Mindset

Lack Of Motivation? How To Overcome A Lack Of Motivation In Your Life

It happens to us all. One day we’re motivated and the next day we’re in the dumps having ourselves a pity party. Staying motivated is not easy and lack of motivation can be a serious problem that affects every one of us.

If keeping yourself motivated were easy, everybody would do it and we’d all be successful, but as you will know, that simply isn’t the case!

But, it can be done. You believe it can be done and that’s why you’re reading this right now – good for you!

Think about this: You may have felt good about a certain job or project when it began. You were filled with enthusiasm and motivation.

Then you hit a few speed bumps and unexpected failures and your motivation waned. You may have fallen into depression and decided to give up. All of those positive thoughts turned into negative ones.

This is nothing new and, believe me, you are NOT alone! We’ve all experienced these emotions that can cause us to give up prematurely. All that upsurge of energy when we started a new project inevitably ends as dreams become reality and we lose our confidence.

You get bogged down with “life” and those feelings of hope just disappear as “reality” sets in!

Don’t be so hard on yourself; you are allowed to dream, and dream big.

The trick is to turn these negative emotions around and the best way to do that is to understand them, analyze them and find out what caused them. We lose our motivation as we lose our focus, our confidence and our direction.

If you can learn to control these three emotions you can control your life. Let’s take a quick look at each of these now:

Focus on what you really want

Focus can make or break your dreams, it’s as simple as that.

Be specific and be positive. We generally think in terms of what we don’t have rather than focus on what we want.

Try flipping this around; it’s also a good idea to be grateful for what you have and where you are at present.

You can find a great post about gratitude and self-reflection here.

Don’t focus on your fears but what you can do to overcome them. Don’t focus on being poor but on a plan to create wealth.

To do this make a plan to get there one step at a time. You don’t become the president of a company until you’ve come up from the ranks.

Focus on your plan to achieve your objectives and your goals. Be realistic on your goals.

Goals that are unreachable can lead to depression. But even small goals that are achieved lead to increased motivation.

Boost your confidence

So many people think that confidence is something you either have or you don’t, but, like any other skill or attribute, it can be acquired and developed.

To quickly boost self-confidence, you can do this by taking stock on what you already have and not what you lack. This is closely linked to the gratitude point made previously.

You’ll probably discover you’re more successful than you think.

We waste our mind power being jealous of others instead of working on achieving our own aspirations.

Don’t take your strengths for granted and count your failures one by one.

Count your blessings one by one and whatever your mind thinks it can accomplish.

Mindset is very powerful, but we hear it so often it can appear trite or cliched, but it really is a powerful tool to enable you to achieve whatever you want out of life.

So, confidence is a powerful motivator, but without a sense of direction, you won’t make the most of it, so let’s look at that now.

Without direction there is no motivation

You must create a day-to-day strategy. Make a to-do list and do it. Mark off each item once it’s accomplished and do not mark it off until it’s done.

You’ll eventually get tired of looking at it on your list and do it.

By making a list or outline of what needs to be done, you’ll find ways to do it and you’ll believe that you truly deserve success.

Don’t waste time by worrying about the future. Start today by doing something to change your future for the better. Today’s actions can create a better future.

Set goals that challenge you to grow, and don’t forget to enjoy the journey and not just the destination. And also, don’t be afraid to “fail” once in a while.

A great post about reframing “failure” can be found here.

Don’t be surprised or depressed about a lack of motivation; it will affect us all many times during our lives, but it is how we react to it that can make all the difference.

Look at it as an opportunity to step back and analyze what you’re doing wrong and what you’re doing right.

Discover your faults and correct them. When you re-evaluate your plans and goals from a fresh perspective, you’ll feel a new surge of enthusiasm and motivation and that lack of motivation can quickly become a thing of the past and you can move onto bigger and better things.

How To Develop Good Habits (And Make Them Stick)!

If you don’t know this already, habits are powerful things and have a massive impact on our lives, so it makes sense to follow good habits, doesn’t it? And there are numerous ways that will show you how to develop good habits.

