The Ultimate Guide to Motivating Yourself

This is a guest post by my friend, Vlad Dolezal, @vladdolezal.

When I was 4 years old, my mum took me to have a vaccination.

Now, I had heard about needles, so I was scared and begging her not to take me there. I even started crying and screaming in the waiting room.

But my mum, being good and firm, insisted. So once it was my turn to have the vaccination, we went in the doctor’s office. The doctor sat me down on a chair, and disinfected my arm (I was still sobbing at this point). Then she gave me the vaccine. A small prick, a little bit of pressure, and it was over.

“That’s all?” I thought, “that was no big deal at all!”

When it was time to get another vaccine a couple months later, I was quiet and calm, because I knew it was no big deal.

The doctor commented at how calm and reasonable I was, even compared to many older boys. Which made me huff up with pride at what a big boy I was. . And I’ve never felt particularly worried about injections since.

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Now, why am I telling you the above story?

The vaccination was pretty much the same in both cases. Yet my reaction was completely different. If I had had any say in the matter, I never would have gone for the first vaccination.

And that’s the essence of what I will share with you today. Motivation isn’t about the reality, it’s about what you imagine the reality will be like. (And by controlling your imagination, you can control your motivation.)

The pain and pleasure principle

What I’m about to say might seem very basic and obvious.

It is. But it’s precisely because this principle is stripped down to the bare basics that it’s so effective. Bear with me, and you will understand in a few moments.

Okay, ready? Here’s a shocker:

All human behavior is motivated by only two things – avoiding pain and seeking pleasure.

Now, I mean pain and pleasure in the broadest sense of the words. If you’re on a diet, not eating a cake might give you pleasure, because you reaffirm to yourself that you are strong-willed, and you feel good about the weight you lose.

Giving to charity gives you pleasure. A satisfying intellectual discussion is pleasure. Boredom is pain.

But despite all the different faces, it all boils down to seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And like in my vaccination story, it’s not about the actual pain or pleasure you will experience, it’s about what you imagine it will be like.

Here’s a great quick exercise I got from Paul McKenna that demonstrates this:

You have been invited to a party. You’re still deciding whether or not you will go.

First imagine standing awkwardly in a corner, surrounded by people you don’t know and have nothing in common with. Your least favorite type of music is playing way too loud in the background. How much do you want to go to the party, on a scale from 1 to 10?

Now instead imagine standing there comfortably, surrounded by people who are interested in spending time with you. Your favorite type of music comes on in the background at just the right volume. How much do you want to go to the party now?

Go ahead, do the exercise now.

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Did you feel a difference there?

If you felt any difference at all, you can see how the images you make in your head can influence your decisions. Even this simple 30-second exercise changed how you felt about going to a friend’s party. So imagine how much difference you could create if you understood this principle, and used it all the time!

Why motivation is so tricky

Please lift your hand if you struggle with motivation fairly regularly. Okay… I think that’s everyone with their hand up?

If it’s so simple, why do we all have so much trouble with motivation? Because while it’s simple and clear in principle, it’s quite tricky in practice unless you understand exactly what’s going on.

So to help you understand where motivation comes from and why we struggle with it so much, I’m going to introduce you to a little something called the triune brain theory.

(If you actually put your hand up while reading this, you can put it down now.)

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The triune brain theory states that our brain evolved in three main stages:

• the reptilian brain, in charge of reflexes and instincts (like breathing or the fight-or-flight response)
• the mammalian brain, in charge of emotions
• the higher brain, in charge of logical thinking

And while your logical thinking and decisions reside in the higher brain, motivation comes strictly from your emotions. It’s all about pain and pleasure, remember?

So when you logically know something is a good thing for you to do, but subconsciously you feel afraid or nervous about it, you will find all sorts of ways to sabotage yourself and procrastinate, just so you don’t have to face the pain.

On top of that, when your different brains disagree, the older one always wins. This is a necessity, because when you are charged by an angry rhinoceros, it would be no use to stay around and ponder all the different options with your logical brain. Your reptilian brain needs to just kick in, take over, get you out of the immediate danger and then hand control back to your logical brain.

And while there’s a distinct lack of charging rhinoceroses in our modern society, the brain kicks up the exact same response towards public speaking, approaching someone you find attractive, or other situations you might be terrified of.

