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Five Steps to Getting Motivated
Frank Scully, Author
Motivation, for me, is the crux of the matter. We can have the best inspiration in the world (did anyone mention Fiona’s books, or this site?), we can have all the tools and know how to achieve our better life, but unless we get motivated it’ll all come to nothing.
How many times, especially at the beginning of the year, have you made resolutions, targets to achieve throughout the year, and how many times have you arrived at the tail end of that year only to realise that, ‘oops now, I fluffed up again’? Precisely.
Motivation is the secret dynamo, the power pack, your passport to getting exactly what you want in life. With motivation suddenly you’ll have the energy, the drive, in short the momentum to move on. Obstacles will be overcome, strategies for success will drip from your very being, success will become your best friend.
Get Juiced
So, why is motivation missing in so many peoples lives? I don’t just mean feeling good about your goal, okay about your plan, having a little bit of a smile regarding your objective. I’m talking seriously fired up, focused, primed to succeed. Juiced. This is motivation. Of all the people I talked to through the years and much of the reading and studying I’ve done, I would say it’s often the case that we don’t chose goals that inspire us in such a way as to fire us up. We settle of second best, the easier option – crumbs.
Ask yourself what would happen if you reached for the stars, achieved the absolute main, most amazing thing in your life you ever dreamed of. Don’t contemplate or second guess yourself, just remember and register what comes to mind. Imagine the only rule is that you could not fail; your dream would be a huge success beyond your wildest dreams. How would that make you feel? Now multiply the feeling by 100. Are you psyched up now? Good, this is what I call motivation. Anything less will just mean it’ll be harder work and probably take longer to achieve.
Motivation makes life easier.
I remember when I was working in the recording industry. I loved what I did. It sounds simplistic, but to hear my voice and music coming back through the speakers made me tingle. My inspiration was growing up and adoring Abba, and it had always been my dream to record the kind of music that would touch people in a similar way, as I had been touched by them all those years before. When Agnetha sang ‘The Winner Takes It All’, I closed my eyes and heard her singing to me. Their music really touched me.
So, that was my inspiration, my motivation; to create the perfect pop record. I would spend days in the studio; 12 hours, 18, sometimes up to 20 hours – yet it just seemed like 5 minutes, I was so excited. Guess what? I was motivated. It was my priority, my focus. When you’re motivated time stands still, life becomes a joy, you just ‘are’.
Nowadays I have other motivations, such as coaching. It really does juice me to write and talk, to help people move forward on their journey through life. To believe their absolute potential. For me, coaching is the most amazing occupation in the world.
Build Your Support Structure
‘But how can you get motivated?’ I hear you ask. Firstly, you’re here on the website and so reading this and hopefully other articles. There are the excellent exercises listed in Fiona’s book, ‘Be Your Own Life Coach’, to get move you to action, and we are publishing my ‘Get Motivated’ online programme today (which has the sole purpose of energising your life). Stepping up a gear would be to book some personal coaching. Many new clients come along to coaches at this time of year simply because they want to follow through with goals and motivation. They want to get serious, to achieve.
Now I’m going to list my ‘5 top tips to get motivated’. Follow them and you’ll be off the mark. Put them in to practice and you’ll be coasting. Keep up the momentum and you’ll be creating the life you want.
Do it now; have fun, and get focused. Why? Because you’re worth it.
1. Get excited!
Does your goal make you tingle, jump up and down with excitement, make you want to post it in The Times? If not, it’s the wrong goal.
Put pen to paper at a time when you won’t be disturbed and brainstorm for 10 minutes. Write down everything you want to do; create a £1 million company, watch the sun come up in Fiji, rollerblade in Central Park (New York) – whatever it is for you put it down.
2. Include a time scale.
Now work through your list, rating when you intend to achieve each by, 1, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years.
3.Take the top three one year goals and write a paragraph about them.
Why are they so amazing? What would you gain by having achieved them in your life? What will having them enable you to do? How will it make you feel/ make others around you feel?
4. Now write down the first action you will take to move towards each of your top three goals.
If you need to make the call, write to someone, do something make the decision that this will be the first of many steps until you achieve – and do it within 24 hours! The power, the absolute energy of making any goal work and giving it status is to take action immediately on it. Do it, and do it now.
5. Do ‘the rocking chair’ test.
Close your eyes and imagine you’re 95 years old, sitting in a rocking chair, looking back at what you achieved in your life. How would you feel had you not taken action, had not achieved your ultimate goal, hadn’t been true to who you really were. What would you have missed, who wouldn’t you have met, where wouldn’t you have travelled. How would it have affected your health, knowing you’d settled for crumbs?
Now imagine having had achieved you’re dreams, you had created the life you wanted. What would have been good? Who would have touched your life, what else would it have lead on to for you to achieve. How fantastic had you felt, your health been? What wonderful pictures can you see in your mind of your fabulous life?