Take a look on Amazon or in your local bookstore and you’ll see many books with “21 days” somewhere in their titles. In many of these titles, it has to do with some form of positive or good habit that the author is going to try to help you accomplish to change your life for the better.

The reason for the 21 days is that is the number of days some people think you need to perform tasks for them to become ingrained in your brain, i.e. they become automatic or habitual.

Most of these authors will tell you this number is based on scientific studies. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant. On a personal note, I believe that 30-60 days is much more likely to succeed in instilling habits that last a lifetime.

When you perform the same tasks repeatedly for 21 days, they will start to become a routine. The problem with setting a hard number to this is that people may abandon it after they reach the threshold. In other words, if you do something every day for 21 days, after the 21^st day, you may feel as though you accomplished the task and move on, but it is easy to “forget” your new habit and slip back into old habits if you aren’t careful.

A better approach for adopting new habits is to set up a plan that is longer term. Have milestones for the short term but project out for a much longer period. This way when 21 days passes, you still have a game plan to reference. This gives you something to shoot for after that time.

Another tip is to find people who are trying to form the same habits as you. Create times when you can all talk together, either in person or via some conferencing solution. It’s easier than ever to do this with the Internet. The members of this group can discuss what has worked for them and what has not been successful. Avoid the unsuccessful tasks. Try to keep the groups small. Large groups will force many members to become complacent and defer to the stronger personalities.

Being a member of a group gives you motivation, but perhaps, more importantly, it gives you accountability because you can make your goal public in the group and you won’t want to let them down, and they will push you to achieve it.

Whether you are working with a group of people or by yourself, maintain a journal to record your progress. This is for your purposes only so you can structure it however it works best for you.

Here are 5 steps to developing good habits.

1. Start Off Small

It’s natural to want to make big changes to your life as quickly as possible but this is a mistake that many people make. They take on more than they can handle and become frustrated with lack of progress and eventually give up.

Does this sound familiar?

Instead, try to break down your big goal into smaller chunks and keep going until you can identify small daily tasks that you know you can achieve, and this will inspire you to keep going. It all adds up, and you will reach your goal in next to no time and you can have fun along the way 🙂

If you want to know more about enjoying the journey while tackling your goals, take a look at this great training here as it will really give you some insight into the fact that the goal is just the destination, and you can also enjoy every step of the process too. It is a real eye-opener and I highly suggest you take a look here.

I also have a nice infographic that you can view all about enjoying your journey 🙂

2. Get Crystal Clear

When deciding on which habit you want to instill in yourself, you need to get crystal clear on what it is, and what the desired end result is. There is no room for vagueness here. If you don’t know exactly what you want, then you will not stick to it, plain and simple.

Visualise what you want to achieve and be intentional. Use If/Then types of scenarios to trigger you to take action, such as “If I’ve got out of bed, then I’ll do 10 pushups before breakfast. This way, getting out of bed can act as a trigger for you to reinforce the habit you are trying to instill.

In a similar vein, you can simply add your new habit into your daily schedule. If it is important to you, then it is important enough to be put into your calendar and using online calendars, they can send you a reminder a few minutes before time. Simple, but very powerful.

3. Reward Yourself

Human nature means that we are so much better at berating ourselves over something we haven’t achieved, rather than rewarding ourselves for something we have achieved.

You want to flip this behaviour on its head and reward yourself for even the smallest of wins.

If you don’t reward yourself, you won’t be motivated to keep going (willpower simply isn’t enough), so use rewards as a positive reinforcement to encourage you to stay the course.

Whenever you reward yourself for making progress, you activate the “reward areas” in your brain.

This releases some key chemicals, such as dopamine, serotonin and endorphins, which make you experience feelings of achievement and pride. These emotions, in turn, empower you to take action and create bigger successes in the future.

So, reward yourself for each step in the right direction, no matter how small they happen to be and you will be much more motivated to stay the course!

