide support, if we let them know we need it.

Sharing our hopes and plans for the future will help our focus and also provide a chance for us to hear what others think. Their views can give our own ideas more shape.

Talk to those who you know will be supportive and, if the same circumstances, who you know you can support. Just be a little wary because we humans can easily descend into negativity when chatting, so always keep it positive.

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Sh*t happens all the time, much of the time it is beyond our control.

But rather than let it drag us down and drift aimlessly hoping that something good will happen we can take control, be positive and make the good things happen.

It may not always be an easy or straight forward path but when we take charge of our lives it gives us a sense of power and enhances our ability to ultimately succeed.

You Can Overcome Your Obstacles

Imagine that you are on a journey and the route to your destination is blocked by a huge, intimidating brick wall.

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What do you do?

You could go and get yourself a ladder or some climbing equipment and clamber over the wall. You could get a shovel and dig a tunnel under the wall. You could take a diversion and walk around the wall. You could, perhaps, get a sledgehammer and bash a hole through the wall.

The point is there are many different solutions to the problem.

Unfortunately, when faced with real life obstacles, we are often stuck in our ways and we constantly repeat the same actions over and over again even though those actions don’t actually help us overcome the problem.

It is like constantly hitting our heads against that brick wall in the hope in gives way before our head does!

Sometimes (as the headache gets worse!) rational thought disappears and we start to hate the wall, we blame the wall for getting in our way. We curse the builder of the wall, without thinking that, perhaps, there was a reason for the wall being put there in the first place. No, we think, the builder deliberately put the wall there to thwart our journey, it is a blatant attack to stop us moving onward with our lives.

Our righteous indignation makes us more determined to keep hitting our head against the wall because we believe the harder our head hits, the more likely we are to succeed!

The reality, though, is we start feeling worse. In the real world that frustration turns to despair, and has a serious impact on our mental health. The more we pointlessly hit the wall, the more our self-confidence and self-belief becomes eroded and we end up just slumped against the wall, unable to move in any direction.

To avoid this happening to us we need to develop flexibility in our thinking.

If you come up against an obstacle and your initial way to overcome it fails, step back quickly, before that righteous indignation sets in and think of the alternative ways that you could use to move forward.

Take time to think of different actions, and the possible consequences of those actions. Weigh up all the possibilities before picking the best alternatives for you.

If we go back to our imaginary wall, climbing over the top may not be the best option if you are afraid of heights, tunnelling underneath may not be the best option if you get claustrophobic, and hitting the wall with a sledgehammer may just bring the whole thing down on the top of your head!

It is about finding the solutions that work for you.

YOU being the most important aspect of achieving your success.

We cannot dwell on what others may or may not have done to deliberately thwart us. We cannot dwell on how others may or may not have caused our dilemma. We cannot dwell on what others may or may not have against us.

We can only focus on what we need to do to move on toward what we want in life.

That is best achieved by reflecting on our own actions, beliefs and strengths.

You could, perhaps, take time to consider why the wall is there in the first place. Imagine getting a chisel and removing just one brick and peeking through to the other side. The could be nothing but the road onwards but maybe there is a huge chasm in the road or a sabre-toothed beast prowling and the wall has been put there to protect travellers on that path!

Stepping back to consider overcoming obstacles requires deliberate, rational thought but that does not mean we need to be completely sensible!

Perhaps we could imagine building a giant catapult and throwing ourselves over our wall! Perhaps we could take a bit of time out of our journey and decorate the wall (I am not advocating becoming a graffiti artist though!).

Engaging our creativity and imagination can often lead to new, different and exciting ideas. History is full of stories where things we take for granted today were created by accident, where people tried to do one thing but realised, they had come up with something else.

The story of the post-it notes says the inventor was actually trying to develop a strong adhesive but failed, luckily, they had the ability to realise the weak solution had a use.

Viagra was initially a failed heat drug, it was the reported side-effects that led scientists to realising they had stumbled on to something else that could be developed, they could easily have just dismissed the trials as a failure.

Creative, imaginative thinking can lead us on new paths which allows us to avoid the wall altogether.

It is not the walls in our lives that are the obstacles, it is our reaction to them. By developing better flexible and creative thinking the walls will come down or simply become irrelevant.

Flex your thinking muscles and the paths onward will soon materialise.

Build Your New Months Resolution

This time next year…….

