Life sucks sometimes.
There you are, just going along and being awesome. Achieving your goals, kicking down doors with your skills and swagger and then BLAM!
Out of nowhere something happens, knocks you off your groove, puts you on your knees and leaves you stewing in a pile of depression and blah-ness.
This happens to everyone – even the greats – it is just part of being a human being.
But the danger really happens when we start spending too much time soaking and self-loathing in that pile of depression and blah-ness. We let the world pass us by wishing, “If only I hadn’t had that road bump.”
Well…
“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place – and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.
You, me or nobody’s gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you’re hit – it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward! How much you can take and KEEP MOVING FORWARD! That’s how winning is done!” ~Rocky Balboa
The people who turn their lives into something that they are proud of, something that they actually ENJOY living are the same people that are able to keep themselves motivated, every damn day.
Motivation Is A Verb
I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes here, but there ain’t no magical motivation fairy that is going to descend out of the sky and bless you with powers to get off your butt and get things done.
That just isn’t going to happen.
If your business is failing and it is sucking the life out of you. YOU have to fix it.
If your workouts are starting to become a rare event in your weekly schedule, YOU are the one who has to turn off the TV and jump into your Vibrams.
The second you realize that motivation is a verb, (one that YOU are responsible for making happen) all the power that doubt, fear and uncertainty posses will drift away. You will literally be taking the reigns on your own life.
The key to keeping yourself motivated to reach the goals that you want to achieve is to set up for yourself a motivation ritual that you can keep locked away in your back pocket for those down days.
Whenever I just simply don’t feel like doing work, I whip out my motivation ritual.
Here it is:
Step 1: Get Physical
If I have time, I’ll go for a long run. If I don’t, I might do a few push-ups or just stand up and walk around and get a drink or something. I just need to get the blood moving.
Step 2: Go To YouTube
I know it sounds crazy, but there are some seriously motivating videos on YouTube.
I have become a very big fan of this guy.
I will usually watch one or two of those videos to get myself really pumped up and to help convince my brain to get motivated.
This reliance on an external force to get the brain juices pumping takes the pressure of me having to draw from reserves of strength and discipline that I might just not have that day.
Step 3: Look At Pictures Of My Family
I have a beautiful baby boy and the most wonderful wife that a man could possibly ask for, and when I’m needing to be motivated, when I’m feeling like I just don’t want to do another bit of work, I look back on my “why” – my wife and kid.
Step 4: Craft The Battle Plan
When I first started my motivation ritual (a few years ago), I would jump straight from step 3 to working.
Usually, what would happen is I would be so pumped up and so excited that I would be just shotgunning my work for the next couple of hours.
The energy would start to boil over and I would have a case of onset ADHD. By the end of the day I would have 10 new projects and the one thing I was supposed to be getting done that day would still be sitting on my desk – unfinished.
That simply doesn’t work. That approach just leads to more demotivation. We have to break that cycle in order to succeed.
Now I try and take all of that energy and put it into a plan.
I don’t want you to think that I sit down on my chair and start writing in a notebook all of these completed and polished ideas.
No, no, no, no…
Typically, what I do is get out my whiteboard and just do a massive brain dump. I draw pictures, I walk around the room, I talk things out with my wife and after about 10 or 15 minutes I am feeling super excited, I have a checklist in hand of tasks that need to be completed and I feel more motivated than ever.
Then it is time to move on to step 5.
Step 5: Follow Through
I would submit that one of the biggest reasons that we feel demotivated about anything, whether that is working out, our work life, anything that we’re trying to do; it is because we failed in some way to follow through with the goal that we were trying to achieve.
When you sit down to your desk and there are a stack of projects waiting for you, and you put them off for 10 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 1 hour – what starts happening? You start losing steam, right?
The KEY to making this 5 step motivation ritual work is the follow through. Don’t wait – just do it.
Motivation Is A Noun
Motivation isn’t just a set of actions. It is also an idea.
In the English language, this sentence makes sense:
“Do you have the motivation?”
Why on earth is that sentence allowed in the same language that has given us Shakespearean sonnets?
The answer is, because motivation, when used in this sense, is a noun that encapsulates a set of personality traits.
When looked at in this way, we can begin to gauge whether or not we are motivated by sifting through this series of traits that motivation describes. We can also use this same idea to build within ourselves motivation, one step at a time.
Allow me to explain:
I want you to come up with your own list of what you think the personality traits are that the word motivation encapsulates.
Here’s a list of my own:
– never gives up
– positive attitude
– gets back up when knocked down
– excitement
– focus
– tenacity
– no fear
– belief in self
– direction
– courage
Once you have this list, you can literally take each and every point and juxtapose it against your own personality.
You can literally create a checklist of motivational traits that you can then look at and say,”Do I have that trait? Yes. Do I have that trait? No. I guess I better work on that trait to help myself stay motivated.”
To BUILD motivation.
When you approach motivation in this way, it takes away the intimidation of the word and puts the power back in your hands.
Staying Motivated Every Damn Day
No matter what it is that you are doing in life, motivation will be the gas that gets you there.
Try and come up with your own motivation ritual for when you feel deflated.
I would love to hear what you do to keep yourself going!