Motivation is a strange beast. When you have it, life seems great and the world is your oyster. When you are unmotivated, however, even the simplest of tasks can be a struggle to complete.

Lack of motivation is something that I often have to deal with, and I know I am not alone (one of our biggest sources of traffic comes via people Googling “motivation“).

So today I am interested to hear your own personal methods for motivating yourself. Is it something as simple as a song? Or, are you driven by something much deeper and personal? Please share tips and tactics for motivating yourself in the comments below.

Book Giveaway

We have 10 copies of Good in a Room: How to Sell Yourself (and Your Ideas) and Win Over Any Audience to give away. In this book Stephanie Palmer, former MGM Director of Creative Affairs, reveals the techniques used by Hollywood’s top writers, directors and producers to get financing for their projects. It also explains how you can apply these techniques to be more successful in your own high-stakes meetings as well as in other areas of your professional life

Check out the Amazon reviews if you want to know more about the book - it is not often you see everyone giving a book 5 stars! To be in the running just leave a comment below. We’ll announce the recipients sometime next week.

Link Karma

Here are some articles that John and I have enjoyed this week:

• The Red Pill: 10 Films Guaranteed to Blow Your Mind
• 10 Super Creative Uses for Everyday Things That You Already Have
• Knowledge; The Jeckyll and Hyde Inside Our Mind
• Beat High Gas Prices This Summer With A Stacation
• Our Life Journey: Break Free From Limiting Beliefs
• Running and Finishing the Excellence Mile! - Part 1 of 2
• What Makes a Good Life?
• The Knowing-Doing Gap

“Everything, a bird, a tree, a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable” - Eckhart Tolle

Life is a miracle. And yet so many of us have become deadened to this simple idea. We mistakenly believe that because we know the word for items - a bird, a tree, a stone, a human being, etc - that we actually know these items. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even the most common everyday items hold unfathomable depth, which is why Eckhart Tolle says that they are ultimately unknowable.

Here is a test: stop reading this for a moment and take a look at your surroundings. Now, when you were looking around did you fully appreciate what was in front of your eyes? If, for example, you are sitting in your living room did you notice the details of the furniture? Did you consider the technology that makes your plasma television possible? Or, did you quickly scan your eyes around across the room and, in doing so, subconsciously attaching a label to each item (eg “chair”, “television”, etc)?

Most of us would have done the latter. And in doing so, we have covered up the mystery of life with a label. Of course this is pretty harmless in the simple example given. But consider for a moment if this is the way in which we always see the world. As Tolle says in his book A New Earth: “the quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you.”
Click here to continue »

I believe it is important to separate good failures from bad failures. Good failures happen when, even though you made the correct decision, you still lost. Bad failures happen because you made bad decisions, or worse, didn’t make a decision at all. Although the two feel the same, they have a completely different long-term impact.

I’m a novice poker player. One of the first things I learned was that there were good wins and bad wins. Good wins were because you had a sound strategy of betting where the odds were in your favor. Bad wins happened when you just got lucky. Going all-in on a 2-7 off-suit might win the hand. But it doesn’t mean you’re a good poker player.

Good Failures

Mentally separating good failures from bad failures takes work. Poker is a simple game where the laws of probability are cleanly defined. Real life is a lot messier. It takes more effort to decide which failures were because of a bad decision and which were just the unintended side-effects of the best choice available.

Although it can be difficult to separate the two, there are benefits to making two piles instead of just one. By separating the two types of failures, it is easier to persevere through good failures. It may hurt to have your business proposal shut down for the fifteenth time, but it isn’t necessarily a bad failure.

By separating the two, you can also avoid more bad failures. If you fail because of laziness, indecision or poor planning, you can quickly correct those in the future. Knowing the difference between good and bad failures keeps you from repeating stupid mistakes.

Types of Good Failures

I’ve found that there are several categories of good failures. These are the kinds of failures you might actually seek out. Since they come from good, not bad, decisions, they are the best way to fail.
Click here to continue »

PickTheBrain has lead me to a new job with a company named PeopleJam (I’ll be sharing the story soon). As part of my duties as head of online marketing, I’ll be writing articles on PeopleJam and sharing them here when they’re relevant.

The first such article is all about maintaining a youthful body as you get older by eating right and getting the right kinds of exercise. Head over and check it out.

If you like the post, do me a favor and give the article a digg.