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!

Training Your Focus

How is your focus? Do you find it easy to concentrate for longer chunks of time or are you easily distracted? Do you enjoy doing the same thing at the same focus level over and over again, or are you easily bored?

I used to think that focus is a function of pleasure: I can concentrate on this because I like it. I do some stuff better than other because I like it. While loving what you do can keep your concentration high, at least in the beginning, maintaining a constant, high focus is not a function of pleasure at all. It’s a function of will.

Focus can be trained. It can be enhanced, it can be shaped the way you want. It can serve you well, if you treat it well. In today’s post I’ll share some of my observations regarding focus and how one can work this tool the same way you work your muscles in your daily workout.

Detach From Pleasure

To like something is a great “do” igniter. It really puts you on the road. Starting something you don’t like is usually slower and less energizing. But after the initial thrill, even if you do like what you’re doing, keeping yourself in the flow requires a lot of effort. Your focus will start to weaken.

The best way to ensure a constant flow of focus is to detach from pleasure. To treat every single task emotionally equal. Might sounds “robotish” and totally not fun, but in fact it’s just a way to trick your focus into a better approaching method.

If you’re constantly doing only things you like, your focus will develop a sort of addiction. It will unconsciously start looking for nice stuff, and will ignore difficult, or boring things. It will not discard it and put it aside for later, the boring stuff will simply disappear from the radar. You’ll end up as a hedonistic prisoner of “only nice stuff, please”.

Detaching from pleasure doesn’t mean you will refrain from enjoying what you’re doing. Detaching from pleasure means you’ll start doing things regardless of their niceness level. You’ll just do them. Detaching from pleasure means you’re also detaching from boredom. If you can observe yourself doing stuff, pleasure and boredom are just choices. You’re doing that thing anyway, so you can chose how you feel about it.

Assess Results

Whenever you keep your focus on something for longer chunks, take your time to assess results every once in a while. Take your time to see how were you at the beginning of the task and how are you now. Especially in difficult tasks, assessing results is a great focus enhancer.

It does this by progress showing. If you’re caught in solving a longer problem, you might forget where you started. You start circling and stumbling. You get caught in a pattern of “I’m getting nowhere with this” and your focus will start weaken. The hedonistic part of you will ask for something nice to hang on, and you’ll step away form the problem and go grab a cookie, for instance.

If after the cookie your focus will be higher, it would be great, but your focus is usually thinner. You didn’t assess any results, you just tried to escape a difficult task. Your focus will want again to the cookie.

Assessing results is easy, is a matter of saying: “I started this journey 15 minutes ago, and I’m doing ok, regardless of the fact I’ve done only one single step. I’m ok. I’m on it.”. Your focus will be forced to stay there until you solve the problem. You assessed your position, you acknowledged the fact that you’re making progress.

This works regardless of the focus time span. You can assess results of a 15 minutes cooking session, or of a 5 years goal. Maintaining your focus is equally important in both.

One More Second

I took this habit from my fitness session. Whenever I do pushups or abs, I establish some goal, let’s say 50 abs. When I’m close to 49, I stretch myself out and go over 50, usually 51, or 52. I do the this all the time. The goal is clear but I always try to stay in there for one more second.

I also did this in business. Whenever I was close to finish a project, I did something extra, a feature or an addition of some kind. It was not in the specs from the beginning but I felt the need to put it there.

Staying “one more second” in a project, in a workout, or in a relationship is a fantastic focus enhancer. I always know that I can do more abs after that second and I always know that my project will be a success, after that last feature. I am in there, I know it, I stay focused.

“One more second” is also good for assessing wrong paths. Even if you feel it’s wrong, take one more second to assess that and let your focus decide. If it’s a bad relationship, stay one more second in it and make sure it’s really bad for you. Next time, your focus will warn you from the beginning, and you won’t have to go through tough times again.

Balance Your Senses

Your focus is channeling the reality by using your senses. Each person have a specific distribution of these senses in their focus. Some are visual, some are functioning well by really touching stuff, some are reacting better to voices. Your senses are the gates and your focus is the gate opener.

Focus likes diversity. If you’re a visual guy, try using some sounds in the next working session. Put some music on, tap the table from time to time. If you’re doing something related to sounds (you’re a musician for instance, or working on a movie soundtrack) try to balance this by using some new lights around you. Change your seat, light a candle. It will instantly make you focus better.

Your focus will always appreciate a new balance in your senses. It’s not about boredom, we talked about that already. What you’re doing is sending a complementary signal that will make your focus trying to recompose the big picture. And that will keep it on the current task.

Your Focus Is Your Reality

Ok, I cheated a bit. I started with all those tips about focus enhancement and kept the focus definition aside. And I did this for a reason.

I strongly believe that your focus is in fact your reality. You cannot experience something outside your focus. Everything you do is driven by focus, it’s like a handle to keep and master your environment. It’s the only way you actively experience your life: whenever you’re not focused, you’re drifting away, whenever you’re focused you’re sailing.

Let’s make a short experiment now. Take a look at the wall in front of you. Yes, like right now. Take a look, I said, don’t cheat. After several seconds come back here and read on.

Where was your focus while you looked at the wall? Outside this blog post, of course, what a silly question. But where was the blog post during this period? You’ll answer that it was there, right in front of you, waiting for your to get back. It was in your mind. But I will say this blog post was completely outside your reality.

You might have think it was there, but it was on a virtual space and time. Your real space and time was filled with the wall. You were focused on the wall, and the wall took precedence of everything else in your life, including your thoughts. You might have think you were thinking at the post, but instead you were focused on the wall.

Everything in your life works like this. You might think you’re doing something, but your real focus is somewhere else. You think you’re happy, but instead of real happiness, your focus is in useless, shallow thoughts. You give to your thinking mind the benefit of reality, instead to give this to your focus. You might spend your entire life thinking you’re doing just fine, but your focus will be on a wall. You’ll be in fact experiencing a wall, not a happy life.

This is why training your focus is far more than a productivity technique. At a certain level, focus mastering is a magical endeavor, is an esoteric, almost secret art.

The one who masters his focus will master his own world.

Are you with me here? Or are your drifting away?