Whatever it is you want to achieve or change in your life it takes time, you are not going to run a marathon or win a sprint just because you have decided it, you need to work to make it happen.

We have our dream and we set out to make that dream a reality.

The problem that often occurs though, is that a year is quite a long time (although it does not seem like it as you get older!) and the dream we start out with gets tangled and entwined by life’s challenges on the way. A bit like the wires behind the TV, they start out nice and neat but, somehow, next time you look, everything is tangled and you can’t tell which wire leads to what!

To help prevent the tangle in our lives we need to make certain we keep focused, and a good way of doing this is keeping control of your plan by breaking it down month by month and building a strategy for the coming weeks.

Ask yourself, what practical things can you do this month that moves you closer to your longer-term goal? How much weight do you need to lose this month? What distance do you need to run? How many words of your book do you need to write etc?

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It is also a chance to review where you are right now in your plan.

Did you make a New Years resolution? If so, where, at the end of February, are you at in achieving it?

If you have made little or no progress, don’t beat yourself up over it or try to find excuses for why, just accept that things haven’t gone to plan so far and start preparing your plan for March.

If, however, you have made progress, celebrate that, give yourself a pat on the back then knuckle down and focus on the next stage.

Your new months resolution needs to concentrate on what is necessary to move you to the next stage of achievement and closer to your ultimate aim. If there is anything that you feel you have not done, so far, then evaluate that first. How important was it in your longer-term plan? Is there something else you need to do that is more important than the thing you have missed?

In other words, prioritise.

Sometimes we can become so bogged down in worrying about things we have not done that we fail to realise there are other things. equally or more important, that we can be doing right now. A lot of times when we change to something else, the other thing we were bogged down by becomes easier once we go back to it because we have had a chance to forget about it for a while.

Our new months resolution is also a means of keeping our focus on the end goal. Even where life distracts us, sitting down at the end of each month to think about the next months resolution, gives us a chance to assess and evaluate where we are now and where we need to be in a few weeks’ time. It becomes part of a continuous cycle of assess-plan-action that moves us forward and keeps what we want at the forefront of our mind.

So, take time this week to think about what you want to achieve next month and how you are going to achieve it. Think about things like the time you need to set aside from your normal routine, anything you need to get before hand or any other preparations that are key to finishing your mini monthly goal.

Your New Months Resolution is a way of keeping you in control of what YOU want to do in your life. Make your plan, stick to your plan and, at the end of next month, just see how much closer you are to your ultimate goal.

Find Your Motivational Motive

If there is a goal you want to pursue or something you want to change in your life to improve it, once you have narrowed down the specifics, the next important thing is to think about the reason you want to do it.

This is because if you want to succeed you need a strong reason to succeed.

As strong reason helps you leap the inevitable hurdles’ we all face in life. Where as a weak reason will make failure the much likelier outcome.

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Imagine you have your goal in mind and the reason you are doing it because “everyone else is doing it” or “I’ve heard it’s a good thing” or “Her on the telly said everyone should do it”. Then, a few weeks down the line this are not going to plan, you are much more likely to give up and you mind will justify you giving up, “everyone else doing this is mad,” or “I must have heard it wrong” or “Her on the telly doesn’t know what she is talking about”!

We humans are creatures of routine and habit and it is often easier for us to fall back into familiar routines rather than make the effort, both physical and mental, to pursue change and difference in our lives. Perhaps you can think of a time you or someone you know has started a programme of change, probably it started off well but then faded away as old habits and routines returned.

Very often this is because we start off with good intentions, unfortunately though, good intentions on their own do not gives us the push to go beyond the initial steps. They do not get us past that difficult patch where relapsing into the familiar is such an easy thing to do.

A strong motive for succeeding can push us through that almost inevitable stage because that reason pulls us toward success.

A strong reason starts with you as an individual. What is it that YOU want to achieve from your goal or life change? Trying to do something because someone else wants you to do it or because it is the socially popular thing to do has inherent problems because your unconscious knows that what you are doing is not actually what you want therefore there is always a degree of resistance. It may be okay for small, less significant things in your life but for longer term, more substantial change It has to be for a reason YOU have.

By using YOU as your starting point you can develop your motive and, therefore, the motivation to get you started and keep you going.

Picture yourself having achieved your goal or life change. What are the benefits in your life you picture then, what are rewards you get from that success?