4. Use your environment

Many psychologists will tell you that your environment can have a huge impact on the way you think and feel, so you need to use this you your advantage.

For example, Have you ever walked into your kitchen, spotted a plate of cookies on the counter, and eaten them just because they were in front of you without even thinking about it? Come on, admit it 🙂

The good thing is that we can use the environment to trigger good habits too, so what can you do to accomplish this?

Do you watch too much TV in your living room when you know you should be reading? Why not put a book on the chair where you sit, and put the remote control on the other side of the room? A simple enough thing to do, but you are much more likely to reach for the book, than get up off the sofa to grab the remote!

5. Go Public

I have already mentioned the power of accountability by going public, but you can also take this a step further by pre-committing to your habit publicly and attaching a penalty for not sticking to it.

This could be feeling guilty if you promise to meet someone at the gym and you don’t show up.

Or it could be financial, by paying that person an amount of money whenever you don’t show up. This can be a powerful motivator to stick to your guns.

So, there are 5 simple steps you can take to form new habits in yourself. However, if all else fails, you can seek professional help. There are plenty of coaches and mentors available to give you some guidance.

Make sure you are critical when choosing a coach and hold them accountable. Set up milestones and as long as you are following their guidance, question any milestones that you don’t meet.

Make sure your coach and you both know what is expected of each other and have any provisions in place before you get started in case it doesn’t work out.

However, hopefully by following the 5 steps in this article, you won’t need a coach 🙂

So, what habit are you going to start building today?

What Is Mindfulness? And What It Is Not

Mindfulness is a tool that has become exceedingly popular over the last few years. But what is mindfulness? And what is it not?!

Let’s be honest; only a few short years ago the general public wouldn’t have been familiar with the term, whereas today it’s something we hear about all the time in a range of different contexts.

In some ways this is a good thing: mindfulness is a great tool to be aware of and it can be used to greatly improve your concentration, awareness and happiness.

But at the same time, it could also be a bad thing because it has been misappropriated in some instances and many people don’t actually really understand what it means anymore.

So, with that in mind, let’s take a better look at what mindfulness is and what it isn’t – and how you can start using it to improve your life.

The Basics

Mindfulness is often used to describe a type of meditation. Specifically, ‘mindfulness meditation’ is a type of meditation that involves reflecting on the contents of your own mind and how they might be affecting you.

Whereas the point of some forms of meditation – such as transcendental meditation – is to completely ‘empty’ your mind, the point of mindfulness is instead to simply detach yourself from your thoughts and become an observer. This way, you can prevent them from affecting you in the same way and you can also gain a greater understanding of the contents of your own thoughts.

Often this is described as ‘watching the thoughts go past like clouds’. The idea is not to engage with them or let them affect you but simply to observe them and to later reflect on how they might impact on your happiness.

Other Uses

By doing this, mindfulness allows us to take some time out of our stressful day to remove ourselves from our thoughts and thereby get some rest and relaxation.

But it’s not really just about meditation. What mindfulness also means is being constantly aware of your own thoughts as you go throughout your day. Some people will tell you to be ‘mindful’ of your body, or ‘mindful’ of your environment. But really what you should be focusing on is just what you’re mindful of.

Next time you go out for a nice walk with family, or next time you do something else that you should be enjoying, just make a note of whether you’re really focused on what you’re doing and whether you’re actively engaging in it… or is your mind elsewhere? Are you actually worrying about work? Or stressing about other things?

Mindfulness is really all about living in the moment and being present in whatever you are doing.

Mindfulness teaches us to be more aware of our thoughts as that way, we can decide that we’re not going to let them affect us and because that way we can then make the conscious effort to refocus and to decide to be happy. Whatever we focus on will determine how we feel, and mindfulness helps us with that.

Mindfulness is not mysticism or linked to religion and it’s not a cure-all therapeutic technique. All this is a tool and better yet, a state of mind. With practice, you can learn to be more in-tune with your own thoughts and that can change everything.

