Category Archives: Success Factor

Motivation and Self Discipline; The Elusive Catalysts

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In the brain salsa post Personal Development; How To Get Motivated Part IV meditation expert Cherie Miranda asked, “Is there a way for people to become more self aware, do you think?” And Mark Hogan (son of body language expert Kevin Hogan) asked “…even if you are aware you are falling behind, how can you keep a level of self discipline instilled in yourself so that you catch back up, or don’t fall behind in the first place?”

They remind of a question posed by the late Jim Rohn, “Who motivates the motivator?”  One of the greatest questions I have ever heard and a question that I have grappled with and pondered for hundreds of hours.  Why are some people self starters, disciplined, motivated and others not. 

There was a study done by Stanford University that set out to pin point what makes a super achiever.  They analyzed super achievers that had dramatically out paced others in their field to become the upper echelon of the upper echelon. They examined many aspects from culture, regions, nationality, race, childhood, education, etc.  

The goal of the study was to find the key to becoming motivated, self disciplined and a super achiever. Though there were some things that were consistent in a segment or group of participants they really couldn’t come up with a universal list that could be applicable across the board with the exception of one.

Now before I reveal the one linking factor I want you to think about what that might be.  Could it be a life changing event, education, the region you where born in, your parents’ financial status, teachers you had in college or grade school, something in your home life, etc.  Now as you are contemplating what it is I want you to ask yourself, “What if I don’t have that?“  How will it affect your self concept? 

I will tell you that if you don’t currently have this key catalyst to become a super achiever that it is too late to get it.  Your opportunity to have it is gone and you had no way of influencing whether you got it or not – it is, by a great extent, a “luck of the draw” circumstance.

The most consistent factor in super achievers was an encouraging mother.  And not just an encouraging mother but how she framed the encouragement and the age of the child when she did it.  For example if a child says “Momma I am going to be a movie star when I grow up.”  Which one of the three responses below do you think is the one that a super achiever heard?

1.      “I think we all would like to be a movie star but you need to be realistic and now that it is highly unlikely you could be successful at that.  You are too smart to be an actor you need to pick something else.”

2.      “That’s great honey, I know that you could be a great movie star.  I think you should go for it but also it is a good idea to have a second option incase the first one doesn’t work out.”

3.      “I know that you will be a great movie star.  You will work hard, focus on it and achieve it because you achieve everything you work hard and focus on.”

The answer is 3.  In the early years of the child’s development a blindly encouraging mother was the most consistent factor (of the criteria monitored in the Stanford study) of people who are super achievers.  It is also worth noting that for women a blindly encouraging father was also a very consistent trait.

Now if you didn’t have blindly encouraging parents – now what?  The odds are that most of us had parents more on the line of 1 and 2.  So does that mean you are doomed for mediocrity?  How has your self concept been affected?  What can you do as an adult to overcome less than blindly encouraging parents?  We will examine these issues in the next post.

Personal Devlopment; How To Get Motivated Part IV

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In the first post of Personal Development; How To Get Motivated, Internet dating expert  April Braswell asked the following questions,

“Do you think that Self Awareness, at least some level of it, is the beginning behind Personal Improvement? And do you find there are certain temperaments or people who are most inclined towards that kind of improvement? What about those who are oblivious?” 

How important is “self awareness” in personal development and getting motivated?  First let me start off by saying that I believe “self awareness” is somewhat subjective in definition. From a philosophical definition it is along the lines of “I think, therefore I am.”  In a psychological perspective it is ones awareness of their own level of knowledge, skills, attitudes, opinions – basically knowing what makes you tick and your abilities.

As it relates to Personal Development; How To Get Motivated I am addressing from the psychological perspective.  Self awareness is a critical component in success.  Self evaluation of your flaws is the process that starts improvement. 

Continual improvement is essential for long term success and viability.  If you look at the companies that made up the Dow Jones Industrial average in 1911 only one is still on the list, General Electric.  Even if you go back 50 years to 1951 only 7 of the current 30 where on the list. 

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was, at one time, the largest publicly traded company in the world. The PRR still holds the record for the longest continuous paying dividend (it paid out dividends to its shareholders for more than 100 years in a row).  At its peak the PRR had a larger budget than the U.S. government (try pulling that off today). 

The PRR was a corporate behemoth like no other the world had seen and it seemed invulnerable.  However, in the seventies PRR merged with New York Central in an attempt to save the two companies and eventually they filed for bankruptcy protection in the mid seventies and the viable pieces were stripped off and sold. And now the PRR is little more than a space on a Monopoly board.  Of course this was all before the U.S. government came up with the notion of “too big to fail”.

Much like the Packard Automobile Company (referred to in Personal Development; How To Get Motivated Part III) we see example after example of incredibly successful corporations that have no self awareness of their vulnerability and subsequently lose their motivation to continually improve.

