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Stay Motivated
Find A Catalyst That Will Motivate And Inspire You
Find A Catalyst That Will Motivate And Inspire You
A catalyst can be something that you experience – such as an event, or it can be words spoken by another person, or a book or a movie that causes you to alter your life in some way.
Some catalysts are simple – such as a man who gets fired because he’s always late. Losing the job can be a catalyst for that man to make sure he gets to his next job on time or find a job that gives him so much personal satisfaction, he never wants to let his company down.
The event of getting fired, often at an inopportune time, caused him to make a change in how he acts in life. Change is hard. It’s easier to do what you’ve always done because there’s comfort in familiarity.
Leaving your comfort zone thrusts you into new situations and forces you to deal with new ideas and new ways of handling various aspects of life. It’s scary and no one wants to go through it voluntarily.
If you were to take a survey of random strangers and ask them, “Are you happy with your life?” you would get more no answers than you would yes ones. There are a lot of people who aren’t happy with their lives.
They don’t like their personal life or their professional life – and they don’t like how they act sometimes. Yet day in and day out, they don’t do anything to change any of that.
Some people don’t know how to change it. They don’t understand how they can find a catalyst to motivate and inspire themselves toward the kind of life they want.
Sometimes a catalyst enters your life, and you’re too focused on the ordinary, that you miss it completely. You may have to train yourself to watch for opportunities if you want to raise yourself to a higher level of success and happiness.
Change Begins And Ends With You
If you take the time to look over your life at this moment, what would you think about it? Think about the people in your life – those who you’re in an intimate relationship with.
Is it everything you wanted it to be and hoped it could be? What about where you are financially in life? Does where you stand right now with your finances make you wish things were different?
Does it create a hunger within you to have more? To be wiser about your finances? What about your job? This is an area where a lot of people are absolutely miserable.
Yet, they stay in that job year after year getting older and even more miserable. If you dislike any area of your life because it simply isn’t satisfying, you but you stick with it anyway, it means that you’ve settled.
You’ve given up on the idea that there could be more – that you deserve more or that changing things is even worth the effort. If you dislike an area of your life now, but you don’t change anything about it, you will still dislike that area of your life three months, six months, or a year down the road.
You will have lost time and you will have missed the opportunity to make changes during that timeframe. If you want more out of life – if you feel that you should have more – and the unhappiness with your life sits like a rock in the pit of your stomach, then you need to take steps to make changes.
Physical signs like that are always indicators that something isn’t the way you want it to be – that it needs to be addressed. And ignoring these physical signs can lead to emotional complications as the stress of the matter weighs heavily on you.
Remaining where you are in a life you’re not happy with will lead to feelings of depression, sadness, and resignation. That hole inside of you that aches for something more, for something better will never be filled.
That’s not what you deserve. It’s not what anyone deserves. Life is not meant to be something that’s just endured. It’s meant to be lived with excitement because it’s an adventure if you decide that it is.
Roadblocks That Get In The Way Of Motivation
Though people are all different, we all have one thing in common – roadblocks that get in the way of what we really want from life. Roadblocks stop some people from ever making a change, but they motivate others to keep on going to find a way to what they want, regardless of the roadblock.
You might have one of these roadblocks or you might experience more than one of them. A major roadblock to change is fear. When things change, it ushers in differences that can make us afraid.
We’re afraid to leave behind the bad job for fear we won’t like the new one – fear that we might not fit in as well. Remember though, that one of the acronyms for fear is False Evidence Appearing Real.
Your fears are usually based on what if myths – and they almost always never come to pass. Don’t let fear cause you to sit on the sidelines of change. Another roadblock that gets in the way is a lack of knowledge.
It’s hard to make changes when you’re not sure exactly how to go about those changes. You might be branching out into an area that’s completely beyond your scope of knowledge at the present time.
Remember that what you don’t know can be learned. Use educational resources as your catalyst for change and success. Strive for new levels of insight that you previously didn’t have.
Thinking that you simply can’t add another thing to your already full life keeps many people stuck where they are. Making changes requires work. So many people see the effort as not worth the payoff – and that’s a mistake.
