Motivation Guide

Success is certainly not based upon our genetics and it is not based on our education. It seems that the most successful people in our society either worked it out for themselves or were lucky enough to have been taught, often by an inspired parent. If you are not in either of these two camps then this guide is for you.

This program will help you to analyze your personality and identify areas that you can change. It will also help you to develop new and empowering habits and behaviors that appear to be common to the highly motivated in our society. There are also some psychological exercises designed to focus our mind on important objectives.
 

  • Step 1 Goals
  • Step 2 SMART & Well Formed Goals
  • Step 3 Make A Detailed Plan
  • Step 4 The Power Of Imagination
  • Step 5 Your Time Line
  • Step 6 Meta Programs
  • Step 7 Modeling
  • Step 8 The Internal Coach
  • Step 9 New Conditioned Responses
  • Step 10 Your Internal State
  • Step 11 Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs
  • Step 12 Re-order Your Values
  • Step 13 Future Projection
  • Step 14 Positive Attitude To Failure
 

Anthony Robbins Personal Power II

Motivation Stage 1 - Goals

You must have a goal to be motivated towards. If you don’t, then you will need to go and do the goal setting workshop and draw up a plan of action to achieve that goal. Motivation is not something you can have without wanting something specific. That would be like being in love but not with anyone in particular.

If you believe you know exactly what your goals are without having done the goal setting workshop, I would still recommend that you do it. It pays to give any goals you have a ‘shake down’. You never know something better might occur to you. You should repeat this exercise at regular intervals and continually review these goals. If you’re in a very bad place and can’t get motivated to do the goal setting workshop then congratulations ‘goal setting’ is your goal. Jump right in with the rest of us.

If you’re struggling to choose a goal, then it is far better to select something arbitrarily and work towards it than it is to sit and do nothing. Any goal is better than no goal. In the process of achieving any goal you will grow and develop momentum and more appropriate goals will come to you.

But you can do much better than random selection. You need to know exactly where you are now. Make a list of all your skills and positive attributes. These are the foundations on which you are going to build. An obvious goal may well present itself. You are unique. No-one else possesses all of the same skills. Even if it is does not feel like your destiny at least it will be the easier path. Don’t stand still, get moving somewhere.

There is a story of a general who is leading his troops through the desert and comes to a fork in the road. They are out of water and he knows that one path leads to an oasis and they will all be saved and the other leads to the middle of the desert and certain death. What does he do? The answer is to make an instant decision and pretend he knows the right path. He has 50% chance of being right. That way, whatever fate awaits them, his men will go happily towards it. Any indecision is pointless as he will be no wiser by wasting time and it would only fill his men’s last hours with fear and uncertainty.

Motivation Stage 2 - SMART and Well Formed Goals

If you already had your goals and skipped the goal setting workshop or you did the workshop and skipped the link to SMART and well formed goals then you will need to do that now. SMART and Well Formed Goals It is important that your goals are defined in terms that your subconscious is going to understand. The psychology behind motivation is complex and there is not space here to go into lengthy explanations. If you need to know more then there is a very useful link at the end of this guide.

Motivation Stage 3 - Make a Detailed Plan

A goal without a plan is a daydream.

Many of you will be good planners and have the necessary skills to do this. If you do not the process can be summarized as follows:

You will need to break your main goal into several sub goals that you will arrange over time. Each of these sub goals will then need to be broken down further into smaller tasks. You aim to make these tasks last in the order of a few days. You can then plan your daily schedules around these tasks and finalize the total time and effort involved and any new skills or training that are required. You should also create a list of people that you will need to help you accomplish these tasks.

See Goals Planning.

Motivation Stage 4 - The Power of Imagination - The Ideal Self

There are 3 laws in psychology that are particularly useful in developing motivational ideas and images in your mind:
  • 1. Coue's Law or the law of reversed effect
    When the will and the imagination come into conflict, the imagination always wins.