Remember it is all individual, it could be you want to be healthier, for example, the rewards then could include such things as being able to enjoy time with grandchildren without getting so tired, or being healthier could prepare you for embarking on a bigger challenge such as marathon running, or being healthier could allow you to lead a better lifestyle. Perhaps you want to learn or develop a skill, it could be that it earns you more money, it could be it allows you to change jobs or it could even be that you gain that sense of personal achievement which raises your self-esteem.

Before you start on any significant change in your life, take some time to think and reflect about why you need that change, list the rewards and benefits that change will bring you. Yet there is a need to be totally honest with yourself, list the things that the change could impact negatively on your current life e.g.- taking up a new hobby could take time and money away from other areas of your life.

Then, assuming the benefits out weigh the negatives, you can see the overall benefits to you can add and the greater rewards these benefits will bring to your life.  You build your reason for succeeding and, as you fix those reasons in your mind, any time you begin to doubt your success you have the motive and motivation to carry on.

You can succeed, and you strong motive for that success will help carry you along the path to that life you truly want.

 

Zoom In On Specifics

What do you want?

Do you want to be heathier, wealthier, or perhaps you want a new job, a new lifestyle or to be able to travel more?

We all have dreams of a better life yet rarely make the moves toward achieving those things we fantasise about.

One reason is that our dreams and fantasies are often quite vague on detail. We like the idea of these things but we just leave them as dreams to retreat into when our current existence gets to us. In order to make a real difference in our lives we need to narrow in on those dreams and develop them into specific goals we can use as a springboard to reach the real life we want to live.

Start by letting your imagination run wild. Really be creative in your dreams about what would bring you satisfaction if life, give yourself no limits on what you think of and allow yourself to mentally explore the most outrageous possibilities your life could be. Throw everything into the mix, everything you have ever dreamt of achieving, those childhood and youthful ambitions that faded away and those sparks of ideas that were smothered by life.

Once you have done that write down some of the ideas that appeal to you most. It is time to switch from the creative side of your brain to the logical side!

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Look at the ideas you have written down, do any of them need you to achieve one of the others first? For example, do you dream of a life of travel and of a life of financial independence? The life of travel may need you to have that financial security first. If that is the case cross off the dependent ones from your list.

Now, take what is ever left on your list and put them in order of priority. Which one feels most important to you right now? This is not to say you are dismissing the other ideas, we are just focussing on the most important idea right now. Those other dreams can just take a temporary backseat while we concentrate on achieving first things first.

Now zoom in on that one idea.

Remember it is your idea and how you view that idea is unique to you.

Maybe, for example, your number one priority is to be healthier. What exactly does that mean to you? It could mean losing weight, it could mean being able to run a marathon, it could mean eating healthier etc. You need to focus on what is important to you, not what other people are saying and not what society is demanding at the moment. Work your idea down to a single goal that you can aim for, a goal that is YOUR GOAL and one you can begin to work toward.

A brief warning, although we are aiming to create the goal to move us toward a better life it does not have to be perfect. Perfectionism is often a means of not making a decision and not taking action because we constantly wait for things to be exactly right and put off doing anything until we have got things exactly right!

Your goal does not have to be so precise and perfect it just needs to be something more concrete than the vague dream we started with. It is our call to action.

To start the process of changing our lives for our own benefit we need to start with something specific to aim for. Vague dreams make it difficult to find a starting point, so by using some focus to narrow down those dreams to an achievable, specific goal we can begin the process toward a life we want.

Let’s Get Negative

Now I know self-help advice is supposed to focus on the positive, positive thinking and positive outcomes but, sometimes, we need to tackle the negative things in our life.

After all, life is about balance.

Call it what you will – Yin & Yang, light and dark, dualism or any of the many other term used in various philosophical and religious systems around the world. The fact is where we have positives we need to have negatives!

If you think about it if you want change if your life it is change from something, you want to turn a negative into a positive. If you remember back a few blogs, the one about motivation, we talked about “away from” motivation, which, often, is a negative we want to get away from.

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The important thing though is understanding those negatives properly. If we want to improve our lives and make truly positive change we need to know what it is we actually want to change.

We humans are particularly good at exaggerating or over stating things, to ourselves as much as to anyone else. We make sweeping generalised statements about ourselves that cannot possibly be true yet we choose to believe them.

Statements like “nobody likes me” “I’m stupid” or “my life is boring”.

To know how to move forward in life we need to recognise when we a making these generalised statements and then begin to break them down so that we can arrive nearer to the truth of how we are feeling and then we can more readily see the path we need to take to make our lives better.

