Napoleon Hill once said, “Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the Seed of an equivalent or a greater Benefit. If you think about it, every obstacle or problem you face in life, something valuable can be gained from it.

I remember when me and my girlfriend broke up, I thought that my life was over. As silly as it sounds, during that time I really couldn’t function the same way as I did before when I met her. I went through months of hammering myself. Many of the times, I found myself saying things such as, “What did I do wrong? I was so stupid! I’m never going to talk to her again.”

The things I loved doing most became dull and uninteresting. College became uninteresting. Driving became uninteresting. Watching movies by myself became painful to do. I couldn’t even concentrate on the simplest problems of my homework. Living a normal life suddenly became hard.

One day, you come to a point where you walk into the bathroom and look yourself in the mirror and you’re in so much pain that you can’t even recognize yourself, but instead, see someone beneath the skin on the surface. At that point, you can’t help but randomly smile and let a small laugh come out somewhere beneath. Within a moment of realization, you say to yourself, “What the hell have I been doing? Enough is enough. I need to move on.”

People say that hindsight is a perfect vision. I agree with that. Everybody has choices and decisions in life, and without the decision to move on, I would have never been able to see other opportunities out there. I have a girlfriend now and I am her first boyfriend, and the way she treats me is sort of the way I treated my ex girlfriend – very emotionally. I understand how that feels now. And it sort of all comes together or comes “full circle,” because sometimes I’m the one that feels like I need some space and now I know why my ex girlfriend felt the way she did sometimes.

We face adversity everyday. You break up with someone and it hurts. But it’s not the end of the world. If anything it just makes you tougher and stronger inside, and to not depend so much on the other person in order to live a normal life. Love doesn’t necessarily have to come from receiving attention from your boyfriend or girlfriend or wife or husband, it can come from giving and receiving a thank you from a stranger.

When business goes bad, it hurts. There are people who are so stuck to their jobs and blame the economy for their financial situation. And instead of seeing another way out of it, they stick to their same business ways, waiting for something to happen, and losing their money everyday. When business is going bad, it’s a lesson right in front of your eyes that change is needed. And when business goes bad and change is implemented to see a solution to make business better, whether this means doing more for customers or changing careers, that itself is a benefit to business going good.

When a person you know well passes away, it hurts. But it makes you appreciate the value of living. The personality they had on other people may be a reflection of how you want to treat others as well. Their contribution to the world may be something that strikes you in a powerful way.  What did they contribute to the world when they were living, and what can you do now to give value to the world while you’re still here on earth? Will you be proud of your accomplishments and what you have done here when it is your time? These adversities we face just make us think a little bit more.

Most of the times, the worse adversities are the ones that we cannot control. This is such as the ones that are in the future. For example, with all the foreclosures that are going on, you may be a person who has to pay off a mortgage bill by a certain, upcoming deadline. There are people who just borrow more money, and put themselves into more drowning debt. Running away from adversity is not what you want to do. Facing adversity such as finding ways to make a dollar is better than spending a hundred dollars and not doing anything to make a dollar because make a dollar is the first step it will take to making more dollars – the direction that you want to go in order to get out of debt.

This was just an example, but as you can see, most obstacles and problems that we have in life are negative. However, you have a choice! Most people will view a negative situation in a negative way. That is being “realistic”. But when we become “realistic” that is when we have accepted the fate our of future from something outside of our control. But people don’t have to view the negative situation as negative, because it’s the people who want to succeed in life that choose to view a negative situation, such as adversity, as a positive way to benefit them in the future.

In the long run, we should think how we feel. Of course, there are going to be adversities that make us feel down. But if we can train ourselves to view adversity in a positive way, then we will feel good about ourselves. Which one do you want to feel between the hours of when you wake up in morning and when you go to sleep at night? For me, I would choose the latter. So next time, instead of seeing your adversity as a big rocky boulder that is blocking your path, see it as a small stepping stone that is actually helping you get back onto the path of your destination.

photo image: JasonRogersFotographie

We all want money for different reasons. Perhaps there is a new watch, a new car, or a new house that you want. These are all great reasons to earn money for. Some people just want to get out of debt. This includes personal debt as well as mortgage.