    The classic example of this is 'walking the plank'. If I was to place a rigid plank of wood on the floor and asked you to walk along it, you would have no problem doing so. If I then placed that plank with each end on a table and asked you to walk along it, you could probably do that too, though more carefully. If, finally, I placed that plank ten floors up across an alley between two buildings you probably wouldn't even attempt it, though the task was the same.

  • 2. The law of concentrated attention.
    When spontaneous attention is concentrated on an idea, the idea tends to realise itself.

  • 3. The law of dominant effect.
    Attaching an emotion to a suggestion makes it more effective.

    • You need to get your imagination working powerfully on your behalf. You need to create a strong mental image of your ideal self. Bring this image to mind as often as you can so that you remain focused on it. This activates your subconscious.

    You need to really believe and feel the experiences that you imagine. If you can make your ideal self as vivid as possible the human mind can have a hard time distinguishing between reality and fiction.

    The best way to do this is to imagine your ideal self in as much detail as possible; how you look; how you act; what you sound like; how you dress; your friends and associates; where you live. Make vivid images. See yourself being successful and enjoying the fruits of your success. Create a short movie clip of yourself in the future, the way you want to be and run this film over and over as often as you can so that it is firmly embedded in your mind.

  • 1. Create an image of your ideal self.
  • 2. Make it bright, colourful, vivid, close-up, and full of action.
  • 3. Add sounds and feelings. Build it into a short movie.
  • 4. Become emotionally involved in the scene.
  • 5. Replay the short movie as often as you can, at least on a daily basis.

    • Motivation Stage 5 - Your Time Line

    The time line is a way that your mind has to represent time. You will need to establish exactly how you do this before continuing. Go to the Time Line Elicitation page. Do this now, it will take less than a minute to do.

    This process will help you to reinforce your goals.

  • 1. Imagine your time line extending out into the future.

  • 2. Imagine yourself moving along your time line into the future and as you placing your goals onto the line until you come to your main goal. If you have good visual images of these goals then use them.

  • 3. Come back to your starting point in the present and mentally walk along your time line recalling each goal in sequence. You will gain a strong overview of the entire process you have to follow to succeed.

  • 4. Run through this time line process every day. Good times to do this are first thing in the morning and last thing at night just before you go to sleep.

    • Motivation Stage 6 - Meta Programs

    Meta programs are the internal thought processes that control your behavior. The following steps will take you through a half-hour program to discover what these are. Once you know these you will be able to adapt your motivation strategy.
  • Step 1 Find out what drives you; Your Meta programs.
  • Step 2 Do the Personality Test.

    • Compare your profile to your the tasks you have to do to achieve your goal. You should get a fairly good idea where your strengths and weaknesses lie. The important thing is that these meta programs show how you instinctively behave and you can easily override them, especially if you build a strong habitual behavior.

    There are a number of meta programs that deal with overall motivation and affect the other techniques in this motivation program.

  • Direction Filter If you are a 'towards' personality then you will be more motivated by rewards. If you are an 'away' personality then you will need to motivate yourself by concentrating on what you might miss out on. You will need to develop your visualization techniques and written goals, accordingly.
  • Reason Filter If you are a possibility person then you
  • Frame of Reference Filter You must develop a good internal frame of reference so that you can judge yourself effectively and rapidly. This will get rid of a lot of self doubt and build confidence. This is best done by reviewing tasks you have already completed to see where you were slow in making a decision. You need to clearly identify those areas where your skills are good so that you do not waste time deliberating. Areas where you are more uncertain will need training. You should always include some learning or training in your daily schedule.
  • Chunk Size Filter If your tendency is to concentrate on details then this is what interests you most which means you may neglect and you may need to develop more motivation into looking at the overall picture and higher level planning. Conversely if your outlook is too 'global' you may need to expend more effort on the details.

    • Motivation Stage 7 - Modeling

    Model the behavior and life of anyone who has been successful in your area of interest. Artists and musicians have always done this but it is only in the last hundred years that this has moved into the areas of business, finance, sports, relationships and even success itself. Choose your heroes and copy them, in as much detail as you can discover. There are a lot of studies now that have analyszd the common behaviour in successful people so a lot of the donkey work has been taken out of this.