(You might remember a time when you managed to grit your teeth, and go through an uncomfortable situation. In that case, the imagined pain of not living up to your own standards was likely even worse than the imagined pain of the situation ahead. While this does occasionally work, it’s a very poor last-resort way of motivating yourself.)

So, with this bit out of the way, let’s answer the ultimate question – how do you motivate yourself?

How to get motivated – the ultimate answer

With all the preliminaries in place, it will now make sense when I tell you exactly how you can motivate yourself.

You can motivate yourself by speaking directly to your emotional brain, through the use of vivid imagery.

Remember the exercise where you imagined going to a friend’s party? Yeah, that’s the basic idea. No amount of logical reasoning will speak to your emotional brain. And yet a simple 30-second visualisation makes all the difference in the world! Now we’ll just add a few extra bits and bobs to make it even more effective.

You will understand this much better if you try it out as I go through the explanation, so please pick an area of your life where you would like to feel more motivated right now.

I will also give you an example of my own as I go along, to further clarify things. I will pick writing an e-book, because that’s something I have wanted to do for over 2 years now. And now, I finally have a great idea, a willing audience, and everything else I need. I just need to stay motivated to get the whole thing written and out there.

Choose an area of your life where you would like to get more motivated, right now.

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Okay, ready? We’ll do this in a simple step-by-step recipe-like way, so you can easily replicate it in the future.

1. Get clear about what you want to get motivated for

In my case, that’s writing an e-book, and getting it out to people.

2. Make a mental list of all the awesome things that will happen if you achieve your goal

In my case, that would be earning some money, and spreading the knowledge among people who will truly benefit from it. Further, it will be my first step towards earning passive income. While I love working as a life coach, ultimately there’s a limit to how much time and energy I have, and I can only help a certain number of people.

This step will help you clarify exactly why you want to achieve your goal in the first place.

3. Picture a scene that sums up the biggest pleasure (in the pain-and-pleasure-principle sense) you will get from achieving your goal

In my case, it’s a collage of looking at my bank statement seeing enough monthly income to support myself comfortably, then being on the phone with life coaching clients, which is something I love doing, and then spending free time with my girlfriend, which I will be able to do if I earn enough money so that I don’t have to get a regular job.

Do note that this isn’t about being “realistic” about what impact your single action will have.

I assume that you have already decided with your logical brain what the best course of action is for you. I’m just helping you align your emotional brain with that, and yes, a bit of exaggeration helps with that.

4. Kick up the emotional intensity of that imagery

Now that you’ve decided what you want to imagine, we’ll just play a bit with how you imagine it. In NLP-speak, we’ll tweak the “submodalities”.

Go back to the visualization you did in the previous step, and try the following:

• see the scene through your own eyes, as opposed to seeing it from a third-person perspective
• make the picture bigger
• make the colors brighter
• if there are any sounds, make them louder. Try adding a soundtrack.

All of these serve to kick up the emotional intensity, and that’s exactly what we want!

5. Now for the pain part of motivation – imagine a really bad-case scenario if you don’t take your action

In my case, this would mean closing down the options for earning passive income online by not even taking the first step. Leading to not earning enough money, and having to get a day job to get by, leaving me tired and frustrated each day, drifting away from my girlfriend because we don’t really get quality time together anymore…

Now, sure, none of that is going to happen just because I don’t write an e-book. But that doesn’t matter, because remember – the emotional brain doesn’t respond to logic, only to vivid imagination.

Again, it’s about getting your emotional brain on board with what you have already decided is the best course of action. It doesn’t matter if you use a bit of exaggerated imagination to get there.

It’s up to you how realistic, or how exaggerated you want to make your imagination. Just remember – the bigger the stick and carrot you create for yourself, the stronger your motivation will drag you right towards the things you want.

6. Again, tweak the submodalities to make the movie in your mind even more vivid and emotionally intense

See step 4 above.

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If you have gone through the above exercise as you were reading it, you now understand how much power you yield over your own motivation just through some simple visualisation.

By applying the above principles, you will turn from fighting against your motivation to a point where your emotions inevitably drag you towards where you want to be. You won’t be able to help being successful, just like you can’t help procrastinating and avoiding action when your logical brain and emotions are mis-aligned.

And now that you know exactly how to get yourself motivated for any action you want… you just need to figure out exactly what actions you want to take that will lead to a happy and fulfilling life.

