I am not sure how many of you are aware of the truly motivating and vastly inspiring story of Beethoven’s Ode To Joy. If you’d permit me, I’d like to share it with you.

Most of Beethoven’s masterpieces were composed while he was deaf. Many of us, me included, might be horrified should we ever become deaf. However, Beethoven would not allow deafness to stand in his way. He had found a way to get over that obstacle.

His love for music strengthened his self-motivation to compose one masterpiece after the other without giving in to the challenge he had. He had music in him, and nothing, not even his deafness, would take charge of him.

And, as we all know, he triumphed over his deafness.

Beethoven set the music to the last movement of the Ninth Symphony to a poem entitled “Ode To Joy”. He strongly believed this poem celebrated the brotherhood of man.

On May 07th, 1824, Beethoven conducted the Ninth Symphony. When the “Ode To Joy” movement was over, the audience erupted in applause. Beethoven, however, did not turn around to accept the round of applause, as he could not hear it. Noticing this, one of the chorus members took it upon himself to step out of line and take hold of Beethoven’s arm to turn him around to face the audience.

But by then the applause had subsided.

As Beethoven quietly looked out into the audience, they all arose, one by one, in standing ovation, their applause thunderous. It is said that a single tear of joy skated down the composer’s cheek. It is also said that a small tear had rolled down the chorus member’s cheek who stood next to him.

This story made me think. I asked myself a few questions, which I will address to you. What do you have that is inside of you, that’s so strong, that it can triumph over your shyness, your fear, your lack of self-confidence or lack of self-motivation?

What will bring your tear of joy? Who will take you by the arm and turn you around when you are down and out, or facing the wrong direction, or on the wrong road, so you may not only see but also hear your standing ovation? The applause, the loud cheers, the simultaneous stamping of feet?

As you think of your chorus member, feel him or her standing next to you, shoulder to shoulder. See yourself achieving, see the new highly enthusiastic and motivated you. See the elated you. Hold your chorus member’s hand tightly and double your elation and motivation.

Hear the applause and the cheers of hundreds of people. Hear them cheering you on, calling your name, loving you and you loving them back. Feel it. Immerse yourself in it. Feel it throughout your whole body. That applause and cheer is for you and you only. Get excited. Accept the applause. Hold on to the cheers. Feel the emotion.

Lift your arms in the air and declare: “I am feeling strong, capable and full of life today.” Repeat this declaration three times as loud and as emotionally as you can. Feel an amazing, lively energy flow through your body.

Feel so motivated that you can do anything, absolutely anything, to achieve your goals and dreams in life. Obstacles can be and will be nothing but sprinkles of dust that you can blow away with a single breath.

I believe in much the same way that success breeds success, motivation must breed more motivation. And the more motivation you have the motivated you will become. It’s like stacking one layer of motivation over another.

You trigger more and more motivation. Here are a couple of ways to breed, stack and trigger more motivation:

1.    Celebrate your motivation attitude. Take time out to remind yourself what you have accomplished and how far you’ve come. Celebrate the fact that you had the motivation to start and finish your task, objective or goal.

Celebrate there and then, immediately upon completion of the task or realization of the goal. And celebrate big!

Rejoice the small and large successes and accomplishments. Honor each one, individually. Allow each success to bring with it its own sense of fulfillment. This fulfillment will give you the added surge of motivation to bring in more successes.

Make it a point to be motivated to achieve as many successes as you can. Size doesn’t matter! A small success is still a success. That’s how the mind sees it.

Motivation is like a snowball – it keeps gaining momentum. Imagine what will happen when you stack one motivation over the other. The snowball will get bigger, sooner.

2.    Reward your motivation attitude. We all love rewards, don’t we? Make it a habit to reward yourself for being and remaining motivated. Have a long bubble bath, go to the movies or a restaurant, buy a pair of shoes, a handbag, a watch. It is important to reward yourself, and as you do, you will look forward to the next reward.

By consistently celebrating and rewarding your motivation attitude you will stimulate and encourage additional motivation. It will be within you waiting to be automatically summoned.