    The following is a list of common behavior exhibited by highly successful people:

  • 1. Believe success is due to ability and effort.
  • 2. Persist when work becomes hard because they know failure is due to lack of effort, which can be overcome by working harder.
  • 3. Select moderately difficult goals that have an even chance of success so that they push themselves. If a goals are too easy then you have an empty feeling of success, if they are too hard you will fail too often and be discouraged.
  • 4. Look forward to their failures and setbacks as they learn from them and are most challenged in these circumstances.
  • 5. Love their work. They are highly committed to it. Their life is their work.
  • 6. Recognition and self-fulfillment are high on their list of values.
  • 7. Very single minded about their work. They tend to become totally absorbed in it.
  • 8. Compulsive goal setters and review their goals daily.
  • 9. Quickly identify good opportunities.
  • 10. Tend to have a reduced social life.
  • 11. Highly competitive in their field.
  • 12. Do not contemplate the possibility of failure.
  • 13. Quick decision makers.
  • 14. Very health conscious.
  • 15. Highly creative. Routinely stimulate their creativity by brainstorming and problem solving.
  • 16. Ask good questions of themselves like:
  • What will make the difference?
  • What earns the money?
  • What is the best use of my time?
  • How can I get this done and enjoy it at the same time?
  • What can I do better?
  • 17. Dedicated to learning
  • 18. Dedicated to serving others. They are very customer focused.
  • 19. Very aware that the cycles of progress plateau and drop back periodically, so they don't fight the slumps, they just ride them out.
  • 20. Nurture good business relationships with other successful people.
  • 21. Accept total responsibility for their lives
  • 22. Often have an important life goal that drives them.
  • 23. Very preoccupied with their own performance.
  • 24. Do a lot of planning.
  • 25. Prefer honest feedback
  • 26. Struggle through difficult tasks on their own rather than seek help.
  • 27. Concentrate on one single most important task at a time.
  • 28. Very adaptable. They will easily let go of one solution and consider another.
  • 29. Develop a very systematic process of problem solving that they always use.

    • Motivation Stage 8 - The Internal Coach

    We all have a voice inside our head that we hear when we think. There is a branch of psychology called 'Cognitive Behavior Modification' that calls this self-talk and suggests that if we learn to control this inner voice we can control our behavior. You can change your self talk to increase your motivation.

  • Step 1 Develop and write down a series of instructions for yourself that are designed to motivate you to completing your immediate goals or tasks.
  • Step 2 Refine and rehearse these instructions.
  • Step 3 Every time that you are scheduled to work on these goals, use your internal voice to run through this script. You are essentially being your own internal coach.
  • Step 4 You can change your own internal voice to sound like somebody that you find very motivating, either real or fictional. For example, a sergeant major in the marines, James Bond, or Winston Churchill. Optionally you can coach yourself out loud, but this falls more into the realm of affirmation.

    • Motivation Stage 9 - Build New Conditioned Responses

    You can create new habits, rituals or associations to produce a new desired behavior. Easy habits don't take long to install, perhaps only a few weeks or a dozen or so repetitions.

    More complex behaviour however is more difficult. The idea here is to pair up the easily done behavior to the more difficult one so that the easy behavior triggers it.

  • Step 1 Identify the desired behavior that requires motivation and find or design another simpler 'controlling' behavior that can occur just prior to it.
  • Step 2 Link the simpler, easily installable behavior to the more complex desired behavior by always executing them at the same time so that they become associated with one another. This may require many repetitions.
  • Step 3 When you need the motivation, you execute the simpler 'controlling' behavior and this will trigger the desired more complex behaviour.

    • For example, I associate a particular piece of music and a cup of tea to setting up my desk to write in the mornings. Once I'm sat at my desk with my pen I use different music to write creatively. I artificially used these sound cues to trigger my writing process.