4 Mindfulness Exercises To Try

Now you know what mindfulness is (and isn’t) here are 4 exercises that you can use to become more mindful today.

These are simple exercises as we all have busy lives but take the time to try some of these out over the next 30 days and you will feel better and perform better, and people will wonder what your secret is!

1.Mindful Breathing

The beauty of this exercise (in fact all of them) is that it can be done either standing up or sitting down, and anywhere you want and at any time.

If you can sit down in the meditation (lotus) position, that’s great, but don’t worry if you can’t; just do whatever is comfortable for you.

All you need to do is be still and focus on your breath for just one minute.

Start by concentrating on breathing in and out slowly. One breath cycle should last for about 6 seconds.
Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, letting your breath flow effortlessly in and out of your body. Don’t force it, be natural.
Let go of your thoughts. Let go of things you have to do later today or pending projects that need your attention. Simply let thoughts rise and fall of their own accord and be at one with your breath. Don’t concentrate on any one thing, just let things flow naturally.
Purposefully keep an eye on your breath, focusing your sense of awareness on its rhythm as it enters your body and fills you with life.
Then visualise its path as it works work its way up and out of your mouth and its energy dissipates into the world.

Did you think that you are the kind of person who could never meditate? Well, look at that; you are already halfway there!

If you enjoyed doing this mind-calming exercise one minute, why not try two or three instead?

2. Mindful Observation

This exercise is simple but incredibly powerful because it helps you notice and appreciate seemingly simple elements of your environment in a more profound way. It opens your eyes to possibility.

The exercise is designed to connect us with the beauty of the natural environment around us. This is something that is so easily missed or taken for granted when we are rushing around in the car or hopping on and off trains while we are commuting to and from work.

Choose a natural object from within your immediate environment and simply focus on it for a minute or two. It could be a flower or an insect, or even the clouds or the moon.
Don’t do anything except notice the thing you are looking at. Focus and really look at it. Simply relax into watching for as long as you can concentrate on it. Once again, don’t force it.
Look at this object as if you are seeing it for the first time. What can you notice bout it that you may not have noticed before?
Visually explore every aspect of its formation, and allow yourself to be consumed by its presence.
Allow yourself to connect with its energy and its purpose within the natural world.

3. Mindful Awareness

This exercise is designed to cultivate a heightened awareness and appreciation of simple daily tasks and the results they achieve. By doing this we can live in the moment and appreciate everything that we are doing at any given time.

Think of something that happens every day more than once; something you take for granted. It could be something that appears really mundane, such as opening a door.

At the very moment you grab the doorknob to open the door, stop for a moment and be mindful of where you are, how you feel in that moment and where the door will lead you. What is on the other side of the door? What are you about to do in the next room and how can you do it to the best of your ability.

Similarly, the moment you open your computer to start work, take a moment to appreciate the hands that enable this process and the brain that facilitates your understanding of how to use the computer. Wonder at how technology makes things so much easier than before and be thankful for that.

And these ‘touch point’ cues don’t have to be physical ones either.

For example: Each time you think a negative thought, you might choose to take a moment to stop, label the thought as unhelpful and release the negativity. Reframe it into a positive thought. being mindful makes you acutely aware of these thoughts and allows you to overcome them.

Or, perhaps each time you smell food, you take a moment to stop and appreciate how lucky you are to have good food to eat and share with your family and friends. Mindfulness and gratitude are powerful partners.

Choose a touch point that resonates with you today and instead of going through your daily task on autopilot, take some time now and then, to stop and cultivate purposeful awareness of what you are doing and the blessings these actions brings to your life.

4. Mindful Listening

This exercise is designed to open your ears to sound in a non-judgmental way, and you can even use this to train your mind to be less swayed by the influence of past experiences and preconception.

So much of what we “feel” is influenced by past experience.

For example, we may dislike a song because it reminds of us of a breakup or another period of life when things felt negative.

And sound is a very powerful evoker of memories, both good and bad.

Remember; the past doesn’t equal the future!