And specifically to April’s question as how key is self awareness to the start of personal development and motivation; it is a critical factor.  The opposite of self awareness would be self obliviousness.  If you are oblivious of your strengths and weaknesses you are not capable of objectively analyzing and methodically choosing areas to improve.  Without improvement you can not grow and if you are not growing you are decaying.

There is no neutral in life or business.  You are either moving forward or you are regressing as others advance past you.  The desire to improve is the spark of motivation. Whether it is to improve your own circumstances or the circumstances of others there is no motivation without the desire to improve. 

As to April’s last question, “What about those who are oblivious?” I do not hold out much hope for those who are oblivious except that they may be the benefactors of other’s generosity.  With the advent of the Internet and a global commerce the market place is becoming a more and more competitive place.  But not only is it competitive among business but it is becoming more competitive for employees to maintain employment.

As we know from history, becoming self-aware, and evolving is a critical factor in success and survival – even when you are on top.

Personal Development; How To Get Motivated Part III

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In the first post for Personal Development; How To Get Motivated some really good question came up.  Hypnotherapist Eva Palmer asked, “What would you do if you have planned, let’s say, 8 months to make your business and you are still half way after that time? Would you do some changes?”

I am unaware of anyone who has aggressively pursued personal development not hitting some snags along the way.  This can cause frustration and kill motivation.  How to get motivated when you aren’t making progress?

One thing is to touch base with why you are doing this.  In my post Classroom For Success Why You Care I talk about creating a document that captures the importance of the task.  As you take the life long journey to personal development; how to get motivated is largely driven by how passionate you are about something. 

In my post Goal GPS Staying Focused And Negotiating Life Detours I show examples how to take your “Why I Care” document and drill down to the most important reasons/issues to you.  These are the buy-in; these are the why you are doing it and if they are really important to you these are what will keep you moving forward when you want to quit.As far as making changes – absolutely. 

Continual evaluation and adjustments should occur when things are going bad and good. The Packard automobile was one of the most popular luxury vehicles in the thirties and forties.  They built a huge elaborate manufacturing plant in Detroit Michigan which actually had elevators that took the automobiles from floor to floor as they progressed through the assembly line.  They were the epitome of success.

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A Picture Of The Packard Automobile Company In Its Prime

They had no concept that anyone would want something different in a luxury car than what they were offering.  Now they’re manufacturing plant is a crumbling grim reminder that you have to evolve to survive.

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Pakard Automobile Company As It Looks Today

As to Eva’s specific question of only being 50% in 100% of the time I would say some changes need to be made.  There are probably issues with time estimates, time allocation and efficient use of time when working on the project.  We will look at these issues in a future post on time management.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT; HOW TO GET MOTIVATED PART II

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In personal development, how to get motivated is a critical success factor.  You must be able to motivate yourself to do that which will get you closer to your goal.  Being a self starter is a great trait to have – but what about those who aren’t. When it comes to personal development; how to get motivated – I am reminded of a quote by Jim Rohn, “Who motivates the motivator?” 

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT; HOW TO GET MOTIVATED – ACTION

In the part I of Personal Development; How To Get Motivated we discussed ways to make suggestions to the mind and prime yourself for self motivation.  However there is another critical success factor that must be looked at: action.  Action is the catalyst that propels you to results.  Intense wishing, visualization, etc will not manifest what you want; you have to have action. 

This is the part of personal development that seems to keep most people in neutral.  They can conjure up some concept of their dreams but they do not get motivated to take action.  And when you think about it, it is just a mental game.  For most people there is not a physical impairment which keeps them form getting motivated and taking action.  It is the thought of the action and a negative emotion attached to that thought that blocks the action.

Getting back to the question, in personal development; how to get motivated – you must deal with both the mental and the physical.  You want to start creating an association of positive, pleasurable emotions with action.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT; HOW TO GET MOTIVATED – ASSOCIATION OF PLEASURE WITH ACTION

Association of emotions with the physical is a huge influencing factor.  Marketing companies learned many years ago that if you can associate your product with a pleasurable experience that people will have a better feeling about your product and be more inclined to buy it.  Beer companies may exploit this better than anyone else.  When you think of the Super Bowl what products come to mind?  For most people Bud Light will be one of the first products they think of. 

Anheuser Busch discovered decades ago that associating their products with sporting events positively impacted their sales.  Because most people associate sporting events with pleasure/leisure and through decades of branding you subconsciously (and to a great extent now even consciously) associate products like Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob, etc with baseball, boxing, football, basketball, hockey and so on. 

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT; HOW TO GET MOTIVATED – MARKETING AND BRANDING TO YOURSELF

So now you must market to yourself and brand action with positive experiences.  Now this may take some work because we have been programmed to associate work with negative emotions.  Going back to doing homework at school, cleaning your room when you wanted to be outside, given an undesirable task at work, etc.  Now I can’t say that you will ever get to the point where you work becomes as enjoyable as watching a great sports game or watching a good movie and that is not necessarily the goal here.  What we want to do is get to point where the negative associations don’t stop you or cause you to procrastinate.