This belief is what keeps you rooted to that job that you hate, to those messy finances, or to that relationship that’s sucking the life right out of you. Learning better time management skills can be a catalyst for a better life as you clear out things that are a waste of time and make room for what offers the most benefits.
Being just comfortable enough where you are can be a roadblock to motivate you to change. You’re not 100% happy, but you’re “happy enough.” All this means is that you settled for a life that keeps you locked in your comfort zone.
You’re trading a full life for one that’s half empty – because if you’re not 100% satisfied, then something is missing. That something may be the very thing that you always wanted, but because you were “happy enough,” you’ll never reach it.
Visualization can be a catalyst for the changes you need to make. Picture the next level of success in every area of your life – finances, career satisfaction, relationships, health – everything that matters most to you.
Focus on how it could be improved and then make a game plan to get you there. If you block out those thoughts in an effort to stay content, you’ll never know what you could have made of your life if you’d give it a chance.
Wanting everything to be perfect is a huge roadblock to motivation. It’s here where people stall out. They want the new situation to be perfect before they attempt any changes.
They want the new job to have everything in place. They don’t want to take the chance that they’ll make a switch and find it’s not what they wanted. These are people who wait for the “perfect” relationship before getting into one.
Perfectionism is the killer of change because what you see in your mind as perfection doesn’t translate that way in life. That’s because there are no perfect scenarios in a life that’s lived to the fullest.
There are experiences to encounter – and not one of them will be perfect. That’s okay. Perfectionism kills progress. You don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines waiting to get into the game of life.
The number one roadblock that keeps too many people from letting a catalyst be their motivation is the fear of failure. They falsely believe that they haven’t failed yet because they haven’t even tried – so they’re safe.
But whether they realize it or not, they have failed. They’re choosing to stay stagnant in a lesser life than what they dreamed of. That, in itself, is a form of failure.
Another roadblock happens when people wait for change rather than seeking change. They wait for the perfect joint venture partner to come to them instead of seeking one out, because that requires putting themselves on the line.
They wait to see if the person they’re in a relationship with is going to treat them better, rather than speaking up about what they want and deserve. They avoid tough situations and tough conversations because they’re waiting for everything to work out on its own.
Change isn’t something that happens on a whim. It’s something that you make happen. You must find the motivation within yourself to make that change. And it’s uncomfortable at first.
That’s okay. Take that sign of discomfort as a compliment. It’s proving to you that you’re taking action and bettering your life, even in the face of fear or uneasiness.
Your Mind Can Be A Catalyst
You get the life that you think you deserve. Your mind or your thought patterns lead you to make changes – to take action that alters the life you currently have.
What usually happens when someone’s mind leads them to take action is they become so upset with their current situation, they think leaving it where it’s at is no longer an option.
Their emotions will often reach a point that they must make a change. This drive can often start out backed by an emotion. For example, if someone is in a relationship with a person who didn’t treat them that well, they’ll often stick with the relationship until a catalyst fueled by emotion causes a change.
One emotion could be anger. If the person you’re in a relationship with is unfaithful, it’s often anger over the cheating that drives the catalyst – even when the prior bad behavior didn’t induce a change.
Your subconscious knows what you truly want. What happens is this true desire becomes buried deep under what we’re willing to settle for. This is why so many people aren’t living a life full of passion.
You can tell if you’re living a life full of passion by asking yourself this question. Do I love getting out of bed in the morning? If you’re not excited about what you get to do when you get out of bed, that’s a warning sign that you need to find your catalyst.
Whatever it is that motivates you is what will drive you to wake up, ready to start and excel throughout your day. It will drive you to keep going in the face of obstacles.
You’ll continue on – even if you’re the only one who believes in you, or your idea or your change. That’s why it’s vital to your success – to your ability to thrive – that you get in a business that you have a strong emotional attachment to – something you are proud of and believe in strongly.
Face The Hard Truth About What’s Keeping You Stuck
Did you ever hear of someone who had a terrible health scare because they made bad choices in life that led to the issue? It shook them up – and for awhile, they strictly followed the doctor’s orders.
They ate right. They exercised. They got the amount of sleep that they needed. They quit smoking. They quit drinking. Yet before several months were out, they slipped right back into their old habits.
