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An important element of motivation is feeling that you are making progress.  The only way to do this is to find some measure for your progress. This is really hard to do in a lot of cases because measuring progress in something that is not easily measured is going to be difficult. Without this measurement, though, you are going to struggle to stay motivated at a task.

Let’s take the losing weight example we have used before. Most people use weight as a measurement of how well they are doing on a diet. However weight is a bad measure of progress (or at least it can be). Most people lose weight on a diet on an ever decreasing scale – that is they lose weight fast to begin with and then it gets slower and slower to the point that they may feel they are making no progress at all. There are several ways around this. The first would be to recognise that this is going to be this way and then adjust your targets accordingly. This is a bad way to stay motivated though because you will still feel that your progress is slowing. Another way would be to increase the times between weighing yourself so that you can stay on track with weight loss but it will just take longer to lose the weight. Probably the best approaches though will include either measuring yourself or checking your body mass index.

However what about if you are trying to become more relaxed or happier. These are hard things to measure. Well in these cases you have to try and work out a scale for measuring and then set certain times to think through the scale. For instance you could have a stress scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is relaxed and 10 is breakdown and then every day before you go to bed you think about how stressed you are on that scale. It’s then a question of setting the appropriate targets.

Now without any target you will soon lose enthusiasm and your goals become a slog. You need to measure progress – not just at the end of a task but (probably more importantly) during the task. If you know you are making progress on a regular basis then you will feel enthusiastic about continuing.

So measure your progress and work out how you are going to do it before getting stuck into a task.

To get yourself motivated you need to have a clear picture of what success for you will look like. The clearer your picture the more motivated you will be. Without a picture you will find it hard to get motivated at all.

So take some time to think through what success will actually mean for you. The more detail you can put in the better. Think about the faces of the people that will be present. I don’t personally think that success is about possessions but if that is how you measure your success then get a good picture in your mind of the kinds of things that you will measure your success by.

Then start to think about the sounds and the smells and put them into your picture as well.

Some people have found it helpful to develop a scrapbook of pictures that illustrate the success they desire. Others have used a notice board and pinned images to it. You can even create a desktop picture for your computer (although if you are like me you seldom see your desktop picture).

The stronger the image, the better it will work.

You also need to spend time daydreaming about this picture. Make it a part of your everyday life.

If you are ever struggling with things then remember the picture and it will bring back lots of feelings of motivation.

I’m always hearing people say that they have to do something for themselves or it will never work. This is not true. It is true that people often fail in a task because they are not committed to something and it is also true that most people are at least a little bit selfish and can only get motivated when they know they will get the reward. But it is not true that you can only get motivated when you are the one who will benefit.

Consider why you are doing something

To get motivated about something you need to understand why you are doing it. This why might well be to improve yourself in some way, or it might be to help someone you love, or it might be driven by a passion for a cause but whatever it is you must have a why. You can get motivated when the end result will benefit someone else but you have to know why you are doing it.

Why is more about an image or a story than about a bland statement

For instance, if you goal was to lost weight for your children’s sake then just saying it is for your children is not a good enough why. You need to be able to spell out why you think it is important that you do this for your children, e.g. because I don’t want my children going to my funeral before they are adults. It gets even better if you can then picture something in your mind of what that will be like.

For yourself means nothing without an image

Even putting the emphasis on your own desires is not enough if you don’t have a good image. Just saying that you want something is not enough it must come from something much more real to you. This might mean having an image of what you will be like when you achieved your goal or it might be a story you can tell of a situation you will be in when you have achieved what you are trying to get motivated for.

I watched Australia’s biggest loser the other day and they were applying this principal very well. They got each person to choose an outfit that they wanted to fit in. This gave then a purpose because they could picture themselves in the outfit but also a story because they could talk about why fitting into that outfit was so important to them. Good motivational technique.

Motivating others

If you want someone else to do something then you can motivate them with a “why” as well. They need to understand why something is important to be done.

Your why must fit with your values

It is also important that your “why” is something that you can feel is important. If someone said that I should get motivated to steal something then it wouldn’t work (obvious example I know but it is important to understand this). If the why of a project doesn’t fit in with what I value then it won’t motivate me.

