- in Motivation , Self Development by Brian Wright
Motivation For Life: How To Get Fired Up With What You Have
How do I find motivation?
Why does it look like others are always speeding past me?
Why do I feel like a wild snorlax that only wants to sleep?
What do I do when I have goals and dreams, but can never muster up the energy and excitement to get them done?
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Some people say that motivation is bullshit. Tell that to yourself the next time to fall asleep condemning yourself for not sticking to your plans.
Not having motivation for life is causing us to lose it, and fast. While the rest of the world is zooming past us (at increasing speeds) we need to make our mark, and plant our flag in this world before we’re forgotten about.
Motivation for Life: In a Nutshell
READ: How to Harness the power of your Motivation
Motivation for Life: Why bother?
1. Survival
Motivation is literally your reason for doing anything, period. IF you had zero motivation, you wouldn’t have the desire (or care) to get up, clothe yourself, pass urine/feces, or feed yourself.
Rats who were starved of their primary motivating factor have been known to choose starvation, rather than walk over to the food that was in reach.
Your life is in your hands. For human beings, motivation is the difference between going shopping for healthy groceries, or choosing to stay home and eat the easy mac. You do the math.
Without the right stuff driving you, you’re at a race toward the bottom.
When we lack motivation, we lack the capability to protect and maintain ourselves.
It’s literally a race to the bottom.
Without motivation, you are less likely to behave in ways that are beneficial to you as an organism. We know that disease and excess body fat are linked. We know that things like cardiac arrest and other health complications are related to exercise, eating habits etc…
Being motivated will increase or lessen the quality of your life. Your organs can last as long as they need, or fail sooner than they need. You can be unhealthy, unattractive, riddled with disease and be miserable. Or you can choose to put in the work. Your choice.
2. Safety
Motivation for life keeps you safe. Are you prepared for a market crash? How about a real estate bubble? What if taxes increase to a level you cannot handle, are you prepared for that?
What if your house gets broken into? What happens then?
Do you have the resources and the know-how to survive those things when (not if) they happen?
Having the right passion for keeping your life stable is what allows us to walk through life feeling prepared and safe.
3. Companionship
We attract more of what we are. Have you ever seen a supermodel with a slob? Have you ever seen a goal oriented CEO with a couch potato? No, because they’re not good matches for each other.
You constantly get more of what you are internally. If you lack the motivation for life necessary to live a good one, you will attract romantic, sexual, business and platonic people in your life who match you.
Think about how excited you would be to hang around someone who has no motivation to better themselves, do anything fun, live life to the fullest and get after the richest experiences they can. Is that you’re thing?
Probably not. To have motivated people around you, you need to be motivated yourself.
4. Prestige
Motivation naturally increases your status in life among your fellow humans. Believe it or not, it’s important and will have a serious effect on your life.
Status affects how others interact with you. Regardless of what we say and think, we judge people unfairly and often quickly. Without being able to fire yourself up to achieve goals and accomplishments, people will look at you like you’re nobody interesting.
You’ll achieve mastery, and have serious accomplishments under your belt. With enough motivation, you’ll get so good they won’t be able to ignore you, and it’ll feel good. You’ll feel useful, admired and valued by those who are inspired by your success.
It’s not only about prestige, motivation to climb the latter will give you a level of freedom and independence that you’ll become addicted to.
5. Full potential and greatness
There is something within you that needs to be let out. It’s not just my own personal belief, but a fact of life. Human beings are capable of outstanding growth and have nearly unlimited potential.
Take anybody, past, present or future, and imagine they never achieve it because they failed to get fired up and serious about their life!
There’s an episode of Star Trek (oh god) where this civilization had technology that was capable of discovering what children were naturally good at. When this was discovered, they hone that skill and the child was expert before they were even adults.
Now that I think about it, I’m not sure why that matters.
There is a unique combination of your life experience, your personal passions and deep desires you have for expansion and accomplishment that will leave a serious mark in your soul, and on this world.
Getting fired up about life is not really an option in my opinion, it’s an obligation. We’ve got work to do.
Your motivation in life can come from knowing that you have the potential to grow into something extraordinary. But not if you don’t start.
How to find your Motivation for life
1. Purpose
You either bear the pain of self-discipline, or you bear the pain of regret.
The right reason will make or break you. Having motivation to get out of your chair will be strong if the building is on fire.
But what if you need to get out of the chair to start your side project? It’s easier to stay on the couch and scroll through your phone then, because there’s no immediate threat.
Create a sense of purpose and urgency behind your actions (that’s the secret), is to look into the future and see how your lack of motivation will affect your life.
Your house won’t burn down if you don’t work on that side project tonight, but you’ll forfeiting the money you’d make, the new colleagues to add to your entourage, the sense of accomplishment burning out of your chest, and you’ll never grow.
