If you’re anything like me then you experience motivation in waves. One day you’ll feel unstoppable and eager to work, as if success is a certainty, then few days or weeks later your confidence drops and you’ll start to drag your feet and feel discouraged, hopeless, or worse — indifferent. Is this you? You are not alone; most of us struggle with this. I believe that the key is finding the combinations that keep fanning the flames of your enthusiasm and motivation.
The acceleration and deceleration are a natural part of life, but if you don’t work to minimize the downs you’ll reach a plateau, and possibly grind to a screeching halt. If every positive step is followed by a down slide, the net gain is minimal. The key to reaching your highest potential is stringing together positive steps and accelerating forward, onward and upwards. In other words, don’t get stuck!
So you ask, ‘how do I sustain my motivation to ensure acceleration and productivity?’ Let’s explore this question further, in a few simple keys that I hope you will explore over the next two editions and implement in your own life.
Set Fantastic Goals
The biggest mistake people make with goals is setting the bar too low. If you only set the bar a couple notches above your current level, you’ll probably get there, but once you do, where do you go next? There is no stretch, no challenge and like the sluggard calamity will come knocking. Every living thing needs a challenge, a big goal – think of the butterfly larvae whose singular fantastic goal is to crawl out of that cocoon and metamorphose into a stunning butterfly. Think of it this way, without a bigger dream, it’s easy to reach a summit, stop to catch your breath, and lose momentum. Ever heard the saying that you should reach for the stars and you may just get to the moon, but reach for the moon and you may just find yourself falling back to the earth?
Management gurus will ask you to create a ‘Moon Shot’! This is a difficult or expensive task, the outcome of which is expected to have great significance. Setting a really good moon shot starts with the end in mind and works backwards from there to the present. The most famous moon shot was uttered by John F Kennedy who said “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
Other people with notable moon shots are Melissa Mayer (Yahoo!) who said that Yahoo’s moonshot was to “be on every smartphone, every tablet every day for every internet user”. I am sure you get the picture – put yourself out there! Wait! What just came to your mind? Write it down and make plans to do it! That could be your fantastic goal or moon shot!
With a fantastic and challenging goal (or moon shot), each milestone will be a heart thumping challenge along the way — you can ease off your accelerator once in a while but there’s no question that the road keeps going up. Never let fear stop you from setting the bar as high as you possibly can. Back to what you wrote down (from the previous paragraph) did it sound like any of these?
- Start my own business with x number of staff in 24 months
- Identify and sign an MOU with a strategic business partner by xxxx months; which will make my/our firm one of the top 3 in the xxxx industry by Jan 2017
- Write and publish a successful book on ‘xyz’, selling over 5,000 copies by the end of the next calendar year
- Gain relevant professional certification in xxxxxxx within the next 12 calendar months
- Own my/our own home at xxxxxxx within the next 5 years
- Quit my current job and start my own business providing xxxxxx by Dec 2016.
These goals might seem impossible, but they aren’t. Thousands of people have accomplished them; thousands more are on their way to achieving similarly audacious goals. They were able to do so because they believed and believe it is possible.
So what is YOUR Moon Shot? If you didn’t write it out before do it now.
Be assured once you set your sights high, your mind starts to search for creative ways to get there. When you plan (not just hope) on being fantastically successful, you are naturally inclined to think strategically and study the examples in front of you. This forward thinking mentality will help you form a long-term vision that beats the short-sighted. It will get your juices flowing each time you feel yourself decelerating. That’s why I asked you to write it down, so that when you are feeling beat up and slow, you can pick up your direction/map and rev your engine.
Never Give Up
Every journey towards success is fraught with pitfalls, setbacks and what some may call failure. These can both demoralize and humble you! When this happens (and it will) you need to remember that EVERY ‘failure’ is a success (keep the right attitude/perspective) – at least you know one more way that wasn’t the right way. I read recently where someone said ‘FAIL’ is an acronym for ‘First Attempt In Learning’! Failure is a bend, not an end! Failure means that you stepped out and took a chance – something most people never do. It means that you are brave, and the fact that you lived to tell the story makes you resilient, and hopefully you have learned something that has made you even smarter than when you first began!
When failure happens, go easy on yourself, don’t give up! Remember, it’s just your first lesson, that says what you did was not quite accurate, try again. As long as you are not dead and buried, you have another opportunity to get it right and grab GOLD.
As you reflect on your lesson (the US Army calls this After Action Review) it’s important to recognize causes of the ‘failure event’ (can I emphasize that failure is just an event and not your destination/terminus) and areas of personal weakness, and not just spend time constantly deprecating yourself – this will only decrease/deflate your motivation. When appraising yourself, do it realistically but gently, and don’t fall into the trap of analysis paralysis –that’ll just sabotage your efforts and productivity. Recognize shortcomings, but dwell on strengths, opportunities, potential and accomplishments; these can energize you. Imagine someone working on losing weight and has a plan to eat only healthy meals, but ends up scarfing down a bucket of KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) deep-fried chicken in one sitting. A fail right? Before I will allow this person to give up on her/his goal, I will have him/her explore why he/she went into KFC in the first place; did he/she fail to plan to have a healthy meal? That means that tomorrow, in order to avoid binging at KFC he/she should plan his/her healthy meal ahead. Then tomorrow we are less likely to fail as we did today.
So, even if you’ve fallen short of a particular goal be assured that there is always something you can build on. There is always a place called ‘there’ that you can move on towards. There is always a remnant that you can rebuild with. There is always tomorrow, and tomorrow means we can start again. Tomorrow is a promise.
People who ride horses will tell you that every once in a while you will be thrown off the horse, the trick for success is to get right back on the horse and keep riding. They say that if you put off getting right back on the horse you could lose your nerve entirely and never get back on again…EVER!
Do you want to risk your dreams? Do you want to risk not achieving what you were put on earth to achieve? Then never give up.
Have you experienced any failure recently? Do you know why you failed? I bet you know now what you should have done differently? Okay…get back on your horse and show your horse who’s BOSS!
We will continue next time.