So, the idea of this exercise is to listen to some music from a neutral standpoint, with a present awareness that is unhindered by preconception.

To do this, select a piece of music you have never listened to before. You may have something in your own collection that you have never listened to, or you might choose to turn the radio dial until something catches your ear.

Close your eyes and put on headphones if possible for better immersion.
Try not to get drawn into judging the music by its genre, title or artist name before it has begun. Instead, ignore any labels and just allow yourself to appreciate the journey of sound for the duration of the song.
Really listen to what is going on during every aspect of track. Even if you don’t particularly like the music track in question, let go of your dislike and give your awareness full permission to climb inside the track and dance among the sound waves without any preconception or judgement.
Explore the song by listening to the dynamics of each instrument. Separate each sound in your mind and analyze each one by one.
Home in on the vocals: the sound of the voice, its range and tones. If there is more than one voice, separate them out as you did in the previous step.

The idea of this exercise is to listen intently and to become completely immersed in the composition without preconception or judgment of the genre, artist, lyrics or instrumentation. Don’t think, just listen.

OK, so now you have an idea of what mindfulness is, and 4 simple exercises that you do whenever you want to bring mindfulness into your life. Take the time to do them and mindfulness will enhance your life in many ways, from being more appreciative, more optimistic/positive and more productive; many high earners and high performers practice mindfulness exercises daily so don’t you think that this is something worth doing?

Finding The Right Path In Life; How To Avoid Falling Into A Career

When it comes to finding our calling in life and starting our careers, most of us will go through a similar process that has very little to do with what we actually want to do and this is so sad and can end up with a sense of being unfulfilled which can permeate throughout our lives and make people feel miserable and unhappy.

For most of us, our jobs are not a matter of design so much as luck and divine intervention. Perhaps you finish school/college/university and you find yourself at a loss for what to do; let’s be honest; many of us don’t know what we really want to do at this stage in our lives.

So what do you do? Inevitably, the vast majority of people will take the first job offer that comes up – let’s say that is stacking boxes for an air conditioning company. Sexy, eh!?!

Then maybe you find yourself somehow rising through the ranks and becoming the head of logistics for delivering said air conditioning units. Maybe this then catches the eye of someone at Fed Ex and you get head hunted to become the head of international…

Great. So now all your experience, all your skills and all your qualifications make you the ideal fit for that job. That job that you never had any interest in doing!

Never mind that you studied at Uni to become a marine biologist! Did you want to be a marine biologist? Maybe it was just something that was of interest to you, but a career? If it was something that you were keen on studying it, then why not?

How To Stop That Happening

So, how did that happen?

Basically you allowed your skills to form as a result of your experience rather than your desires or dreams.

This is normally what happens and is not your fault but you do need to be aware that this is the normal process.

Our strengths are partly natural and partly acquired through our experience.

You may think that your natural strengths are more important but you would be wrong. Yes, we will tend to play to our strengths if we can, but it is the skills that we gather through experience that truly shape us as individuals.

The latter actually tends to play a larger role though and certainly from the perspective of someone looking to hire you. When someone is looking at candidates, experience is a very important part in the decision making process of many employers, so we tend to get pushed down a path we never intended to follow!

Never mind that you love fish and have a marine biology degree – you’ve got 10 years of experience in logistics!

In other words, your strengths will be largely shaped by your experience, so if you want to make sure you don’t just ‘land’ in a career you never planned to pursue, you need to ensure that the experience you’re getting is highly relevant to whatever it is that you want to do.

Take Control

Now you may argue that this is out of your control and it may be to some extent.

You don’t always get to choose the job offers that come your way or the advancement courses you get offered.

But sometimes it will be down to you.

And it will be down to you to make your experience relevant to the career path that you want to choose.

Life is full of choices, and they will have a huge impact on the path that you follow in life, so choose wisely.

It is easy to choose with your head and follow the “safer” path, pursuing a “normal” career, but is that what you really want?