    Motivation Stage 10 - Your Internal State

    You can affect your internal state with your physiology and your thoughts. Both of these can be controlled. The main techniques are given below:

  • 1. Physiology Your state of mind is influenced by your physiology. Maintaining a confident, motivated body language will help you to be more motivated and confident. At sporting events athletes punch the air and pump themselves up. This increases energy and sends messages to your mind that something important is happening. You can use this to help your motivation. develop a routine for yourself to provide a boost when you need it.
  • 2. Visualizations Imagine vivid images of yourself attaining or having your goal. Add as much action, sound and feeling as you can. Replay this ‘fantasies’ as often as is practical during the day to keep your mind focused on your goal. See the page on Visualizations.
  • 3. Affirmations The auditory equivalent of visualizations. Affirmations are repeatedly saying empowering phrases out loud and with emotion. It is a very direct auditory instruction to your brain. For example, saying “I am focused, I am confident, I am unstoppable, I am in control, I love doing this...”. Repeat it over and over and really believe it. See the page on Affirmations
  • 4. Anchors You can remind yourself of your goals and your motivation throughout the day by using physical cues. Use the chain of anchors technique to associate a physical event such as clicking a pen with visualization of your goal.

    • Motivation Stage 11 - Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

    Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – All motivation is affected by fundamental subconscious human needs. Deficiencies in these basic needs will affect your overall motivation. These can be brought into the conscious for evaluation and correction. There are 5 basic needs:
  • 1. Physiological
  • 2. Safety
  • 3. Love and Affection
  • 4. Esteem
  • a) Strength, achievement, confidence, adequacy, freedom, independence
  • b) Reputation and Prestige
  • 5. Self actualization

    • The idea is that you must satisfy your physiological needs to a certain extent before you can begin to focus on Safety needs and so on up the chain. Some people have higher thresholds than others before they can move on.

    For example, you may need to be 90% satisfied with love and affection before you can move on to deal with esteem. This may cause problems if a close relationship breaks down as you will focus a lot of your energy on repairing or replacing it which will seriously affect your motivation to attain your higher needs. Knowing where your vulnerability lies in this way will make sure that you make sufficient efforts to maintain those important foundations.

    So, on a physiological level you need to maintain your health, on a safety level perhaps make sure you have adequate insurance and on a love and affection level make sure your spouse, family and friends with the care and attention they deserve. Losing any of these could be disastrous to your success in life.

    Motivation Stage 12 - Re-order Your Values

    There is a powerful Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) technique that enables you change the relative importance of your life values. See Values Elicitation page.

    Motivation Stage 13 - Future Projection

  • Create a sense of urgency – If you had one month to live, to change the life of someone you love.
  • All your past failed attempts and procrastination will work against you. These have to be eliminated. Remember: “A fool that thinks he is wise is a fool indeed. A fool that knows he is a fool is that much wiser.” Identify your past attempts, understand them and let them go.
  • Stop feeling comfortable where you are now. Remember the law of dominant effect. Stir yourself up so that you have to do something. Concentrate on the pain of not doing anything. Imagine the life you will not get to lead if you do not act now.

    • Motivation Stage 14 - Positive Attitude to Failure

    The things you can’t or don’t do will give you direction. The French philosopher, John Paul Sartre, met a Jesuit priest while imprisoned during World War II. The priest’s father had died when he was a child and left him in poverty and dependant on charity. Later a love affair ended very badly. Finally he’d failed the exam to enter military service. Instead of being despondent, he put these events together and concluded that it was a message from God telling him to follow a religious life.

    This is an excellent example of reframing events in a positive way. Very like the Chinese General, whom when asked why he was retreating, said that he wasn’t retreating, merely advancing in the other direction.

    The Success Factor
    (CD)

    The Success Factor CD contains 4 specially selected hypnosis sessions.

    Links

    There is an excellent free e-book called 'Psychological Self-Help' by Clayton E. Tucker-Ladd, Ph.D. that is available from his web site. It is very up-to-date and contains a synthesis of current psychological thinking including some excellent chapters dedicated to motivation and the theories behind it.
    Psychological Self-Help >>> It runs to over a thousand pages and cites many useful research references. Thoroughly recommended for further reading on this subject.

    Links to resources on motivation

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