Conclusion

So then make sure you have a why you can believe in and that you can see in your mind and feel in your heart. Don’t get into the rut of thinking things can only succeed if I do it for me but instead understand why something is important to you. No amount of “doing it for me” will work unless you believe in what you are doing and can picture that success in your mind.

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.

To achieve anything you need to be motivated. At some point all of us has wanted to achieve something but few of us ever actually ever do. Self motivation comes from having a dream or a goal that is so tangible that you can see it and feel it. In this series of posts we are going to explore how you can reach the point where you can motivate yourself to achieve your dreams.

Know what you want

The first step in getting yourself motivated is to know what you want. You will often hear people say that you must do something for yourself (e.g. if you are going to lost weight or give up smoking then you have to do it for yourself and not for anyone else). This is only partly true. Some of us can be motivated by the thought of doing something for someone else. If you have a faith then you will be familiar with the idea of doing something for God. If you are deeply in love with someone then you may get motivated by doing something for them.

The important thing is that you know exactly what you want.

Imagination can help

Most of the things that you want do not actually exist. Even if you want something like a car or a big house the actual one that you are going to aim for is in your imagination. The better you can imagine something the more powerful the motivation. Take some time to build a picture of what you want in your mind so that you can almost feel it. If possible right those feelings down in as much detail as you can.

What do you want?

If someone were to ask you the question: “what do you want”, would you be able to answer them?

It is very hard to get motivated about something that you only vaguely appreciate. Many people say that they want happiness but happiness is such a vague idea that it is a very poor motivator. If you can describe what happiness looks like then you are more likely to be motived by that image.

Don’t be put off by thinking that if you imagine something that you don’t get you will be disappointed. It is better to have tried and been disappointed than not to have tried at all. If there is a chance you could gain what you have always wanted why do hold back on the chance you might not get it – that sounds like nonsense to me.

Get going

So right now set yourself a time when you are going to think about what you want. Then in that time develop a clear idea of what you actually want and get the idea so fixed in your mind that you find it hard to think about anything else.

To keep motivated for something it is important to spend some time thinking about the goal and not always about the task.

I’ve met a lot of people who seem to spend all their time on making sure that a task is going well. There will be lots of measurement and lots of planning but also there will be lots of times when it is hard to get motivated. Leaders who concentrate on the task and forget about the people who have to accomplish the task or the ultimate aim often find that their workers have lost interest. But this is also true for self motivation.

I think that how a task is to be done can be as important as the goal itself but a goal-less task soon turns into grind.

So take some time to think about why a task is necessary. Take some time to refresh the people who are working at the task. Give yourself a planned break to give your mind a chance to understand why something is necessary.

What motivates people? This is a question that has pre-occupied people since some clever person decided to tie a carrot to the end of a stick to get a donkey to move (did anyone actually ever do that?). The truth is that the carrot is different for everyone, but why is this? The simple answer is that everyone values different things.

Many people believe that money is a good motivator – give someone a bonus and they will work hard to earn it. There are all kinds of problems with this – not least that for most people money isn’t a good motivator. Most people want what they believe the money can buy them (security, peace, love, health, freedom, etc) but all of these things can be acquired without money. To try and get this motivator to work we are constantly bombarded with adverts to try and make us greedy – we fall for it for a while but soon become disillusioned when the promised lifestyle doesn’t arrive with the acquisition of money. This is born out time and again by surveys that show that rich people tend to be less happy than the rest of us.

In the end what really motivates us is our values. This is one of the reasons that knowing what you value is so important. In some self help systems you will be told to listen to what your insides tell you about values. I think this is only part of the story. To really understand what motivates us we need to understand what we value – relying on feelings is not always productive.

So to get motivated you need to know your values.

To motivate other people you have to start with yourself. This applies in any situation where you want to motivate others: parents, leaders, managers, supervisors, etc. I’m talking about long term motivation, of course, not just a quick fix. Here is a list of stuff you should get right first so you can then get others motivated.

