Motivation

Picture this: it's the final month of the year, and you get an unexpected call from the head of your department informing you that you've been selected for a career-defining opportunity. It's an all-expenses-paid invitation to speak at a prestigious global conference, where you'll be sharing the stage with industry leaders, including your CEO. The only catch? You have one week to prepare your presentation and be ready to fly out.

Would you seize the opportunity? Absolutely!

You'd likely spend every waking moment perfecting your presentation, rehearsing your speech, and ensuring you have all the materials you need. You 'did clear your schedule, delegate tasks, and perhaps even pull a few late nights to make sure everything is flawless. The sheer importance of the opportunity would drive you to perform at your absolute best.

But here's the key question: why aren't you operating at this level of intensity and focus everyday? All of a sudden you were fully productive—doing things at a level that you've always been capable of doing but 99 times out of 100 you are not achieving. The potential for high performance is always within you, but it's often dormant until a compelling reason awakens it.

This brings us back to the importance of motivation and the role of a powerful 'why 'When the rewards are clear, your subconscious mind shifts into high gear, pushing you to achieve what you once thought was impossible.

But how do you maintain that drive once the immediate incentive fades? It boils down to consistently renewing your motivation and keeping your goals at the forefront of your mind.

As Tony Robbins says, if the why is big enough, you’ll find the how. So, if you’re not motivated to perform at your best everyday, maybe your “why” isn’t big enough, or maybe it’s just not clear enough for you to focus on. If you accept that, then it stands to reason that if you could somehow reprogram yourself to begin focusing on a greater level of success, a greater level of productivity, more sales, more income—then these things will rise. You' will start doing things you perhaps haven’t been doing before now. At the end of the year, you will be more successful and have achieved more simply because you changed the way you think. Does that make sense?

If we look at it another way, if we look at long-term goals—because that’s where our dreams reside (daily or weekly goals are usually far more mundane!)—if you cloned yourself, and I asked each of you and your clone, where do you see yourselves five years from today? And the cloned version of you says, five years from today, my target, my goal, what I will focus on everyday, is having ￡1 million in the bank. Meanwhile, you’re sitting there and say, I am focused on maybe having ￡100,000 in the bank. If that's the only difference, what you’re focusing on, but doing it repeatedly—a million pounds versus one hundred thousand pounds—which of you is more likely to have a million pounds in the bank, or be well on the way to generating that?

The long-term image, the dream, the vision - what's going on between your ears - has a lot to do with the way you work and the productivity you generate. But, I’m sure you have heard that before, so what’s the problem? Motivation. Having a vision that is big enough and clear enough—making sure your why is big enough for you to find the how.

It’s actually very easy to get motivated. What’s really hard is staying motivated. The most obvious example of that is New Year's resolutions.

What is the most common New Year's resolution? I’m going to lose weight. Ask someone who has made that resolution “why?” and they’ll tell you will look better”, will feel better”will wear clothes I haven't been able to wear in years”, will be healthier”, will be able to go to the swimming pool”, I won’t be embarrassed on the beach when I go on holiday.” They are filled with motivation, clearly identifiable, powerfully motivating thoughts. Yet, nine times out of 10,when you see them again two or three weeks later, they're sitting there , back in their old eating and exercising habits.

So you ask them (if you’re brave enough) what about the weight you wanted to lose? What about looking better, feeling better, wearing the clothes you used to be able to wear, going to the beach? And they’ll look at you and say something like, “Life’s too busy at the moment, there’s too much going on.” They didn't have trouble getting motivated; they had trouble staying motivated.

That's the challenge with motivation. For most people, it’s easy to get, hard to keep. In fact, for most people, motivation lasts for a maximum of about 48 hours and then it fades away.

To use a business example: how many times have you been at a conference or training session where the speakers are inspiring, maybe the music has been pumping, you’ve been wined and dined, and you've had a great time with your colleagues? In short, you're all pumped up with motivation as you leave the session. How long do you think that feeling's going to last for most of you?.

Come back a week later, and most will be back doing what they always did, how they always did it—back to their old levels of productivity, old habits. The problem is that motivation's very transitory. Most people can't stay motivated and they end up going back to their old default setting. Notice I keep saying most people—not everybody.

Once in a while, you will come across a person that appears to be constantly motivated. How do they do that?

Well, a mentor of mine started asking people what they did to stay motivated. Most people, probably more than 90%, would look up at the ceiling, shuffle their feet, rub their chin, look a bit confused. There would be a pause, and they’d give a very vague answer, like “Well, I try to get up at the same time every morning”, “I try to get to work on time”, or “I try to keep my head down and work hard.” Very vague, very nebulous.

The other less than 10% might hesitate, but only briefly—they were probably not used to being asked that—but would come back faster and in much greater detail. And the more successful the person was, the higher up the food chain they were, the more detailed and faster they would come back. When asked what they did to stay motivated, they all answered the question quickly and in detail.

The point is, they were all doing something—and it was always started or repeated within that 24 to 48-hour window. Most of them were doing it every day, some two or three times a week, but they all started doing it within that 48-hour window. They could tell him exactly what it was.

For most of them, whatever they did, it took them less than five minutes a day, but they said that if they didn’t do it, they felt that they lost their focus, and their performance would start to go down.

They all had what I would call a mental program—they were repeatedly motivating themselves over and over within that 48-hour window. And while many of the examples were unique, one thing came up over and over again. What do you suppose that answer was? I’m sure that you all know…

Let me have your thoughts and I’ll reveal all in the next issue

Until next time,

Best regards,

Donald Hamilton

Website: www.donaldhamilton.co.uk

Email: [email protected]