As far as I know there has not been a lot done on developing techniques to create this work pleasure association.  So this is going to be a self exploration as to what works for you.  However we can take a clue from the marketing world and know that imagery can cause an association.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT; HOW TO GET MOTIVATED – TECHNIQUE ONE

Here is a technique you can try; take some pictures of you working. Some at a desk, some doing home chores, some at your job, whatever tasks you seem to have a hard time getting motivated to do.  Now put them up in areas where you do leisure activities, like bay a stereo, TV, computer, video game, a patio you relax on. Then when you are feeling positive emotions of enjoyment, satisfaction, relaxation look at a picture of you working and hold on to that positive emotion.  Don’t shift your attitude and say, “I hate my job” or “I hate cleaning gutters” or “I hate working on proposals”, etc.  Just keep your focus on the positive and look at the image without really thinking about it.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT; HOW TO GET MOTIVATED – TECHNIQUE TWO

When you are having a hard time getting motivated think about it being completed.  Get an image in your mind of what it will look like when it is done and then conjure up an emotion of satisfaction and accomplishment.  Then jump in and just start keeping a focus on the feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment (or whatever positive emotion works for you).

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT; HOW TO GET MOTIVATED – TECHNIQUE THREE

Plan your actions.  Before you start briefly write out the actions you will have to take to accomplish the task. Put the tasks in the order in which they will have to be accomplished and if at all possible make the first several tasks easy ones.  Then tell yourself over and over again “do it now, do it now, do it now” and start in on the first task without thinking. Go to the second and so on until you are engaged and committed to seeing it through.  Upon completion think back at how easy it was to start those first tasks. Think about how you said “do it now” and then just jumped in and started.  Reflect on how good it feels to be done with the task. 

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT; HOW TO GET MOTIVATED – TECHNIQUE FOUR

For long range goals/tasks that will take days to years to accomplish try treasure mapping.  There is most likely an ultimate benefit for you doing this long term item: like to keep your job so you can have money or it might be part of a long range plan for financial freedom or losing weight.  What you want to do is collect images that represent that ultimate benefit and make a collage.  Then we you go to work on your task look at the collage of treasures you will receive by successfully completing this long range goal.  Feel the positive emotions you will feel when you have these treasures. 

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT; HOW TO GET MOTIVATED – CUSTOMIZE YOUR OWN TECHNIQUE

If these techniques don’t work for you be creative and come up with your own.  Keep experimenting and working it until you find the right technique for you that will erase that imaginary line between work and plan.  But the most important thing is to take action.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT; HOW TO GET MOTIVATED

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Personal development is a critical factor for success no matter what you do. The question is  how to get motivated to focus on personal development.  How to Motivate? That should be one of the key question you ask when planning your personal development.  How to motivate yourself? How to motivate your family? How to motivate your support team and so on. How to get motivated is a tough one to take on but it can be the lynch pin to a successful personal development program.

In relation to the question how to motivate Meditation Expert Cherie Miranda asked “We’re predisposed to be lazy, so what’s the best way to overcome that predisposition and develop a strong work ethic?”  Additionally Michael D Walker from the Success Secrets asked “ So, what are your best recommendations for getting past this default mode of being lazy?”

These questions were in response to my post The Lazy Song with put forth the theory that we are inherently predisposed to conserve energy which can make us inclined to be lazy.  Based on this assumption it makes it even more challenging to over come laziness and motivate yourself.  In fact when you start to develop your program to get motivated you may find you experience an uneasy feeling as you are getting out of your natural comfort zone. 

So the first thing is to acknowledge that as you develop your work ethic it may feel uncomfortable and unnatural.  Your subconscious mind may be sending you messages to stop and conserve your energy. 

For some a viable technique to deal with this may just be to verbally acknowledge the uneasy sensation then reinforce that it is important to complete the task you are working on.  Additionally say to yourself that having a good work ethic is essential for your continued personal development and that it will build self-esteem as well as allow you to achieve your goals and live a happier life.

Now this is just an example of what you can say, script something that feels right for you and that you buy into. Or just an impromptu message that conveys the objective is also acceptable.  The objective here is to acknowledge what’s going on then communicate to your subconscious that this is important to you, it will benefit you and it is what you want – including specific benefits is always helpful.  Say this out load and in a calm confident voice.

Another technique is to develop a regular self talk program.  Very similar to above but it is a much longer script that goes into more detail and reinforces several key issues to help develop your work ethic.  With self talk you would read the script several times a day and especially before you go to bed.  Also recording it playing it back why you are driving, cooking, getting ready in the morning, etc. will help accelerate the programming of your mind and habit.  There is much more to the self-talk technique and we will discuss it more in future posts.

The next technique that you may try is hypnosis.  For this your best bet is to go to a certified hypnosis instructor. 

Now if you are a very strong willed person you may not need any mental programming and you just bull through it.  But odds are, if you were this type you would probably already have a strong work ethic.

The next step is developing a specific action plan to incorporate work ethic habits.  We will discuss this more in the next post.