But that’s a topic for another day

Vlad Dolezal is a life coach who helps people with motivation, confidence, busting through limiting beliefs, and yes, even figuring out what will lead to a happy satisfying life for them specifically. He also writes Fun Life Development, a blog about making personal development fun, and turning complicated ideas into simple step-by-step ways to improve your life. Click the link above and check it out!

7 Reasons To Enjoy Life More

Too often we forget why we’re here. Caught in an endless, empty race without a real prize, we run each day trying to fulfill our own expectations, other people’s expectations, or just simply blindly following rules we don’t understand. We forgot what is the real reason of our existence: to enjoy it. To breathe life every second and thrill with it. Here’s a list of 7 simple reasons to enjoy life even in the fastest, emptiest, dullest and mindless race we chose to run.

Beginnings

Every little thing we start is a creation. A miracle by itself. Think for a second: before we activate the Universe to make it happen, there is nothing there. Picture a cup of coffee in your mind. Before you pour the water, add the brown powder and put some heat on it, there is nothing there. Separated pieces of matter, drifting around in your environment, without any intention to glue them together. It was you who changed this and manifested a cup of coffee where there was nothing before.

I am a big fan of beginnings. I am addicted to them. Every time I start something, I enjoy my creative super powers. Because there’s no need to start big, in order to enjoy your creative super powers, all you need is to start. Size has nothing to do with beginnings: even the biggest journey started with only one step. That atomic action, that infinitesimal shift in the current texture of the Universe, this incredible small intention, that is a magical thing. Putting together separated pieces of your environment and transform them into something new, that is enchanting.

Beginnings are filling us with enthusiasm, passion and eagerness. Every time we start doing something, being it a cup of coffee or a new relationship, being it a walk in the park or circling around the word, we’re using our divine, immortal persona. Just make sure you realize that next time you’re making coffee.

People You Love

You may be sad, but when they are around, you’re happy. You may be struggling with financial difficulties, but when you think at them, everything seems easy. You may  be stumbling in the darkest depression and yet, only by thinking at them, your path seem a little bit clearer. They are the people you love. They are the ones who’re making you abandon your own wishes, in an unspeakably happy surrender to something bigger than you. They are sometimes your only reason to live.

Have you thought what makes you love them? What are the reason behind your love? I hope you didn’t find the answer. Because you don’t need one. You just love them. Loving somebody is outside reason, outside logic, beyond our analytical understanding of the world. Love is our greatest mystery and the people we love are its messengers. They tend to arrive at impossible moments in our lives and destroy all the solid foundations we thought we had. Only to build new, better and stronger ones.

Life is not easy. It can pull you in different directions and suck the last drop of energy out of you. And yet, in the most desert period of your existence, you’ll still have somebody to love. The moment you stopped loving other people, you stopped loving yourself. And without love, yes, life is empty, dull and mindless.

Creating Value

You do have a talent. Something that is unique to you. It doesn’t need to follow social rules or be converted into a career. It’s just something you’re great at. Every time you do that, every time you’re performing that special talent of yours, you’re creating value. It may be just that you make people laugh. Or comfort them by speaking. Or dancing. Or writing. Something that just flows through you and reach other people almost effortless. Creating value is what gives you a sense of usefulness and presence.

I love creating value. I love mastering different skills. I love the feelings I have when something I did proves useful for somebody else. Lately, this happens on this blog. People email me and tell me they felt motivated by my writing. Sometimes, they are even old friends who almost lost contact and incidentally found me while browsing the net. Every time I have one of those moments I feel fulfilled. A deep, strong and almost explosive emotion, leaving me thrilled and filled with adrenaline.

Making yourself useful to other people is drastically underrated in our modern society. A sense of blind ego and empty performance has replaced this natural flow: it doesn’t matter how you can make people happy with what you do, but rather what you get in return. No wonder you can’t enjoy life in such a limiting mindset.

Enjoying Value Created By Other People

When was the last time you felt inspired while listening to good music? Or watching an excellent movie? Or just enjoying new, simple yet elegant clothes? Or eating out deliciously at a nice restaurant, on a magical summer evening? On any of these occasions you were enjoying value created by other people. Somebody else created that music, imagined those clothes, made that movie, prepared that dinner. Somebody else used his or her unique talent and made you feel special.