Some people may feel motivated to use money to buy all the things they ever wanted to have. What tends to happen is that they will run out of the motivational fuel half way through their process. To me, materialism doesn’t give me a desire to always take action. Of course, it may be nice to own a new car or to even own some property. However, I think what goes beyond material can give a person the greatest motivation of all.

One of the things I think really motivates people to getting money is having the ability to have things that we want without having to hesitate over the price of things. That feeling is also like losing something valuable, but knowing that it’s not a big deal and that it could be easily replaced, rather than making a huge fuss about it or getting in an argument with another person. This, of course, does not mean to be careless over things.

Do you feel like you are a person who is very conservative? Do you have parents that kind of are the save-every-penny type people? Maybe it even feels uncomfortable walking in a business area shop as a high class shopping mall or what not. Instead of that feeling of uneasiness we feel when spending or saving money, being financially secure wherever one goes could be a good reason why someone would want to become wealthy.

The basic point is that when we have reasons to want money that is beyond materialism, it’s a greater motivator for us to achieve that type of money.

As you probably have noticed, rich older men like to play golf. Golf to me is a rather boring sport. But it is most likely what golf represents – not the golf clubs, the golf balls, or the golf course – but the relaxation of golf, the open field of golf represents a free life (sort of), and the enjoyment of taking your time in life, while talking to your buddies about anything.

The same goes with traveling. It may not be the cost of the plane ticket, the ride, but the knowledge you get from traveling and seeing other places in the world and experiencing their culture. If you have always stayed inside your country and left, you may be shocked at what you see in other parts of the world. The images we see from TV, the internet, or newspaper is a really limited view compared to the experience one has when visiting and staying in another country.

Take some time to write down all the reasons of why you want money. Maybe it is having material things that you have always wanted, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you really take the time to think about what lies beyond materialism, you will be able to find deeper reasons that will help give you that extra motivation fuel you’ll need in order to get there.

Photo Credit: longhorndave

There are times when our goal seems so out of reach because we are so obsessed with how to get there, that it prevents us from getting there at all. We go through the journey sometimes clueless, sometimes frustrated, and sometimes just waiting for that magical “break” to happen to us while we go and do other things that are more appealing to us.

If you are not working towards your goal, there has to be a reason. Figure out what is stopping you from you goal, as it will help get rid of that ambiguous feeling of not taking action. If you don’t know what is holding you back, here are some common reasons that stop us from getting to our goals.

1. Lack of Knowledge

2. Lack of Experience

3. Trying Different Things before Working on Current Project

4. Doing Too many Things at Once

5. Problems Getting Organized

6. Not Enough Patience

7. Negative Thought Processes

8. Other People’s Opinions/Criticism

9. Easily Distracted

10. Fear of Failing

It could be a combination of one of these things, a combination of these things, all of these things, or something that’s not even on this list. But whatever it happens to be, make a mental note of it or write it down somewhere where you know it is something that you will have to deal with.

I like writing in my blog, but one of the biggest things that stops me from doing so is trying to do too many things at once. Sometimes I’ll check my e-mail, sometimes I’ll check out what’s going on in ESPN, sometimes I’ll check the latest news in Yahoo. When I do this, I get distracted easily and without even realizing that one or two hours have passed by and I haven’t even written anything.

When I have a mental note of this problem, next time I feel myself getting suckered into doing many things at once, I resist the temptation and get to writing. Writing is my just goal. I wish to write consistently. But what about yours? Is it trying to find a job or making new friends?

Whatever that’s stopping you from you goal, identify it. That way, instead of doing nothing. At least you can be on your way to removing that roadblock, and moving closer to your aim in life.

Photo Credit: sampitech

It is said that 80% of people who graduate college, within four years, end up doing a career that was unrelated to their major. That’s a lot of people, but I’m not surprised. Many people in college are confused and don’t know exactly what they want to do until they go out in the real world and actually experience it. They may have an idea of what they want, but without actually doing the job, they have no idea what things were not expected such as a psycho boss, paperwork pressure, social pressure, etc.

