Self motivation techniques: NOW is the right time ... the only time you have

Some self motivation tips to help you think it through...

These self motivation techniques should help you stop going round in circles. If you keep thinking about change, but the prospect creates a mixture of anxiety, excitement and doubt (or some other mix of disabling feelings) you need to find a better way.

There's a visualization meditation that you can use or record lower down the page. This can also be used to direct a piece of writing you can do to explore your self motivation ... and give it a boost if it needs it!

It is true that we avoid pain by moving away from it and we move towards those things that bring us pleasure, but ... a rich and fulfilling life does not start with treating yourself like a donkey!

(Shhhh, but ... it's not even how to get the best out of a donkey ... or a team ... or a workforce. Let alone your self!)

In keeping with the approach I take on the whole site, for me the best self motivation techniques are not about one part of you brow-beating another (reluctant) part of you into submission! That builds internal conflict and increases stress and tension.

Conflicted, stressed-out and tense people are not easily motivated. Nothing eats up your energy and vitality like inner conflict.

Part of you says, "Come on! You ought to be able to do this. You spent all that time goal-setting, was that all hot air? Make time ... get creative ... work harder ... run longer ... no gain without pain! You'll get your reward. Your ideal weight / job / partner / income / lifestyle is round the next corner."

Another part replies: "I know, I know, I know! But don't you see what a week I've had. I just can't muster the energy ... and I've not been sleeping ... and the kids have been really demanding ... and I had that report deadline at work ..."

That constant battle between a persecuting voice and the voice of the suffering, martyred victim just ain't the way to go. As self motivation techniques go ... this is a dead-end!

Self motivation techniques: there is a better way!

Self motivation techniques- at their best - are about finding a place where your personal resistance to change melts, and you find your self swimming with the stream. Rather than fight inner and outer forces, you find that you're in the right place at the right time; that the stream brings you what you need when you need it.

Believe it or not, I've just had an example: I just got a newsletter from another coach. It's subject? "The Truth about Motivation." While it's mainly focused on business leaders and how to motivate staff, it has some stuff that is going to help me crystallize my ideas for this article. It arrived right on cue.

That is beautifully summed up for me in the quote from Goethe in the right column. I've included it on one of the self motivation posters as part of the free download package.

It's an old and now quite a well known quote in personal development circles, but the idea has echoes in the psychology of peak or excellent performance. Being 'in the zone' or being 'in the flow'. Being so absorbed that you almost disappear and things just happen, seemingly out of the blue.

Self motivation techniques: extrinsic and intrinsic motivation

The carrot and the stick are both forms of 'extrinsic motivation.' That is, motivation by forces outside the person. I may have been a little hard on carrots!

There is a difference between these two extrinsic motivators.

If you're motivated by avoidance, the effectiveness of the stick (demotion, drop in pay, loss of responsibilities, title, etc) in creating any kind of movement towards change decreases with time and space. As you put distance between yourself and the source of pain, its value as a motivator is lost. After a while you're likely to drift back into old habits.

People responding to the big stick can have a flurry of activity - but it tends to be short-lived. Activity is followed by loss of motivation ... until the next sharp reminder. And so it goes on.

On the other hand the value of a carrot-like motivator is likely to increase. As that dim and distant reward (a bonus, a better car, a PA or secretary) gets closer, it becomes a clearer reality and people often respond by working harder to 'get across the finish line.'

If they have a place at all, extrinsic motivators are best limited to achieving relatively short-term goals and outcomes.

But neither creates the quality of sustained attention and motivation that intrinsic motivation provides. Intrinsically motivated people commit themselves to their projects, their relationships ... to themselves and their lives out of a deep sense of personal involvement. They engage in activities because they are personally meaningful to them. This is a self motivation techniques that doesn't feel like a 'technique' at all.

Expressing involvement, passion and creativity is inherently rewarding.

So, when we think about self motivation tips, we are really thinking about how to set things up so that this is what we experience.