Commemorate your motivation to get you where you want to be. Have a party, have fun and watch your successes escalate.

Hani Al-Qasem is a published author and personal growth specialist. He co-authored Self-Confidence Building in 7 Steps and Establish Powerful Self-Enhancing Beliefs.

Download the free e-book Establish Powerful Self-Enhancing Beliefs and eliminate the limiting beliefs that keep you from enjoying happiness and success. Get motivated and Stay Motivated to achieve more.

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Have you ever started a project or activity, ground away at it for hours/weeks/years, and wanted to just give up? Sometimes, you know you need to push past temporary difficulties or discomfort in order to get where you want to be. But sometimes, you feel as though you’re chasing after a worthless goal or outcome. Your interest and enthusiasm have hit rock-bottom, and you just want out.

What’s probably stopping you, though, is the time, money or energy you’ve already invested in this activity. It might be something quite trivial:
•    You’ve read 100 pages of this (very tedious) novel: you might as well finish it.
•    You bought a packet of not-so-great cookies, but you don’t want to waste the money, so you decide to eat them all
•    You started writing a poem which you’re not getting anywhere with. You’ve spent three hours on it, and you feel like it would be a waste of time to give up now.

Or your activity might be something huge – something where quitting it would mean quite a big change in your life:
•    You’ve been following a particular career path for six years, and you’re increasingly feeling that it’s “not you”.
•    Your relationship with your boyfriend/girlfriend has been deteriorating for some time, but you’ve been together for three years.
•    You’ve spent most evenings for the past four years playing World of Warcraft, but you’re starting to lose interest in the game – and you’re wishing you had all those hours back.
•    For seven years, you’ve been writing a novel. The feedback from writing friends is … polite, at best. Re-reading it, you’re not sure it’s so great yourself. You’re also sick of working on it. But you don’t want to lose all the time you’ve put in…
•    You’ve been spending a small fortune on vitamin pills and dietary supplements. But you’re not noticing any real difference after six months, and a nutritionist friend says you really don’t need them. You think of giving up – but then you’d be admitting that you’ve wasted hundreds of dollars.

Whether your activity is a trivial one or a huge one, don’t stick with it because of the time or money you’ve already put in. That time/money is gone: you’ll never have it back. What you can recover, though, is the future time or money you’d otherwise be spending on something you don’t really want.

Quit Leisure Activities That Are No Longer Fun

As a teen, I spent several hours every day playing a small online role playing game. When I eventually realised that the game had become less engaging (lots of players had left) and that I’d grown and moved onto new interests, I was reluctant to quit. I felt that I’d spent a lot of my life on the game – and stopping playing would mean that time was wasted.

What I realised, though, was that there was no point wasting more time. The best time to quit is when you realise you’re not gaining enough from something to justify the time/cash that you’re putting into it, and that the situation is never going to improve.

Your interests naturally change over time, and sometimes, a shift in circumstances can mean that something formerly fun becomes boring. Don’t get tied into things just because you’ve done them for a long time in the past: you’re allowed to quit at any time. If you’ve watched three seasons of a TV show and you’re bored, don’t make yourself watch the fourth “just because I’ve got this far”. If you read half a novel and it’s a monumental effort to keep going, just stop.

Leave A Dead-End (For You) Job

Tim Ferriss tells a great story in The Four-Hour Work Week, which describes the unsuccessful attempt to create a large carb-free cheesecake – and the subsequent consumption of the cake:

“This new masterpiece … tasted like liquid cream cheese mixed with cold water and about 600 packets of sugar. … I grabbed the largest soup ladel with a sigh … I had wasted an entire Sunday and a boatload of ingredients – it was time to reap what I had sown.
… Stupid? Of course. It’s about as stupid as one can get. This is a ridiculous and micro example of what people do on a larger scale with jobs all the time: self-imposed suffering that can be avoided.”
(Tim Ferriss, The Four-Hour Work Week, pg 226)

Perhaps you jumped straight into a job after college and belatedly realised it wasn’t really for you. Whether this realisation comes after a month, a year or half a lifetime, it’s okay to quit. Don’t carry on making yourself miserable just because you feel like all that past misery would be wasted otherwise!