A lot of people are scared when they don’t know what they want to do for the rest of their life and I’m here to say, try new things. Experiment, and don’t be afraid of failure.

Famous people like Paul McCartney and John Lennon wanted to be songwriters at first for other people, not knowing they were later going to be full blown rock stars. Another musician, Johnny Cash, was a morose code interceptor operator for Russian Army transmissions before making his first CD’s and becoming an American singer. Walt Disney wanted to be an illustrator and first, without knowing that he was later be the creator and symbol of worldwide theme parks.

Most people who change their jobs do so because they hate what they do. They don’t like waking up in the morning and driving to work every day. It is until they day they say, “I can’t stand it, it’s time to change jobs” that they take the action to quit and so something that they like better. Some people can’t do this because they need the income to get by life, and can’t settle for a job that pays lower.

Others might say, “Screw the income. I’d rather do something that I love to do and makes me happy.” They key is ultimately finding the right balance, not just picking a job you hate but pays well or picking a job you love but could be also regarded as a hobby. That’s why many people go through years and years finding that ideal job where they do what they love and get paid well for doing it as well.

It might take some trial and error and that’s fine. But the worse thing one could do is just sit around and do nothing about the issue. If you don’t know what you want to do in the future, that’s fine, but don’t expect to know without going out in the real world and experiencing it for yourself. It’s better to take a course of action, such as doing some light researching, rather than sit around waiting for the world to give you the answers on a silver platter, which may never happen.

One tip that I can suggest is figuring out what you are skilled at. Most people who are asked this question will say that there are still at nothing. That’s not right! Everybody is skilled at something. Some people are skilled at viewing fine detail, which they might consider a job that requires attention to small details. Some people are skilled at talking or having conversations; thus any social job that doesn’t require one to sit alone at a desk and do paperwork all day would be a good choice. Some people hate using their mind, so they are happy settling with a job that uses their hands such as construction work.

If you’re stuck, just sit down and write down what you’re skilled at. Ask yourself questions about what would be an ideal job that you could be satisfied doing for long-term. You can figure this out right now, instead of going through a job you might hate for the next 2 to 3 years. But the most important thing to figuring out what you want to do, when you don’t know yet, is that you must take action! Don’t let time waste away because the sooner you can figure out what you want to do, the better advantage you will have compared to other people, but ultimately down the line for yourself.

joestump

Yesterday my post was about NMA or negative mental attitude on a side of an imaginary talisman. Today let’s talk about we can reverse that side to having PMA or positive mental attitude, a side that you’ll want to have with you wherever you go.

Now one might be able tell from the title, Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude, that the title says it all. However, the book goes deeper than just success; it talks about PMA as it is a way of life. “Success” to everybody means different things, but in order to achieve their kind of success, one has to develop a positive mental attitude through practice and perseverance. It doesn’t just come “pre-packaged”.

In the previous post, I stated that most people become unhappy because of things that they don’t have. Instead of finding a solution to their woes, they develop a negative mental attitude from inside to out. Realize that, with PMA, it is possible to achieve anything you want including what was stated yesterday:

• Wealth
• Happiness
• Relationship
• Friendship
• Dream House
• Dream Car
• Skinny
• Muscular
• Fame
• Confidence

This is not a full list of things so feel free to add to it. I also realize that there are some things in life that are permanent. These things are a lot more difficult to conquer and usually even on the mere thought of these permanent things, it brings out a negative mental attitude in us.

But also realize that even if some things are permanent, there are ways that are unknown to your mind at this point to solving the problem and in order to even see that, you have to first try to at least develop a positive mental attitude.

Think of it as a see-saw. There is a balance. For everything that seems negative in your life, there is something that equality positive that you can have. If there is a low degree of negative, there will be a low degree of positive. If there is a high degree of negative, there will be a high degree of positive as well. It just depends if you’re willing to see that other side or not.