I love to enjoy value created by other people. It gives me a sense of connection and validation. I feel like I am part of something bigger. Somewhere, somehow, there is a master plan and I am part of it. I mean something. Somebody took his time and skills and imagination and created something for me. I am enriched by that thing. I am better and I feel better while enjoying it. And I am also sending my respect to the creators. Refusing this flow of good stuff that comes to me is just against nature.

Living a life of abstinence in the name of fake modesty is so frustrating. Disconnecting from other people while waiting to transcend some twisted, invisible layers of “limiting” pressure is simply stupid. I do experience some abstinence every now and then, but only as an appetizer: makes the whole thing taste so much better.

Your Current Moment

Being in the current moment is a magic experience. And like any other magic it doesn’t require more of this world, but rather less. In order to really be in the current moment, you don’t need to learn something new, but get rid of what you already know. Leave back your worries, your frustrations, your memories and just stay here. Enjoy what you see. What you feel. What you hear or touch. You are designed for this specific experience, not for worrying and stacking frustration over frustration until you crack up.

Being in the current moment doesn’t have anything to do with positive or negative emotions. Anger or joy are two faces of the same coin. Being in the current moment while you’re angry has the same result as being in the current moment while you’re joyful. Rejecting what you feel because it’s “wrong” will simply kill the current moment and replace it with some mental notion about it. Instead of living your moment, you’ll live your theoretical notion about what you “should” feel., repressing the genuine feeling. And that’s so tasteless and dead.

The current moment is the only moment you have. As fragile as it is, it has this enormous power of making you alive. Don’t suffocate it with unnecessary garbage from the past, or with volatile worries about the future. Everything you have and need is right here. Right now.

The Unexpected

One of the most popular and delusive hoaxes of all time is that life could be predictable. Life is not predictable. Life is what’s happening while you’re busy making plans. The unexpected is the key ingredient here. Trying to eliminate the unexpected in your life, making your path as safe as you can, will be the only sure proof way to die of boredom. If no challenge will be there for you, if no surprising events will shake your universe, if nothing unforeseen will pop up suddenly, then what’s left for you to do?

I used to fight against the unexpected. Especially while I had my business. Seemed the most reasonable way to manage a business. Eliminate all the possible bad outcomes and wait for the good ones to manifest. Sadly, it didn’t worked out. Apparently, the only way to enjoy a steady and healthy growth for my business was to embrace the unexpected and take advantage of it in every way I can. Without the unpredictable changes in the market, I wouldn’t have any growth whatsoever.

While I don’t reject a solid preparation for starting your days, I don’t think this by itself will eliminate the unexpected in your life. Fortunately. Being prepared when the unpredictable happens is something completely different than rejecting it. So much better to be hit by a wave, and enjoy it, rather than pretend the sea is still.

Endings

What goes up, must come down. Every beginning has an end. And I find as much thrill and joy of life in a healthy ending as I find in a genuine beginning. Every ending is a confirmation that what’s started has reached its maturity. The purpose have been fulfilled. It’s not the ending in itself that causes suffering, it’s the attachment. Yes, pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional. Most of the time, though, I find out endings are not painful at all. They’re most like reaching the top of a mountain: you did it, now go down and start another one.

People try to make things last for unbelievably long periods of time. It’s an unconscious attempt to beat time. What a waste of resources. Time allows us to exist, how can you think to beat something that allows you to be. It’s a contradiction in terms. You can’t beat your own context, you’re in it. For instance, people are struggling to make their relationships last longer. Longer than what? Every thing has a purpose, if the purpose has been reached, it’s time for a new beginning. Enjoy the ending and let go.

If you don’t allow endings, you’re blocking other things form manifestation. Making something last more than its original intention will just hurt everybody. Enjoy the end and welcome a new beginning. Like this blog post. It’s over now. Time for you to start something new.

Pain Is Unavoidable, Suffering Is Optional

If you’ve never, ever been hurt in your entire life, raise your hand. And leave this blog ASAP, because the following article is not for you. It’s for all the people who got hurt at some point in their lives. And who suffered because of that.

Suffering and pain are tied together in our minds. One is giving birth to the other. They’re like a single, osmotic being. Every time we get hurt, we suffer. And every time we suffer we create more hurt. It’s difficult to even talk about pain and suffering in a detached way, this is how deep they are buried in our subconscious mind. The mere act of reading about pain and suffering is making your brain reconnect with those feelings in this very moment.