Make yourself, and yourself alone, the judge of what constitutes a “dead end” job for you. You might have plenty of opportunities for promotion within your workplace – but if none of those higher positions interest you, it’s time to get out.

Nothing Is Wasted

Something I find quite comforting when cutting my losses and ditching an activity is to remember that nothing is wasted.  You can always draw something good out:

A leisure activity that you now dismiss as escapism and a waste of time may have helped you through a difficult period in your life.

A relationship that didn’t work out will have shown you something about yourself.
A job that is going nowhere for you will have taught you some useful skills. These might not be directly related to the actual work: one of the most useful things I learnt as an employee was to get over my dislike of answering the phone!

New friends and contacts will probably have come into your life during your activity. Today, I have close friends who I initially met through playing the online game that I quit years ago. I’m still in touch with colleagues from my former job.

At the very least, you’ll have learnt something about yourself. Maybe your failed attempt at freelancing has taught you that you need the structure of an office environment in order to work effectively. Perhaps all those unfinished novels have convinced you that you’re never going to enjoy historical fiction, however often your friends recommend it.

What activities are you currently engaged in that you want to quit? Why are you sticking with them – is it because you really will gain something at the end, or out of a misguided sense that you don’t want to lose the time/money already invested?

Image courtesy of Shutter Hack

Have you settled for less in your life, when you used to dream that something bigger, something grander, was possible? Not only possible, but you knew for certain it would happen, didn’t you?

Then something happened…

You got responsibilities.

You had to be practical.

But you don’t have to follow the herd anymore. You can make your heart and your mind work together. You simply have to realize that this so-called “collective wisdom” is really a collective assumption.

Any of these old sayings (sleep walking mantras) sound familiar?

• Get a real job.
• Welcome to adulthood!
• Grow up.
• Keep your head down.
• It’s called work for a reason!

These are all fine and dandy. They may have been more applicable in say, your grandfather’s time. Labor was expected for the larger part of sunlight and there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to follow your passions (unless you liked mining coal).

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Image courtesy of NaPix

You’ve got a lot of different things on the go. Some of them are New Years’ resolutions that you’re determined to stick with, this time. Some are projects that have dragged on for years – an unfinished novel in your bottom drawer, or the refurbishment of your basement. Others are things you’ve started and given up almost straight away: these have left their legacy in the form of unread textbooks, boxes of craft materials, dusty computer gadgetry, never-played language CDs and more…

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Image courtesy of Superbomba

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” – Steve Jobs, in Commencement Address to Stanford students

What would you do if you were told you had five years left to live? I prefer to use this rather than Steve Job’s single day, because most of us, with a day or week left, would spend them seeing family and saying goodbyes.

But five years is different. Five years is long enough to accomplish almost any goal you might have, however ambitious. And you wouldn’t want to spend five years partying hedonistically, or eating your favourite meal every night.

Would you finally get around to writing that novel that you’ve been planning for more years than you want to admit? Would you quit your job and set up your own business – secure in the knowledge that your retirement fund is no longer a problem? Would you find the means and the money to travel to places you’ve always wanted to visit?

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Image courtesy of wonderlane

The internet has forever changed the way we gather information. In the past obtaining information could be tedious. If you wanted to get the financial report of a company and learn about its business, most probably you would need to visit the company personally to collect the financial reports and talk to the management. Now, with the help of the internet, anyone can easily learn the history of Walmart by googling it or searching for it on Wikipedia.

So the internet had greatly reduced the time it takes to gather information, but has it really made us more effective and efficient?

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Image courtesy of  Wili Hybrid

Our western puritan work ethic has taught us that hard work, industry, struggle and effort are necessary prerequisites for achievement. I respectfully but passionately disagree. In fact, I believe that the opposite is true, that struggle and effort are vices, unhealthy addictions and pathologies. They only tire us out with struggle and they get us nowhere, like the fly caught in the spider’s web enmeshes itself all the more by its attempts to work its way out.

