Com­pelling New Year Res­o­lu­tions that LAST!

Have you made your list of new year res­o­lu­tions yet? Does moti­va­tion usu­ally some­how seem to dwin­dle as the year goes by?

HOW DO I KEEP THE MOTIVATION GOING?

I am really excited when I start things, then I just lose interest…

Moti­va­tion has been at the heart of human behav­iour for ever! Going our hunt­ing in the snow 10,000 years ago, start­ing the revi­sion for a test next week, fin­ish­ing that oh so impor­tant com­pany project, or find­ing inspi­ra­tion in front of that blank page.

You know what I am talk­ing about! But have you ever noticed: WHAT moti­vates you? Like don­keys, Humans have 2 basic types of moti­va­tion: the car­rot and the stick! In NLP terms, we talk about “TOWARD” and “AWAY FROM”.

Can you think of a time in the past when you had to do some­thing you did not feel like doing? Good! (if you never had that prob­lem ever, are you sure you are human?) Now, at that time, what moved you into action? The carrot/the reward (TOWARD), or the stick (“if I do not fin­ish this, I am fired”!) (AWAY FROM)? Can you think of another one? And another one? Based on your usual pat­tern, are you more moti­vated by reward, or by want­ing to get away from what causes more pain?

A few years ago, a jour­nal­ist did a par­al­lel between Bill Gates and Don­ald Trump, based on her research about the 2 men. Don­ald Trump, who has been bank­rupted sev­eral times, turned out to be moti­vated to make money by his fear of not hav­ing enough (AWAY FROM), whereas Bill Gates was mov­ing for­ward toward excit­ing goals that he had fixed for him­self (TOWARD).

Basi­cally, when you are moti­vated by AWAY FROMs, you move for­ward look­ing back on what you do NOT want. The prob­lem with that is sim­ple: your moti­va­tion dimin­ishes as the dis­tance you put between you and what scares you increases! Once you moved far enough away from where you do not want to be, it is gone completely.

Imag­ine some­one you REALLY, really hate, and put the pic­ture of that per­son right in front of your eyes, 2 inches away from your face! How do you feel? Prob­a­bly not too good. Now push it to the other side of the room, then fur­ther back to out­side the build­ing, then fur­ther away to the sky, and still fur­ther to the moon, and shrink it soooooo much that it is a lit­tle black dot. Now how do you feel? Prob­a­bly pretty neu­tral about it. It is the same thing with moti­va­tion. The fur­ther away the source of your moti­va­tion is, the less com­pelling it is.

Now, imag­ine some­one who moves TOWARD. Mov­ing for­ward toward their goal actu­ally brings the source of their moti­va­tion closer to them! So the more moti­vated they are, well.. the more moti­vated they get!

That’s all very nice, but HOW DO I DO THAT?

Step 1: Define a GOAL! Most peo­ple know what they do not want, but are not clear about they WANT.
Your goal needs to be spe­cific, for your­self (i.e. do not set goals that depend on oth­ers doing some­thing), timed (you need a DATE! When I say a date, it means some­thing like 31st of Decem­ber 2009, not “the end of the year”), mea­sur­able (if it involves money, you need an amount, as opposed to “make more money”) and As If Now (i.e. in the present tense, “I am mak­ing $xxxxxx per month/year). OK, now you are CLEAR about WHAT YOU WANT. (By the way, this works best when you select a goal for ONE domain in your life: career/business, per­sonal rela­tion­ships, health, self devel­op­ment for exam­ple; You can go through the process sev­eral times.)

Step 2: TAKE ACTION! This is the MOST impor­tant step, and it is usu­ally the “skipped step” (try say­ing that 10 times quickly). The most beau­ti­ful dreams will remain just that, dreams! if you do not take action to man­i­fest them.
2 Ques­tions to ask your­self:
1. What is the last thing that needs to hap­pen for me to know that I have my goal? (if your goal has to do with re-training and get­ting new prac­ti­cal skills to increase your effec­tive­ness for exam­ple, the last thing that needs to hap­pen could be book­ing your space on a course, or decide to take a course, or step into the train­ing room, YOU decide what works for you).
2. What is the first step I need to take toward get­ting my goal? (in the exam­ple above, it could be make a list of what you are good at, or do an inter­net research on pos­si­ble courses)

Step 3: You are clear about where you are going, have started tak­ing steps toward your goal, now you need to STAY FOCUSED on your goal until you have got it 100%! Now, don’t tell any­one, but the secret about that is in the title of this arti­cle! Got it? Yes! The more com­pelling the goal, the most likely you stay focused on it.

Con­tact us to enrol in the “Com­pelling New Year res­o­lu­tions That Last” and NLP Coach Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion train­ing courses.

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