Do you remember how you felt last time you experienced pain? What were the exact feelings? Frustration? Sorrow? Despair? Defeat? What were the words you used to describe it? Suffering? Affliction? Trauma? Grief?

Pain is one of the most avoided situations in our life. We run away from pain. We’re trying to escape the pain. To mask it, to hide from it, to cover it in superfluous, temporary indulgences. We can’t stand it. Because we don’t want to suffer.

Why Do We Suffer?

Pain is external. It’s created by things out of our control. We’ve just been hit by something. The same way we get hit by happiness, sometimes. Only this time it hurts.

Suffering is internal. It gets triggered by our own feelings and perceptions of the pain. We’re interpreting the pain in a certain way. Most of the time by resisting it.

Pain is generated by loss. Loss of confidence, loss of affection, loss of hope. Every time you get disappointed, you’re losing a dream. And it hurts. We lose things we were attached to and the main body reacts: I want that part of me back. And we get this signal under the form of pain.

Suffering, on the other part, is the attachment for what we lose. The higher the attachment, the stronger the signal we receive. Pain becomes bigger and bigger.

But, believe it or not, losing parts of ourselves is natural. This is how we grow. By losing parts of ourselves. We lose our childish body and become adults. We lose our ignorance and become knowledgeable. We lose our inhibitions and become free. Every time we lose something, we’re forced to put something in its place. We create something new. We become something new.

Our loss is the trigger for evolution. We replace the tears with something we crafted. This is how we become a new being. Most of the time a better one. Because now we know what it takes to re-create that part of our Universe.

They say you grow stronger through pain than through happiness. And that’s true. You grow faster when you have all that work to do. When you lose all your dreams and hopes, you have to get to work. Fill in the gaps. Make sure life doesn’t flow away through all those holes. Be there. Do things.

I’m not making the apology of pain as the ultimate evolutionary tool. I’m human just like you and I get hurt just like you. What I do try is to lower the suffering. Because suffering is not necessary. Pain, as hurtful as it gets, might be. But suffering is an internal artifact, a self-generated response which I have control over. I may not control pain, but I can control my own reaction to it.

By giving free way to suffering I accept to lose my energy. My whole power is hijacked by suffering. Instead of using it for creating something new on that crack, I crave for what was there before. I use my focus in a desperate attempt to freeze the Universe in the very second before the loss occurred. Like this would be possible…

I Am What I Do

Every time I get hurt, I try to see which part of me is detached. What am I losing? Is the affection of somebody? Is my confidence in somebody? Is something I took for granted but it proved to be as changeable as the whole Universe? Every loss I experience creates some pain. I know I cannot avoid it. But I also know I can create something new in that hurtful cavity of myself.

That pain is the signal I have work to do. If there’s somebody affection I lost, I start to love myself more. If there’s confidence in somebody I lost, I start to trust myself more often. If there’s something I took for granted, like when I’m disappointed by somebody, I start to make and keep new promises. All those tears are signs of unfinished work with myself.

It’s not about the other guys. The outside process of getting hurt is in fact a reflection of what’s going on inside. Blaming external conditions for my pain is just another form of suffering. The real process takes place inside.

Deep down, every pain is a pointer for something we avoided to do for a long time. We’re designed in such a way that we naturally experience growth, and most of the time we grow organically. But sometimes we get so attached that we cannot break up and grow further other than through violent actions. This is when pain occur. When we don’t want to grow anymore. At that point, a violent event blows away that part of our main body which is not necessary anymore. Forcing us to start covering it with something new, and, most important, better.

Most of my pain came in my relationships. I made bad choices. Several times. I got hurt and I’m still getting hurt. It’s nobody else’s fault. In fact, it’s nobody’s fault. It’s just a pointer that I have a lot of work to do in this area. And that work is about myself. It’s about trusting and opening. About accepting rejection, if that’s the case, and creating understanding. It’s about making peace with my own failures and my partner’s failures. About acceptance and freedom.

Desperately trying to tune out the pain by temporary indulgences won’t solve my relationships problem. The cavity will still be there until I start building something new over it.

And I’m building something new over it. I’m not making huge progress, but I’m sticking with it. Every single day.