If you’re anything like me then you experience motivation in waves. One day you’ll feel unstoppable and eager to work, as if success is a certainty. A few days later your confidence will drop and you’ll start to drag your feet and feel discouraged, hopeless, or worse — indifferent.
These ups and downs are a natural part of life, but if you don’t work to minimize the downs you’ll reach a plateau. If every positive step is followed by a down slide, the net gain is minimal. The key to reaching your highest potential is stringing together positive steps and constantly accelerating forward.
Set Fantastic Longterm Goals
The biggest mistake people make with longterm goals is setting them too low. If you only set the bar a couple notches above your current level, you’ll probably get there, but once you do, where do you go next? Without a bigger dream, it’s easy to reach a summit, stop to check out the view, and lose momentum. If you have a fantastic longterm goal, than each milestone will be a nice blip along the way — you can stop for a moment but there’s no question that the road keeps going up.
Never be afraid to set your longterm goals too high. Maybe you want to be a millionaire before you reach 30. Maybe you want to write a bestselling book. These goals might seem impossible but they aren’t. Thousands of people have accomplished them. They were able to do so because they believed it was possible.
Once you set your sights high, your mind starts to search for creative ways to get there. When you plan on being fantastically successful, you are naturally inclined to think strategically and study the examples in front of you. This forward thinking mentality will help you form a longterm vision that trounces the short-sighted.
Go Easy On Yourself
Inevitably there will be failures and set backs that humble and demoralize you. In these times it’s important to understand that every failure is a success. Each failure means that you stepped out of hiding and took a risk — something most people never dare to do. This makes you brave, the fact you have survived makes you resilient, and if you’ve learned something, that makes you smarter as well.
It’s important to recognize causes of failure and areas of personal weakness, but constantly deprecating yourself will only decrease your motivation. When criticizing yourself, do it gently, the same way to you would with a subordinate who’s confidence you want to build. Recognize shortcomings, but dwell on strengths and accomplishments. Even if you’ve fallen short of a particular goal there is always something you can build on.
Find Friends Along the Way
For people with ambition who operate in a competitive environment, the natural reaction is to view competitors with animosity. There will always be someone who has more than you, who’s making faster progress, or who’s generating more buzz.
While your competitive fire can help increase motivation in bursts, over the long-haul, this form of self-centered negative motivation doesn’t last. For one, it isn’t enjoyable to associate progress with negativity, and secondly, you’ll cut yourself off from from collaboration.
In most cases, life is not a zero-sum game. Another person’s success does nothing to detract from yours and frequently enhances it. Instead of making rivalries, develop friendships. Your competitors are usually the people you can relate the most to. Do what you can to help them. Share advice and recognize good work. This type of giving not only inspires others to return the favor, but it creates an infectious feeling of goodwill around you and your projects. People are attracted to positive vibes.
t’s also important to find happiness and motivation in the mundane. Every day I get dozens of emails through this site, some are random questions or requests for advice, but many are just people saying hello. I could look at all these emails as “something to deal with” but I do my best to answer every single one and make a connection in the process. Enjoying these small personal interactions reminds me of why I started doing this to begin with.
Create Self-Reinforcing Habits
Another powerful longterm motivator is self-reinforcing habits. The best example that comes to mind is Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret. His habit was spending time writing every single day:
Seinfeld said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”
By making the writing streak a goal, Seinfeld was able to create a self-reinforcing habit that built towards his dream of becoming a successful comedian. Each successful day made writing the next day even easier. By using the streak as a motivator, he was able to taste success every day and through repetition was able to break down resistance. If you can do something for long enough it becomes easier to maintain the habit than break it.
Staying motivated is a constant challenge, but if you dream big, enjoy yourself along the way, and develop positive self reinforcing habits, you’ll eventually find yourself at the top of your personal Mt. Everest.
image by nicolas valentin
Excellent post, John. I especially like your advice to go easy on yourself and to find friends along the way.
It’s easy to be too down on yourself. I have found that if you just take a step back you often see that you are being too harsh on yourself and too serious about whatever happened. In the long run and from a larger perspective most mistakes and problems are pretty small.
I also think it’s sometimes easy to fall into the trap of being negative towards people you may compete with. But as you say, in most cases life is not a zero-sum game. And thinking about it that way ads a whole lot more positivity and fun to your life.
