MOTIVATION

Motivation is your drive to do certain tasks.

We usually associate motivation as what tips the scale of activation energy to partake in a task we say we want to do but don’t, things like going to the gym.

Motivation comes in waves, however when you feel motivated to do something there’s nothing else you want to do.

Being motivated makes everything 100 x easier and more enjoyable. You often hear 'how to be more motivated to do something' and to be honest with you if you are asking to become more motivated that thing isn’t for you. Especially if you're just starting out.

I was motivated to go the gym every single day because I hated how I looked. I looked in the mirror and was genuinely so disgusted I would move mountains to get to the gym so I could take one step further away from that undesirable place.

If you can’t seem to be motivated to go to the gym but say you want to go, you really don’t want it as bad as you say or think. The problem is not a lack of motivation, it's a lack of desire. A lack of reasoning, which brings me onto the next point.

Finding your why is finding your reason for motivation. You need to know your why in the most stupidly intricate detail as possible and you need to know it like the back of your hand. Whys that? Well if you know the specific reason and you know it's easily accessible, it's like having a coffee to wake up.

The emotional connection you're after is lying in that answer somewhere. I suggest you dedicate time, with a pen and paper and just write down the word why in the middle and brainstorm. String those ideas together in to sentences. Read it over everyday, remind yourself of why you're even doing this, because if your reason and purpose doesn't even get you fired up, it's not the right reason.

Your reason is personal, only you hold the answer so don't let any external force influence your why. And I'll say it again, your reasoning and motivation does NOT care about it's source, aslong as it gets it. If you're doing it to cherish the memory of a dead goldfish, but it gets you motivated like hell, then I don't know about you but I see no problem.

There are still tricks however you can do to lower the bar for entry and increase that motivation spike just enough so you can get the task done.

Just before I move on it’s important to note also that your source of motivation does not matter.

What I mean by this is whatever motivation gets you up and fired use it. If for example you go to the gym for women, use that motivation. The starting motivation doesn’t matter as long as you can hit that threshold for the energy required to actually start the task.

So how do you become more motivated? You see to become more motivated you have to bend the real meaning of it.

Motivation can often fall off because of the energy it takes to do the task or more often than not, the energy to setup to doing the task.

So to be more motivated you can inspire the energy into yourself, or reduce the friction for the task.

Like I said earlier, motivation lowers the boundary for entry, but only because we feel so much energy inside. So if you’re not feeling that surge of energy internally, you can do the opposite, lower the barrier for entry.

My first tip is accountability. It’s best to do this with a partner, anyone at all.

For example if you want to go to the gym, tell them that you’re going and say that if you don’t you’ll give them £10.

All of a sudden you feel motivated to go because you don’t want to lose your money. You have added an external motivating factor. You’ve inspired the energy to do something because you are desperate to avoid losing something tangible.

You see the problem with most things is that the reward from your efforts aren’t tangible instantly or take a long time to become tangible.

And as most people are driven by reward, if you can make something tangible until you learn to work for intangible items, it’s going to help you a lot.

It’s such an easy thing but it fixes most people’s habits of skipping. Moreover, the more you talk to someone about it, the more responsibility you will feel internally and externally, almost like you have to hold up your side of a deal. Even if you didn’t put money on the line you are more likely to do it because you want to keep up your appearances, money is just the safety net.

And just to add one more thing to that, the more you talk about something and try taking accountability, the more interested you become in the topic - and with more interest comes more emotional attachment and the more emotional attachment the more motivation.

This next tip seems a bit obvious and rogue at the same time.

A lot of people can relate to this ‘2am motivation’ where they’ll stay up doing whatever and for some reason they seem to get this absolute surge of energy to turn their life around.

This is because you do things you know are bad for you, ie staying up late, eating junk, wasting hours watching netflix until you realise you need be awake in 4 hours. All of this eventually ticks over and you get this surge.

Now this form of motivation comes from trying to escape a bad area. It’s almost your survival instinct kicking in your adrenaline to get away as fast as you can from danger.

Now if you have read this guide, you know I hated how I looked and constantly wanted it changing. To build the motivation, sit with your thoughts and try isolate that feeling you had of self disgust and use it to drive you.

Pain is single handily the most powerful fuel. Use it for as long as you can because that’s what will get you as far ahead and as far away as possible. Replicate the survival instinct.

The next tip is visualising.

Visualising yourself as the person who does the sort of thing that you want to do, if it helps, visualise the accolades they get for being that person and doing that thing.

If they have a great physique because they only eat healthily, visualise yourself as a healthy eater who in turn has a great physique and gets praise for it.

It sounds quite simple but if you start to cement in your head that you are that person, your old self who eats junk food all day suddenly seems to become so undesirable that you don’t want to associate with them.

The more you visualise, the more defined the visions become. And the more defined the vision the more drive you have to chase that person.

This is the reducing friction side. Be as lazy as possible.

Be lazy and make your tasks easier to do than to skip.

Leave your gym clothes on your bed the night before along with a water bottle because if they’re already ready to go, your chances are higher that you will go.

Your task becomes easier to do because there is less work and energy involved to do it, as you’ve already done half of it.

Set yourself up to be lazy and you’ll get the task done. This also works in reverse order in my opinion even more effectively.

I wanted to stop using my phone if I was trying to work so I left it downstairs, turned off fully and at the back of a cupboard.

All of a sudden it was more effort to go downstairs, pull everything out the cupboard, get my phone, put everything back in, wait for it to turn on, then use it. It became a 6 step process whereas before it was 1.

Now it was lower effort to me to just carry on working. If you can add steps to do things you want to quit, it’s going to make you at least second guess yourself before you do it.

When people set themselves huge tasks they usually fail or quit because they keep looking at it in a larger scale.

They get overwhelmed by the size of the task. New years revolutions become a 3 day thing because people are always thinking about a whole year. It becomes overwhelming to the brain. Chop down the time frame. People who want to stop smoking usually fail because they’re visualising the task as a whole life process.

Focus on living, not life. Break it down into days, I won’t smoke today.

Not smoking for one day is one million times easier than quitting forever, but all you need to do is take that same mindset to tomorrow. I didn’t smoke yesterday, I won’t smoke today, keep this going until you’ll realise you haven’t touched a cigarette in months and eventually is will be erased from your life. And if you have to, work on progressing it, if you can’t go cold turkey. Have 1 less cigarette a day, until you’re having none, then have 1 a week, then once a fortnight, then cut them out.

If you can make the process seem less harsh, it will be easier and more comfortable to do.

By relating it to something which you already have desire for, it associates it with that and becomes easier.

Many guys don’t want to go to the gym but want to get more women, relate the gym to looking better and women being more attracted to you so you get more girls, now it’s like bread and butter because it is associated with something more desirable.

And it’s not like you’re lying to yourself either because that will make you more attractive, more confident and it will help you attract more of the opposite gender.

If you aren’t motivated for one reason, be motivated for another reason. It doesn’t matter what you’re source of motivation is as long as it gets done.

Go find another source of motivation to have, like explained in accountability. For me, I used to be pretty bad at sticking to routines and habits, but I didn’t want anyone to think I couldn’t stick to routines and habits, so I made myself prove to someone that I was.

You see I had no motivation to do the task, but I had motivation to uphold my image.