• Have a clear vision for what you want to achieve – if you don’t really know what you are trying to do how can you expect others to get interested? Don’t just put it in terms of benefitting yourself or the organisation you represent either – most people find it really hard to get excited about working hard to line the pockets of somebody else.
• Work at least as hard as you want everyone else to work – if you seem to be having an easy time while everyone else is working hard they will hate you for it. Most of the time you will need to work harder than anyone else (see the next bit of advice).
• Work as smart as you want everyone else to work – if you want people to be organised then get more organised; if you want people to be more relaxed then be more relaxed; if you want people to be less stressed then make sure you are less stressed yourself. Good managers want the best from their workers and this means that they must show others how to work in the way they work. If you are working very long hours and getting very stressed out then your staff will end up the same.
• Be a leader not a follower – you must take the lead in everything. Don’t expect anyone else to be more motivated than you are.
• Get excited about your vision but not obsessive – people pick up on the excitement of others. You need to get excited about what you are trying to achieve if you hope to motivate others. However, no one likes to be around those who have a one tracked mind (it can get pretty exhausting and annoying). You need to show that you understand how important other things are as well – take an interest in what motivates the people you are trying to motivate.
• Get to know people – you need to know what it is that motivates your people. Each one of us is different and we get motivated by different things. Take some time to get to know the people you are trying to reach.
• Become a good communicator – you need to get your vision across to others and this involves good communication skills. Don’t rely on the inspirational words of others but instead find your own that are relevant to your vision. I’m all for the odd inspirational quote but they won’t inspire people to work hard at what you want them too unless you find good ways of getting your message across – often and in different ways.

Long term motivation is not about high powered speakers or shouting or being dynamic it’s about being a good leader.

Path to nowhere

We always seek the path of least resistance to achieve our goals. However this tendency means that we seldom actually achieve our goals. It’s this search for the ultimate path of least resistance that makes us do nothing. You might also call this laziness I guess.

You see when we are faced with a problem to solve or something we want to get we tend to settle for the least amount of effort to get it. Then when we don’t get it we persuade ourselves that we did try but it just didn’t work.

In sports there are plenty of people who play sports who take the easiest path to prepare for the sport. They do the very least amount of exercise and attend the fewest number of practices and then wonder why they don’t win.

This has always been the problem with setting targets. You see when you set targets people automatically work towards the target and put the least amount of effort in to reach them. It’s not that setting targets is bad – it is necessary – but the target needs to be a guide and not a reward.

So how do you avoid this path of least resistance?

I suggest the first step is understanding that it exists. That the next time you set out to do something recognise that you will be tempted to take the easiest route and not necessarily the best or most rewarding route.

Personal development involves learning to seek out the best route and commiting yourself to achieving it. When you set your goals think hard if you will be pushing your limits, if not then set them a little higher.

One of the problems with professional sports people is that they seldom understand what it feels like not to be fit. When you are not fit any amount of exercise can be painful and exhausting. I well remember the first time I went running after a long absence from the sport. I could only run about 200 yards and then I have to give in and walk back home. I felt sick, dizzy, embarrassed, unhealthy, desperate, etc. I’m glad I kept going – although even now it’s pretty hard work.

Of course sports people feel this kind of thing as well but I think there is a difference. I’ve had both experiences in my life and I know that somehow the sickness and exhaustion that comes when you are pushing yourself as a fit person is different to that of when you are unfit.

I want to encourage you if you are just starting out to get fit.

First – some of us do understand what you are going through and we know that it is not easy. I may not know you personally but believe me that I have great admiration for anyone who makes the effort to get fit – especially if you are very unfit.

Second – understand that the pain you experience is a part of the process of getting fit. Don’t give in when it hurts (if you are worried about the pain then seek medical help – it’s wise to get checked out). The pain you feel from first starting to exercise will get less. Somehow the pain can almost become a pleasure when you get past that first part.

Third – don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s great that you are now getting some exercise.  When you first start out you should be very proud that you are making those first steps – don’t be put off by any lack of progress instead be happy you are exercising.

I’m proud of you – keep it up.