The catalyst, which was the health scare, came face to face with personal responsibility – and lost. The hard truth is that for your catalyst to motivate you, you’re going to have to accept personal responsibility.
The choices that you make in life are your choices. You made them because you thought they were the best option at the time. You might have received bad advice that led you to a decision – but in the end, you were the one that made that choice.
You must accept personal responsibility for what you want to see changed in your life before it can change. People who place the blame on others for their lot in life don’t ever reach a place where they’re truly happy – regardless of the changes.
That’s because they see life as happening to them rather than them making life happen. Accept the responsibility for your mistakes, for your poor choices, for that awful job you shouldn’t have taken, or for that relationship that was a mess from the start that you wasted too much time on.
Once you accept it, you can move on. You can free yourself to finally accept the catalyst for change. Don’t let where you were be a stone around your neck that anchors you to the place where you currently are.
Let the mistakes you made in the past become part of your motivation – part of your growing experience. While growth is hard, all good things happen with the evolution to a different place in life.
5 Ways You Can Find Your Catalyst
Knowing that you want your life to change requires that you take stock of your life. It means that you must examine every area and look at what’s not been working to make you feel the inner satisfaction that you’d like to have.
The first way that you can find your catalyst is to understand the things in your life that matter to you. Your catalyst for motivation won’t be the same as someone else’s.
While what matters to one person may be an expensive house, that might not matter to you. Your priority might be financial security for your retirement, or more time to spend with your loved ones.
If having time to do what you want to do with creative work is what matters to you, then your catalyst will be whatever action gives you the chance to free your inner artist.
This may be something as simple as cutting back on hours with work or finding a different job. It might be the catalyst of taking an art or a writing class. Whatever it is should be something that you truly desire – something that you feel your life would be lacking if you didn’t have it.
The second way is to accept that you’re going to have to change things to get what matters to you. Many people are willing to acknowledge what matters to them, but then they balk at the change.
You won’t get what matters to you without change. It’s like losing weight. You can’t shed pounds if you stay sedentary, eating copious amounts of calories. You must be mindful of your movement and intake.
The third way to find your catalyst is to give it the opportunity to happen. For example, if you want to start your own business, but your personal and professional life doesn’t leave you with room to learn about business development or to increase your talents, then something has to give.
You must make room to let the change in. Maybe that means spending a little time after work on the weekdays or on the weekends to educate yourself. It’s a temporary sacrifice for a long-term benefit.
The fourth way to find your catalyst is to make it concrete. Write it down. Share it with others. Find a mentor. Don’t allow this change you want to remain nothing more than a desire.
By naming it, you’re taking a step toward making it your future reality. Claim what it is that you want for your life. Then make a formidable plan to go after it, step-by-step.
The fifth way is to not let the size of the change throw you off your goal. Some changes that people want to make really are pretty big. Changes like moving from your home to live in another country because it’s what you’ve always wanted is a huge change.
You wouldn’t want to pack up overnight and head out the next morning. You can’t throw away personal responsibility when a catalyst happens. What you must do is focus on the things you need to do to reach that change sensibly.
If your goal is moving to another country, you would want to find a place to live and secure a way to support yourself financially before taking the leap. Those are action steps that you can take that lead to the big change.
Small change is what equals big change, and it gets you closer to where you want to be in life. Think about how often you’ve just accepted your fate – your lot in life.
Have you ever made an action plan to get to a better place? To have more peaceful relationships by setting boundaries. To feel the thrill of waking up each morning, ready to lead a niche that excites you?
If you’ve been watching time pass by, waiting for a bolt of lightening, consider this day your wake up call. It’s time to embrace every catalyst you encounter so that years down the road, you’re not still stuck in the mud wondering why life passed you by.
As you probably already know, having a strong mindset is critical to any attempt to make a change in your life, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 😊
Using Time Blocking To Stay Motivated
We are all guilty of suffering from a lack of motivation in our lives!
Am I right? Of course I am. This is just human nature and with all the distractions of modern living, it can be harder than ever to remain motivated and focused.
What happens when we push our brain to keep thinking, focusing and creating hour after hour? It shuts down. It goes on strike. It says “I’m outa here, buddy”.
This is especially true when we keep requiring it to focus on the same task for hours at a time.