Napoleon Hill once said, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of equal or greater benefit.” It is true that even with the worse adversities, failures, and heartaches, there is something to learn from it and receive from it in a positive form.

That’s why it’s important that instead of saying things such as I cannot, it will bring in a way of looking at things if we say things such as:

• I can!
• It’s doable!
• It’s possible!
• There is a way!
• I choose how to react to him!
• I choose how to react to her!
• I need to change myself!
• I can change!
• I am as gifted as anybody else!
• I can do anything!

When you start to reframe the I cannots to I cans, you’ll start to see a power within yourself manifesting all the situations to something positive. You’ll find yourself holding the power to influence yourself and others too.

One of the biggest messages of the book was having a magnificent obsession. And that is simply having an obsession of helping others to make the world a better place through positive mental attitude. Even if you can’t help yourself, and you can’t find happiness within yourself, you might be able to find happiness by helping others feel good or succeed.

Whether this is giving them a compliment, doing a deed, smiling, or any other small thing, these all make a difference in raising people’s moods and allowing yourself to be a more positive person as well. Through PMA, a person will no longer have to use negative ways to get through life. It will build a character of the following traits:

• Loving
• Courage
• Trustworthy
• Honest
• Patient
• Proactive
• Just
• Confident
• Friendly
• Peaceful

A character with these traits do not view problems as bad things, but as challenges to overcome. Most people view problems and what the word implies - problem, headache, frustration etc.

Instead of seeing a problem that you may dislike, view the problem as something that is suppose to help you grow as a person. If the problem involves other people, and what they have done to you, it doesn’t matter about them.

What matters is you, so let them go as you cannot be burdened by people problems for your time, whether this is a year, five years, or ten years.

When you let positive mental attitude in the worst of times, you motivate yourself when you feel like you can’t do anything. It will help you motivate others when they feel down as well. It will help you find a way out of what seems impossible for you at the time and it will spread like a fire effecting everybody around you. It will help you attract wealth if you are poor or help you find love in your life if you are alone. It builds character and a pleasing personality that others want to be around and want to learn from.

But most importantly, by having a positive attitude, you will feel healthy, you will feel happy, and you will feel terrific every single day. You will wake up with enthusiasm because you no longer want to waste time sleeping. You notice that there’s a lot of unhappy people who oversleep because they are thinking way too much about their worries, rather than what they can be doing in life! You are what you think about. So never let time pass you by because we only have on life to live and time will be gone. Utilize every moment that you have with an attitude that shines from inside out.

Photo Credit: shambhavi singh

Today I finished reading the book Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone. It was a very good and inspiring book. The main idea is that everybody has a “talisman” labeled PMA or NMA. It represents the attitude we have for creating our lives also known as our minds. And usually that attitude can be flipped either way: positive mental attitude (PMA) or negative mental attitude (NMA). Today I’ll talk about what negative mental attitude is.

NMA or negative mental attitude is going about everything in life expecting the worse to happen. It is easy to focus on the negative things in life rather than focusing on the positive things in life. Why?

It is human nature for each and every one of us to want what we don’t havesuch as:

• Wealth
• Happiness
• Relationship
• Friendship
• Dream House
• Dream Car
• Skinny
• Muscular
• Fame
• Confidence

These are just some of the things that people want but don’t have. Having a negative mental attitude then brings it one step further. People who always dwell in the misery will have a hard time bringing themselves out of their hole. In addition they find reasons for why they can’t achieve something that they can’t have and feel justified by it.

People who have negative mental attitude make it a habit using phrases such as:

• I can’t…
• It’s hard to do…
• It’s impossible…
• There’s no way…
• It’s his fault…
• It’s her fault…
• They need to change…
• I can’t change…
• Other people are gifted…
• I was born with this condition…

Now, these are people who have a negative mental attitude do not have the confidence in themselves to carry things out. Moreover, to survive in what they believe is a tough world; they usually put up defenses in order to get by other people.