Take, for example, the statement “nobody likes me” – how true would that really be? Nobody, at all, likes you? That would be a very rare thing indeed, wouldn’t it? It may be more likely you feel some people don’t like you, or perhaps, you are shy around people so you don’t interact with others which, in turn, makes them avoid you in the future.

Think about “my life is boring”. Would that be true? It would be unlikely that your life was boring every minute of every day, wouldn’t it. It may be more likely that certain aspects of your life bore you but at other times life is more enjoyable. It is just that we often ignore positives in favour of the negatives.

If we just use our generalised negatives to plan our changed future we could start ourselves of a false path, a path that takes us away from a false generalisation rather than the specific issue we really need to address. I am sure you can think of times where other people, businesses or governments have made knee jerk reactions to something negative without fully working out what went wrong only to find they have made matters worse by what they have done.

So, for example, who is it you feel doesn’t like you and why does that matter? What is it you can do to address that? Or, what particular thing are you having trouble with that makes you feel stupid? How can you tackle that particular thing in order to improve yourself with that task? What specific area of your life is boring? Is it something you can remove from your life or do you need to make other areas of your life more interesting?

To improve our lives, to make change for the better, we must introduce a positive mindset into our everyday lives yet that can only start by understanding the negatives, the reason behind the change we are setting out to achieve.

Use the negatives in your life to propel you forward, understand them and let them motivate you toward the positives.

Flex Those Motivational Muscles

What is your motivation for change?
We may dream of changing our lives but unless we have the motivation to make that change it will remain just a dream. To help us find that boost which gets us to our goal it is useful to understand what actually motivates us.
On a basic level there are two motivators, “away from” and “toward”, sometimes known as pain and pleasure or the carrot and the stick etc.


The “away from” motivation comes from our desire to leave or get rid of something. For example, we might want to lose weight to escape a negative body image, join the gym to escape health problems or join a group to escape loneliness. It is not just goal is our life that the “away from” motivator works, it is there at a basic level. We eat to get rid of hunger and we run away when we sense danger. The “away from” motivator is a part of our fight or flight response.
On the flip side the “toward” motivator takes us toward pleasure and success, again it works at a base level, those times we eat, not because we are hungry but because we are seeking the pleasure of eating something that ignites our pleasure hormones. The “toward” motivator is about adding something to our lives, making ourselves feel better, losing weight because you have an event where you want to impress, joining the gym for the buzz the feel of exercise gives you, joining a group because you want to expand you existing network etc.
Both forms of motivation are equally legitimate yet both can sometimes lack something in getting the change we want.
When the motivation to achieve something is “away from” we can have that initial push to get us going but once we a sufficiently far away from what it was we wanted to escape our momentum can falter. Think of it like using your feet to push you off in a swimming pool, the push itself will only get you so far, without any other action you will just be stuck mid-water.
With “toward” motivation we may gain momentum as we close in on our goal but it is getting started in the first place that may be the issue. Imagine you want to drive somewhere where you can really enjoy yourself, you won’t get there though until you turn the key in the ignition and spark the engine into life.
The real key is to use both methods in order to succeed, push and pull to get you where you ultimately want to be.
Start by thinking about what it is you want to change in your life and why you want to achieve that change. Is your primary motivation “away from” or “toward”?
Be honest with yourself. We can sometimes fail to recognise our true motives, hiding them behind things we prefer to believe.
Once you have figured out what it is that is motivating you move to the other end of the goal and find some motivating factor there too.
So if your initial motivation is “away from” think about what achieving you goal will gain you, what is waiting for you when you get to the finish line, what will success bring you. Say you want to join a group, evening class or such because you feel an element of loneliness in your life, you know your “away from” but what is your “toward”. Imagine the possibilities developing that new skill or knowledge will bring, the focus on the one possibility that really ignites your imagination.
If, on the other hand, your primary motivation is a “toward” one, what is it that is going to ignite that engine and get you moving. Perhaps, you want to be a great dancer, writer or something similar but what will that move you away from? If you are looking to achieve success it does, to a certain degree, mean you are feeling unsuccessful now so use that as you push forward.
Some things automatically lend themselves to having a push and a pull but others we need to dig deep to find the other end of the line that we will be travelling. By finding our “away from” and “toward” motivation we double our chances in succeeding in achieving change and success.
So flex those motivational muscles and head confidently toward your success.