Neuroscience now tells us that changing tasks regularly, taking consistent breaks and blocking out our time keeps our brain more engaged when it is working so that we actually get more done in less time.
So, let’s look at blocking time.
This is not a new concept. But it’s one we don’t use often enough to maintain our enthusiasm and focus, not to mention our mental and emotional health.
Blocking time is a way to schedule your work hours in a way that sets up a dedicated time to a particular task. And then, when that time is up, you switch to a new task.
But why you may ask, is this important to performance and productivity?
- Keeps your brain from getting bored (aka, low motivation)
- Mentally prepares you for the tasks ahead
- Lowers stress because you see work getting done
- Ensures no multitasking occurs
- Improves self-confidence in your ability to succeed
So, how should you go about blocking your time? Usually, it’s recommended to work in 2–3-hour work chunks at a time, while allowing a short 5–10-minute break every 30-45 minutes.
- Decide how you will block your time. There are many ways to do this, including various apps and email calendars. Google Calendar is a great way to get started because it’s easy to use and readily available.
- Chose the date and time for your task. Remember to keep it to 2-3 hrs if possible
- Decide where you will complete the task.
- Include any details you need to remember before performing the task in the memo area. This will make it faster to get started when you get to that time block. No searching for the sticky note you wrote the directions on.
- Set reminders so you know when it’s time to switch tasks. You can get a reminder via email, pop-up or app notifications.
If 2-3 hours seems a long time to focus on a particular task, then you can use smaller chunks.
The Pomodoro technique uses time chunks of only 25 minutes, each followed by a 5-minute break. After 4 of these chunks, you should take a 15-minute break.
If you a little more information about the Pomodoro technique, you can read this blog post
Using time blocks keeps your motivation high for all the reasons stated above, and also because it allows you to use several of your skill sets each day. It breaks up the monotony of doing the same task all day long.
When working on tasks, you should also schedule breaks you’re your routine.
Why, you ask? Well, let’s look at a scientific reason now…
3 Reasons Science Tells Us To Take Breaks
Too busy to take a break? That’s a common thought in our fast-paced world.
We are a society with consistently too many things on our collective plate.
But science tells us that we need to make taking regular breaks a priority to maintain inspiration and productivity.
Advances in neuroscience have proven that we need breaks as well as focused work time, as some cultures have known and practiced for millennia.
Why We Need To Take Breaks
There are a number of reasons why it is important to take scheduled breaks, and we will cover just 3 of them in this article.
It makes perfect sense to stop every now and again as if we don’t, we will get tired and lose focus.
This causes us to become frustrated and becomes a negative feedback loop, so it is important to take a break.
Let’s look at 3 big reasons to stop…
Make Connections And Retain Information
Our brain has two modes of operation. The focus mode, which is where we spend most of our day, concentrating on tasks and challenges as they arise.
The other mode is just as important, though often underappreciated – the diffuse mode. This is the state of daydreaming or letting our mind wander. You may have experienced the benefits of this mode when you are doing something mundane on autopilot.
For example, you may have an ah-ha moment about a solution to a problem that you’ve been trying to solve while you are driving someplace familiar or taking a shower. This diffuse mode is when most of our insights and out-of-the-box thinking happens.
Re-Evaluate Our Goals
When we stay focused on a task or problem constantly, we can easily become caught up in all the little details instead of questioning if we are completing the right tasks in the best order and way.
The devil may be in the details, but we need breaks to gain perspective on how our work is advancing and if there are more productive or effective ways to reach the same or even better results.
Stepping out of work mode for even just a few minutes is enough time to help us re-evaluate our goals and the way we are going about achieving them.
Keep Us Engaged And Motivated
Our brains weren’t meant to stay in focused mode all the time, even though we think they should sometimes.
Neuroscientists have found that taking short breaks on a regular basis is a more effective way to work, even though that might seem counterintuitive.
Breaks give our brains a rest from constant focus so that they can “regroup” if you will. When we take breaks throughout the day when working on tasks that take a lot of concentration or take a longer period of time to complete, we actually are more productive and motivated when we are working on the task than if we worked straight through.