The Taoist notion of ‘Wu Wei’ refers to a state of action where there is little activity on our part, and yet a great deal gets done. Wu Wei is not apathy or passivity. It is not laziness or torpor. It is like swimming with the current, sawing wood in the direction of the grain or sailing with the wind. There is action, but little effort. In other words, it is ‘going with the flow.’

The world can be ruled by letting things run their course; it cannot be ruled by interfering. (Lao Tse)

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Image courtesy of Hamed Masoumi

Everywhere on and off the web, people talk about the benefits of planning. Plans help you define your goals, help you determine what tasks are needed and when you need to do them. And plans help you stay on track when distractions set in. So, what’s not to love about plans?

Lots.

When you overplan, you live in the future instead of the present, plan instead of do, and lose adaptability. All three of these mean you lessen your chances of reaching your goals. Instead you fumble around in the plan, wondering why despite all the hard work you’re doing, your business isn’t growing, your house renovations aren’t going anywhere, you aren’t losing weight, or you’re not reaching whatever goal you’re pursuing.

Fortunately the solution is easy.

1. Create a mental sketch of the future you want.
2. Work backwards to get where you are now.
3. Go step by step forwards again noting down the crucial steps.
4. Start implementing the plan, and
5. Let the details fill themselves in as you get to them.

On his blog 6weeks.ca Brett Legree has a great take on the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of our actions are unnecessary detail he says. If you can figure out the 20% that’s mission critical, then your plan becomes easy to fulfill.

But before we go into too much detail about the solution, let’s look at the problems of overplanning in more detail.

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Can a mop and a dust cloth bring happiness and luck?

Back in August, I picked up a book written by Mr. Mitsuhiro Masuda (in Japanese) who advocates the power of cleaning and decluttering.  He maintains that we can be happier and luckier by cleaning up our place of living.  I was a brand-new entrepreneur at that time, meaning my business was starting to attract some clients but not enough to be in full operation, so I had time and was willing to try anything to improve the situation.

Now, I know grabbing a dust cloth and reorganizing the bookshelf is as boring as it gets in personal development. But we intuitively know our environment affects our mood. When we are in a poorly-lit, cluttered room where we can’t find what we need and what we see doesn’t resonate with who we are, we feel messy, sad, frustrated, and out of place.  How can we feel bright, efficient, well-organized and be in the natural flow of energy?  Clean up!

Many people are big on decorating their place.  That is fine.  But cleaning needs to happen before decorating.  Before creating your new YOU, you need to let go of your old YOU. Physically taking care of your environment by cleaning and decluttering can stimulate letting go of your mental clutter that has been holding you in the old pattern.

The 21 Day Outside In Personal Development Program

The book came with the 21 day action plan.  It’s a good plan, but very women-oriented, so I have modified it to be helpful for everyone.  You work in one area for three days, totaling seven areas of your place of living.

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Am I the only one who has trouble focusing on a single task? I doubt it.

It wasn’t always this way. At school and university it seemed relatively easy to apply myself to a single task. But these days it seems as if my mind is wanting me to do a million different things at once.

I call this the “web 2.0 mind”. Why? Because I believe the web 2.0 has changed how I act, both online and offline. When online I’m usually busy doing a number of different things at once. Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Gmail, Flickr, Facebook, Skype, blogs…. these are just a few of the places I might I be at any given moment. Doing multiple things at once has become the norm for me, which is why I say even when I’m offline I can find it difficult to focus on a single task. Of course multi-tasking is nothing new, but never before has it been so easy and enjoyable to be doing so many things at once.

You may be asking yourself: does this web 2.0 mind even need “taming”? Well, let me make one thing clear: the ability to be doing a number of tasks at once – ie multi-tasking – is not only an asset, but a necessity, in this modern economy. And as I previously noted, it is often fun to have a number of things on the go at once. However, there often comes a time when you need to put your head down and get a particular task or project completed. And when this time comes, the last thing you want to have to deal with is a mind that is running wild with thoughts such as “I wonder what is on the Digg front page” or “I’ll just check Twitter quickly to see what my friends are up to”. These sound pretty harmless, but it’s funny how 5 minutes can quickly turn into 30 minutes without you realizing it.

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