• Sly
• Overaggressive
• Greed
• Selfishness
• Vain
• Immoral
• Stubborn
• Violent
• Hate
• Envious

Having a lack of confidence is one trait of having negative mental attitude. This is within oneself. And the things listed above bring the conditions to a whole other level, not only attracting negatively to oneself, but using it to give it to others, ultimately repelling success.

People who give off negative attitude to other people will sooner or later realize that it will come back to them in the future through one of the most powerful, negative emotions once can experience that eats you up from inside out – and that is guilt.

You can either bring success through a positive mental attitude, which comes from a more positive way of thinking and usually leads to happiness, or what might be considered a failure through a negative mental attitude, which develops from negative thinking and usually leads to destruction or disaster.

People with negative mental attitude will lose opportunities day in and day out because what is in front of them is what they see; they are blind to the fact that opportunities are not given to a person. Most of the times, opportunities are not “seen.” One creates an opportunity in his mind and it becomes an opportunity in real life.

So, take some time to reevaluate yourself right now. Pretend that you do hold an “invisible talisman” everywhere you go. It’s either on one side or the other side. Be conscious of yourself. Are you more optimistic or pessimistic? If you feel you are more pessimistic, it has to deal with your negative mental attitude and it’s never too late to change that into PMA or positive mental attitude, which I’ll talk more about tomorrow.

Photo Credit: wili hybrid

I’ve always been fascinated by extraordinary people, and what makes them who they are. Is it born talent? Is it innate ability? Is it pure genius? Is there something that separates world experts and geniuses from ordinary people, in which ordinary people cannot achieve no matter how hard they try?

A couple months ago, I went to the bookstore and there was a book that caught my eye, even though it was only in white cover with black font and a simple bronze star on the top right hand corner. It was the title, which you’ve may have heard before, called Outliers – The Story of Success – by Malcom Gladwell. Before falling asleep yesterday, the book was on my desk and I just flipped through it, rereading one of the most insightful chapters that I have come across in a while, called the 10,000 hour rule.

The chapter describes the journey process of how one becomes a world class expert. A world class expert can be generally defined as someone who is widely known for being the top of the class, for being the best, for being able to perform in ways that separates them for everybody else, especially at an age that no one expects them to.

For example, it talks about how there was study on comparing average violinist students, to good violinist students, to the best violinist students – students who had potential to be world-class soloists.

At the age of five, these students all practiced around 2 to 3 hours a week, about 20 to 30 minutes a day. At the age of eight, while the average to good students were still practicing at about the same pace, the best ones started to excel, playing at 6 hours a week by age nine, about 45 minutes a day. Then they started playing  8 hours a week by age twelve, about 1 hour a day, 16 hours a week by age fourteen, about 2 hours a day, and at the age of twenty, they were hitting 30 hours a week, about 4 hours a day, just on playing a musical instrument.

It goes on to talk about the Beatles, arguably one of the best rock bands in history. It tells the story about how, before they came to the United States that they had been already playing together for seven years. This was a period of time of where they started out as a high school band into a popular public band. But it all started out with a lucky opportunity through connections of random people that brought them from playing London to playing for the strips clubs of Germany.

For example, in Liverpool, London, the Beatles had only done 1 hour sessions for public, but in Hamburg, Germany, they had to play many times for 8 hours sessions, 7 nights a week. Usually, they played about 5 to 6 hours per night on stage everyday. Before even going to America, they had already performed lived about twelve hundred times – way more than many bands get to perform on stage in their entire careers.

The chapter talks about currently the wealthiest person on the planet today – Bill Gates. How he came to make a software program that almost every single person on the planet who owns a computer uses – Windows – isn’t a form of genius work, but of incredibly amount of work to getting to getting to that point.

Bill got the opportunity to use learn programming on a time-sharing computer system in 8th grade, something that most Americans did not even have access to at this time, which was around the late 1960’s, since it had just been invented.

During a seven month period as a high school student, Bill averaged eight hours a day and seven days a week in the computer room. All he did was program, program, and program; it was his obsession. He went there at night, he went there on the weekends, and at it would be a rare occasion where he and his friends did not program for 20 or 30 hours a week.