As you probably already know, having a strong mindset is critical to any attempt to plan and stay focused, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 😊
5 Ways To Stay Motivated
Losing motivation? It happens to the best of us. But there are tricks to staying motivated, many of which involve taking a hard look at your goals.
With a little preparation and solid planning, there’s no reason why you can’t stay motivated all the way through whatever project you’ve set out for yourself.
How? Well, let’s take a look…
1. Start With The Big Picture
What is it you’re trying to accomplish? Having an idea of the eventual goal will help you to stay on track.
The clearer the vision, the more likely you are to keep going, even when times get tough. Ask yourself what it is you’re trying to achieve – and then picture yourself achieving it.
The visualization step is the most important one here. We tend to perform in the way we expect to. So if we expect to fail, we do. By seeing success, you’re more likely to attain success.
2. Make Sure This Is YOUR Goal
Now that you’ve gotten the big picture make sure this is YOUR goal. At first glance that statement seems ridiculous – why would you make a goal that isn’t your own?
This answer can be found most easily in asking WHY you want to accomplish what you are. If the word “should” comes up, then chances are you might want to re-evaluate what you’re doing.
We often set goals because we feel like they’re something we’re supposed to do, and not because they’re something we want to do. You’re less likely to stay motivated when you’re on the path of ‘should.’
3. Break Tasks Down To Make Them Manageable
Next, you’ll want to break those tasks down into something manageable.
Now that you have a goal and are sure it’s something you want to do, you might feel a little overwhelmed about how you’re going to accomplish that goal.
By breaking it up into smaller pieces, you regain the feeling that you’re doing something possible.
Like a pro tip? Celebrate the small successes then as you go. That will help keep the motivation levels high.
4. Get Organized
If you’re still a little overwhelmed, get organized.
It might be that you don’t feel prepared to work on this project because you lack the research or supplies.
Figure out what you need, and then go about making sure you have the proper tools to get the job done.
It’s easier to stay motivated when you have what you need to succeed.
5. Remember Your Why
If all else fails, remember why you set the goal in the first place. It could be you only need a little reminder of your previous motivation to find the fresh motivation to keep going.
Motivation isn’t something you have to lose as you work on a project. You can keep your motivation levels high with a little forethought and planning.
By keeping on track with your goals, you’ll find that motivation will likewise keep on track, guiding you all the way through the job at hand until completion.
And this is why routine is so good for you and helps to keep you motivated so let’s look at the power of routines next…
Why Routine Is Good for You
You’ll hear people refer to routine as being dull or boring. It implies that life is the same from one day to the next.
However, routines are a great way to get your work done. It’s also a great means for teams to work together towards a common goal.
When everyone has an understanding of what needs to get done, i.e., what routines each team member needs to perform, projects tend to run smoother.
We also have routines in our society. In some ways, laws can be considered routines. You know that you aren’t supposed to run a red light and that can be thought of as a routine.
When you come to a red light, you stop as best as you can. There may be instances when you accidentally go through one here or there. But, most people will stop for red lights. And this is good to reduce accidents.
You set up routines for your kids in the form of chores. You know that certain tasks need to get done each week. Many parents tie kids’ allowances on these chores.
When the kids finish their chores, they receive their allowances. It teaches the kids a work ethic. They need to perform tasks, and when they complete those tasks, they receive money for them.
When you pay bills, you tend to have a routine for this. Some people like to get everything sorted on one day and pay all the bills on that day. Others will pay them whenever they receive them. Others, still, will set up their payments to be paid automatically by their bank or brokerage.
There isn’t a right answer for how to do this. Whatever works for you is the right answer. However, the method you choose will be routine.
Contrast this to people who don’t have routines to manage their lives. They tend to handle tasks when the mood strikes them. These people are usually late with their bills and have messy environments.
Some of these people will say that this way of life works for them. However, for most people this is chaos. It’s something that can easily be avoided by setting up routines for the tasks you need to complete.
Of course, people are not robots. Hence, they do break up their routines on occasion. You may use weekends to do activities that you don’t get to do during the work week. Also, many families use vacations to help break up their routines.
So, use these tips to stay motivated and use the power of routines to keep you on track too. Hopefully you will be surprised by the results.
Having a strong mindset is critical to any attempt to staying focused and motivated, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 🙂