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“Each failure means that you stepped out of hiding and took a risk — something most people never dare to do. This makes you brave, the fact you have survived makes you resilient, and if you’ve learned something, that makes you smarter as well.”
That piece of advice is something I personally find very important. Sometimes there are things a person will never learn unless they go out, test, and fail. I read lots of books about people like great stock traders and all of them seem to go broke a couple of time before they finally learn what to do right. Failure is a natural part of learning what to do right and also a natural part of learning that failure is transitory and not the end of the world. And although failure is often de-motivating, it is usually a necessary part of getting good and learning how to do things successfully. So I always just think of failure as “the price of good education.” And for me that cures the de-motivating aspects of a failure.
I’ve always loved the line from Zig Ziglar: “Motivation doesn’t last, but neither does taking a bath. That’s why we recommend it DAILY.”
ENJOY NOW!
-Patrick
Thanks everyone, I’m glad the ideas resonated with you. Patrick, I really like that quote from Zig Ziglar — it’s funny and makes a lot of sense.
How To Maintain Your Motivation Level For A Long Time…
Motivation often comes in spurts and most often it vanishes before we can achieve much. Once you get motivated you need to sustain/maintain motivation level.
Why in the first base do we get motivated?
We want to get rich
We want to have sex
We want t…
Nice article John. And I love that quote Patrick.
Great post, John. I’ve always believed that the best way to motivate yourself is with the carrot and the stick. Anthony Robbins talks about using pleasure and pain. Basically, that means imagining all the pleasure you’ll experience if you follow through on your goal and all the pain you’ll experience if you don’t. It’s that push/pull combination that really works wonders!
Eugene,
You are right about the push/pull. Are you a fan of Tony Robbins? I’ve listened to “Get the Edge” and was for the most part impressed, and was thinking of reviewing it at some point.
Hi John,
MOTIVATION is driven by YOUR EXPERIENCE.
YOUR EXPERIENCE is driven by YOUR PERCEPTION.
PERCEPTION is driven by YOUR 5 SENSES.
One of the most poweful senses is your vision.
When I’m motivated I’m focused on my VISION.
When I’m not motivated my vision is fuzzy and unclear.
Visualize to Motivate. Check out Principle 5 in,
The Science of Getting Rich: Principles 4-7
http://www.stephenmartile.com/?p=19
To learn how to visualize for wealth and prosperity check out my latest article,
Focus on Properity
http://www.stephenmartile.com/?p=86
Stephen Martile
Personal Development Made Simple
http://www.stephenmartile.com
Great post, especially ‘go easy on yourself’. The vast majority of us over commit ourselves.
A neat little technique I use is telling myself ‘I have permission to…’
So if I am having an off day, I say ‘I give myself permission to have an easy day’ or a similar phrase.
You can use this for anything.
‘I give myself permission to have a piece of cake…or turn off my mobile phone…or have a lie in…’
Andrew
Sustainability is easier to create than we may think it is. Discouragement, frustration, and hopelessness and frustration are the clothes that overwhelm wears.
If we have a method for recognizing and dissolving overwhelm when it develops, all that friction and drag from resistance disappears.
A new book called Productive Procrastination will be on shelves in a few weeks. In it, there’s a dissolving overwhelm exercise. There are many ways to dissolve overwhelm, though – the key is to let yourself experience the physical sensations/energy of what you’re experiencing in the moment, rather than resisting them. It’s simply amazing how easy it is, how quick once you have just a little practice, and how effective in taking you from dread or indifference to eagerness and action.
A little more info on the book, if you’re interested, is at http://www.ProductiveProcrastinationBook.com
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I like the article!
As is already pointed out, the “take it easy” part is a comforting one. I was wondering, how to do it, when I’m disappointed with not doing, not trying enough. When I’m disappointed because I did the oposite of stepping out of hiding.
[...] Sustaining Self-Motivation Make no mistake – even if you’re passionately in love with your house, it’s hard to keep yourself motivated when the excitement wears off and the work drags on. This article has some good tips for powering through. [...]
Thanks for using my photo…..motivation and courage are part of my life ,give you a sense of well been .Sometime you need to push the barriers a bit further .this walk was easy (850meters starting from sea level)2 hours ..Every one can do it ,,no doubt!!
It’s my pleasure. That’s an incredible shot!
[...] who procrastinate will develop feelings of guilt and stress, as the work piles up and turn urgent. Procrastination on its own is not a dangerous [...]
[...] Sustaining self motivation [...]