bythemethod.com blog

Feelings matter more than we would probably like to admit and this is very true when it comes to motivation. Most athletes will tell you that they need to have the right mood if they are going to perform at their best. This mood is not one of anger or stress (as many people would have you believe) but is instead a feeling of readiness, of energy, of success.

How you feel is more down to how you think than your circumstances.

You see your brain is a wonderful thing and capable of some amazing achievements but when it comes to emotions it is usually pretty stupid. Any signal can trigger off a feeling – good or bad. For instance about a week ago I was stuck in a traffic jam with my family for over 5 hours (don’t get me started on the cause). We had to travel that same bit of road a few days later and although I thought I’d done pretty well in the jam all kinds of bad feelings started to bubble up when we reached the same spot we had sat at for so long. Simple things can trigger emotions.

Use this to your advantage

But this simple thing can be used to your advantage. To get motivated you need to feel right about what you are trying to achieve. By remembering other times you were very motivated for something and applying those same emotions to the new situation you can start to feel the motivation. There is a simple technique known as anchoring which you can use and is explained elsewhere on this site (anchoring). If you anchor the feeling then you can use that feeling to get you motivated to achieve your ends.

Feelings are very powerful

If you feel that you can’t be bothered guess what? That’s right you won’t be bothered. If you feel excited about something then guess what? That’s right you will work hard to achieve it. The problem is that so often we start excited and then go to can’t be bothered and so we give up. The trick is in keeping excited.

So to get motivated you need the right feelings.