Self motivation techniques: hearing 'the call'

We've learned to ignore the 'gut feelings' we get from time to time that remind us when we are out of alignment with our real self, with our unfettered human potential.

These may come at odd times - often when we're least expecting them -  as a reminder from that part of us that knows it's being short-changed in our current life. For example, I'd been toying with the idea of this website for quite some time. I had doubts: 'Did I know enough?' 'Who was I to ...?'. Even though I also had a growing belief that this was the direction I needed and wanted to take.

Then while reading some poetry, I found myself hearing these lines almost as a direct challenge:

The wind left ... I wept. I said to my soul,
"What have you done with the garden entrusted to you?"

This was accompanied by a clutching feeling in the guts! And a question to myself: "What was I doing with the garden entrusted to me? What use was I making of the experience and knowledge I've gained over the years? It crystallized a sense of something important left undone. And of time passing. And that one day ... there will be no tomorrows to do the things I put off starting today.

That thought connected to another challenge I'd listened to a few times, but not really 'heard':

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

Those two ideas came together to create the spark that ignited this web site.

Is there any 'call' you've been ignoring? How do you justify staying the same, refusing to grow and develop? Self motivation techniques are not going to move you like a response from the depths of your being.

Self motivation techniques:
urgency and looking back from an imaginary future

There are some classic motivational pointers in that story.

I'd allowed myself to see the future; to see myself feeling good about what I'd been able to put together ... enough to taste success. The line of poetry injected the sense of urgency by presenting an image of those aspirations coming to dust, rather than bearing fruit.

And that didn't feel good!

This exercise - which you could write answers to or use as prompts for a visualization journey - aims to help you taste the future, then look back on two paths, the one you're on now, and the new journey that you want to start. Aim to be curious, watchful, wide-eyed ...

I hope this doesn't feel like a self motivation technique at all ...

1. Think of a reasonable time scale to achieve the changes you want to make.
2. How old are you now? How old will you be at that future date?
3. Can you see yourself:
1. Where are you living?
2. Which room are you in?
3. Fill the room with remembrances of your journey: trinkets, souvenirs, awards, qualifications, diplomas, photos, books, scrapbooks, other things that are important to you at that future date.
4. Pay particular attention to objects that have acted as a talisman for you: souvenirs, jewellery, trinkets, natural objects found, received as gifts or bought at key times on your journey.
   
4. See the expression on your face; feel the temperature of the room, maybe the breeze blowing through an open window, sounds ... a fire crackling? family and friends in an adjacent room; how does the room smell? can you feel the floor beneath your feet, the chair you are sitting on? what in that room gives you most pleasure? enjoy those pleasurable feelings ...
5. Now ... just take some time to fill up that rewarding future: fill out the experience with anything that fits your journey ... just take time to be with all those sights, sounds, smells, feelings ... take as long as you need to bring that future to life ...
6. ... and now ... look back along the journey you have taken ... retrace your steps ...  right back to this moment ... and the decision you made: that courageous decision that made all the difference: this day, this moment when you commit to a new future for yourself.
7. Notice how good you feel making that commitment.
   
8. Decide what your first step on that journey is to be ... and resolve to take that step.

You may want to record this visualization meditation. If you do, give yourself plenty of time for images, thoughts and feelings to arise.

Complete this exercise by looking forward to a future without taking that courageous first step. This can be done using your standard thinking and imagining processes. Or you can run the sequence above on your current life path.

What does your destination look like? Where are you heading right now? How does it compare with your imagined new future? How do you feel about yourself when you resolve to go on the same way?

If it feels good, maybe there's no need to change anything right now. You've checked out a possible new future, but the status quo is good, too. And that''s absolutely fine. This enables you to opt in more positively to your life right now.

But if you've discovered an itch to change, better work out how to scratch it!

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After self motivation techniques, where to next?

Next article in this introduction explains how personal development consulting works.

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