Sometimes you have to gamble and choose with your heart and see where it takes you; it will be more exciting and more rewarding, but it can also be incredibly scary and this can deter some people from ever going for it.

Let me tell you now; NEVER give up on your dreams and don’t stubbornly hold out for that perfect job either – instead, plot yourself a course and steer yourself as much in that direction as possible, looking for opportunities wherever they arise to mold your strengths and abilities to be a fit for whatever it is you truly want to do with your life.

This way you will be doing your best to ensure that you are finding the right path in life for you and not just falling into a career that doesn’t really suit you. You owe it to yourself to have a career that you truly enjoy, fulfills you and makes you happy (and hopefully makes you some money in the process) so be aware of your choices and do everything in your power to steer your life and career in the direction you want to go 🙂

Life Obstacles: Can You Imagine A Life Without Obstacles?

Life obstacles; great aren’t they?

But suppose you are given a choice to live a life without any type of obstacles or challenges. Can you imagine a life without obstacles?

Would you take that if it were possible? You may be tempted to jump at the chance, however, it is likely it would not measure up to your expectations.

Several years ago, there was a television program that focused on only good news. It actively looked for good news in the local community and even in other places.

Do you know what happened? The show did not last because people seem to be more drawn to bad news. Isn’t that interesting?

The thing is, our minds are hardwired to solve problems, so when problems don’t exist, our minds become idle and we become bored with our situations.

Therefore, subconsciously, we welcome obstacles so that we can figure out how to overcome or solve them.

When we crash against an obstacle or challenge in our lives, we often moan and groan about how “life isn’t fair…” etc. but we need these things in our life to force us to grow as individuals.

Just think about an obstacle course. Why do these even exist and why do people try to get around them as quickly as possible?

If we weren’t so inclined to solve problems, these never would have become popular. But, we still participate in them because of the challenge involved.

The military use these to inspire things such as free thinking, abstract thought and leadership; 3 qualities highly regarded in life and crucial in soldiering.

When we manage to get past some obstacle, we experience a feeling of elation and accomplishment, which increases in proportion to how difficult the obstacle was to overcome.

Getting past the obstacle may happen very quickly or may happen over a period of time. It could be a mental or physical challenge, or even both. The thing is, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever the situation, we welcome the challenge, at least on a deep, subconscious level.

Some people will withdraw when faced with certain obstacles. They may feel as though these particular types of obstacles are beyond their ability to solve them and this is unfortunate because we all have the capability of solving most situations.

The difference between these people and others who succeed in overcoming these challenges is the belief that they can do so, not being put off by past experience and the perseverance to keep going (grit).

Even when the obstacles are dire, dangerous or even life threatening, people who approach it in a positive manner will have a much greater chance of overcoming them.

What is certain is that if you don’t try, you will definitely fail and that obstacle will become part of you in a negative way. It could destroy your life if you let it.

Your “failure” to overcome it can really eat at you and cause a quick downwards spiral which can make you less certain of yourself and thus even less inclined to face up to future challenges; it is a type of negative self-fulfilling prophesy that you need to be aware of and do everything to avoid.

Obstacles are an integral part of life and as you have seen from this post, they are necessary for our survival and continued growth as human beings and should be embraced.

They may be difficult to come to terms with. However, when we get to the point of overcoming them, we have tools we can use to make our lives better and that is an incredible experience.

But even more powerful is that we can extend our experience to helping others overcome similar obstacles and challenges as well.

And there is no greater feeling than helping someone to overcome a situation that they thought impossible!

So, why not think about all this the next time you are faced with a difficult situation and realise that it is not a challenge or obstacle, but rather an opportunity to stretch yourself and to grow and become a better version of yourself.

This kind of positive re-framing can make all the difference in getting past the problem and you will become a much stronger individual in the process. You will also show others that you can deal with adverse situations and they may start to turn to you to help them and you can become a powerful leader and force in their lives.

So, I ask you again; could you imagine life without obstacles?

I hope the answer is a resounding “No!”