Only do what’s really important. You don’t need to feel motivated for anything else. If you’ve decided that something is important, everytime you decide to stall or procrastinate, the result will be as serious as your house burning down.
2. Passion
Take something that really ignites your flame and start doing it. There are things we do that are fun, and there are things we do that cause us to lose track of time. When you flow that well with something, you want to keep it in your life.
Flow state is an experience like no other. To be honest, I’m not sure I think good sex can even beat how it feels to be laser focused something. It’s the feeling you get when you’re so into something, you’re almost communicating with it. The marble says “chizel me here”.
Whatever you’re into, get more of it into your life. Become so good at it that you develop a group of passionate onlookers.
Never stop looking for that thing you can lose yourself in. Once you get a taste of the elusive flow state, you’ll spend your whole life trying to get it back.
When you’re expert, figure out a way you can be paid. Ways to be paid for your passion are:
- Offer it as a done for you service (create something)
- Be an instructor (teach them something)
- Be an entertainer (offer them a nice experience)
Attach wonderful experiences to your daily activities. Make everything in your life fun somehow, and you’ll get up off the couch.
3. Vision
Show me your life map. Do you even know what that is? A life map is where you are now, and everything that follows until you die. You should be able to draw it from memory.
A life map/life vision is a grand idea for where your life is going. Change is inevitable, but we can guide and control the change through our actions. Without a vision for our lives, we’re bobbing up and down out at sea, completely at the mercy of the current.
Having a vision for your life is the first step to taking control and asserting your independence.
4. Goals
Progress is your best friend. Even the smallest amount of progress lights us up and reinvigorates us. Look at someone who’s been stagnant in their life for so long, and have them achieve them smallest amount of progress toward something that means a lot to them. The light’s in their eyes come back.
You can literally divide a dream someone has into a thousand smaller steps, and at step 1 see a completely different person.
Your brain responds favorably to goals. (2) Your mind supports the goals you have and tries to find ways for you to accomplish them. (3) Your heart starts to glow brighter because FINALLY you’re honoring yourself as a powerful being worthy of success.
Setting goals cannot be overlooked. It’s the easiest way to change your life. Pick a direction and go.
Avoid wasting time pursuing goals that are meaningless to you, combine your sense of purpose, vision, and your passions into a life vision that gets you motivated for life.
Motivation hacks
1. Drink the kool-aid
Brainwash yourself for success. Whatever you’re doing in life (trying to make more money, learning more, becoming better) there are people who’ve done it, and those who are doing it alongside you.
Find your group and “drink the kool-aid”. Shut out all the naysayers and feed yourself the programming of your group only.
2. Understanding procrastination
Procrastination happens in your brain. All things equal, those activities that require the most energy from you will be the hardest to get up off the couch and do.
Your brain is a resource manager, and when the resource demand is high, the brain requires a tremendous amount of motivation.
To work around this, mentally increase your motivation by psyching yourself up, or make the activity seem smaller. You can make large activities seem small by using the chunking technique.
You can beat procrastination by only working on something for a short amount of time (5-10 minutes), by telling yourself that you’ll only accomplish a small step, & by convincing yourself that “there’s no harm in just starting and seeing what happens. No pressure”
Procrastination happens in your mind. Limiting beliefs, fear, doubt and all other types of mental roadblocks will cause uncertainty in your life and keep you on the couch.
- Create a serious masterplan: with every step outlined you eliminate confusion
- Find an expert’s formula: more than likely, someone has already done it, or something similar. Pay them if you have to to get the results you want.
- Harness the power of Comparison: Someone has probably done something harder, with less.
3. Routine
Motivation is only necessary until you make things routine. Once it’s on automatic, you get up and do it regardless of the snow, wind, rain and headache. Every have an issue tying your shoes with a cold? That’s the power of routine.
4. Habits
Habits will empower you, or destroy your life. Luckily, the difference is nothing but a choice on our part. Embrace all thoughts, attitudes, behaviors and beliefs that are conducive for your success.
Reject everything that holds you back from your success. Actually, reject everything unnecessary too. Results come faster when you’re not wasting energy.
Literally examine everything. If the thoughts in your mind are holding you back, reject them. Why would you hold onto something that’s holding you prisoner?
Motivation is Garbage
Get rid of the idea that you have to “feel like it” in order to get up and get things done.
Your life is constantly happening. What are the odds that you’re always gonna feel like it?
If i only went to the gym when I felt like it, I’d be fat.
Joe Rogan
Requiring motivation to accomplish the important, is not a rule. So stop following it.That being said, you can take what you’ve learned here, and in no time realize that you’re truly unstoppable.
