It’s pretty common to get all fired up for something, get started, and then have your motivation just fizzle out.
In fact, many don’t have much of a problem choosing goals, and figuring how to get started, it’s that initial force of motivation tends to wane over time.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in those “motivational” type seminars, where you pay a bunch of money, get all pumped up, and then find yourself in the same situation a couple weeks later, wondering what in the heck happened.
This also happens when we try and lose weight. We dig out those old pair of jeans at the bottom of the closet, wonder why they’ve gotten smaller, and then resolve to do something about it.
But then here we are, a couple weeks later thinking, “Oh yea, I’ll start that diet TOMORROW.”
One of the very common reasons for our mysteriously disappearing motivation is our own motivational strategies.
Every living creature is motivated away from pain, and toward pleasure and humans are no different.
But understanding your own unique mix is crucial.
If you are 80% motivated “away from pain” then any motivation you have will naturally vanish once you get “away from” whatever particular pain motivated you in the first place.
A common way we shoot ourselves in the foot is to feel enough “pain” to set a goal, and then we tell a bunch of people, or write it down, and say it to ourselves in the mirror.
But we get just enough “satisfaction” from stating our goal that it diminishes the pain, which was our initial motivation.
In a nutshell, it goes like this. We feel pain. We make a choice to alleviate it. We state that choice out loud (either to ourselves or friends and family), and that feels good. That good feeling eliminates the pain, and we’re automatically back to square one.
There’s a couple ways around this strategy. One is to keep your goals secret. Imagine just achieving them, and letting your family and friends find out what you “did” rather than what you are intending to “do.”
Another is to create some powerful, huge, compelling goal in the future, and think about it as often as you can.
That way, you’ll both be “pushed” away from pain, and “pulled” toward pleasure at the same time.
Sometimes this tweak is all you need to create a life filled with accomplishment after accomplishment, which in the long run, can add up to a lot of money, satisfaction, and emotionally rewarding relationships.
To find out how to make this virtually guaranteed, check this out: