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.

Be Sociable, Share!

•