Between 8th grade and the end of his high school senior year, these 5 years, he experience with programming in a time-sharing terminal, he had experience working in C-Cubed offices, he had experience working at a computer center at the University of Washington for ISI (Information Sciences Inc.) working sometimes from 3 to 6 in the morning, and he had experience working for a technology company TRW as a programmer.

People who hear that anybody who purposely drops themselves out of Harvard is insane, but the people who make these kind of decisions know what exactly they’re doing. They know something that millions of people don’t know. By this time, when Bill dropped out as a Harvard as sophomore, he had already been programming nonstop for seven years. To say that he wasn’t confident to start his own software company from his lifetime passion, rather than studying more in school, would be something insane not to do for a person like him.

And what do the world’s best violinists, the Beatles, and Bill Gates have in common? Yes, they are the best at what they do, they are famous, and most of the times, they are wealthy, but for a reason. These people spend hours practicing, starting from a young age, and by the time they hit their early twenties, they have accumulated a period of practice time that most other people never even come close to – 10,000 hours.

This is the number that experts say it takes to reach true mastery. And all these people either took advantage of a lucky opportunity given to them at the time or created their own opportunity through endless practice – something that upon first glance no one would know until it they demonstrated their talents.

So what can the 10,000 rule teach us? It teaches us that if we want to be the best at something, at the top of our game, it’s not about special talent. It’s about putting in the hours and hours of practice until it is something that just becomes a part of us.

And even if we are at an age when we think it’s too late, it’s really never too late to learn something new or become extremely good at something. All of the people above started out taking about thirty minutes a day doing something, which increased to an hour a day, then two hours a day, and so forth.

From composers such as Mozart, to legendary chess players such as Bobby Fischer, these genius didn’t start out as genius. They took about 10 years of 10,000 hours to become who they are. Studies show that there’s no such evidence that ”genius” most of us think are born with magical, innate talent. They just practice much, much, much more than everybody else who’s doing the same thing.

An ordinary person may see an expert as somebody “out of reach”, but an expert sees an ordinary person, and knows exactly how much hard work they put into it to be where they are. So I guess the question is, everybody who wants to be “the best,” who wants to be a guru, a master, a expert, to be at the top, are they willing to seriously put in the commitment, the work, the training; all this to accumulate about 10,000 hours of practice to be at the top, to be the best, to be the next genius?

Photo Credit: liza31337

There will be days where you don’t want to do anything involving that dreaded four letter word – work. Whatever type of work you do in order to get to a specific goal you have in mind, sometimes we need that burst of energy to combat that “lazy,” “procrastinating,” “I-don’t-want-to-do-it” voice in our heads. Everybody goes through this; it’s common, but it’s important to understand how to quickly get yourself into gear so you are taking action.

One of the best ways is to motivate yourself. Here are ten effective methods you use whenever you feel like you need motivation.

Looking to the Future

Knowing what it is that you want in life gives you motivation. You should have a vision of yourideal life. Where you want to travel? Where do you want to live? You could be cruising on Yacht in one of the beautiful beaches of the world. You could be living in a mansion with a beautiful, loving spouse and kids playing around you. You could buy that dream car you’ve always wanted ever since a teenager. Make a collage and post it on the wall. Don’t be afraid to let other people see it if it’s something that motivates you to do your work. It’s for you, not for anybody else.

Going Outside and Run

Yes, run. It’s very healthy for you in fact. By running you’ll be stimulating blood to your brain and allowing more oxygen in your body, letting you think better. But the point is to get you away from all this swirling chatter going inside your mind at the moment and just enjoy whatever is going on outside. Maybe you can just jog around the neighborhood and see people watering the grass, kids playing outside, people talking and help each other, etc. There’s more to life than being stuck at work and sometimes getting your adrenaline running while seeing something else besides your work is a simple yet powerful source of motivation.

Getting Inspiration from Gurus

Everybody has role models. There are many inspiration people out there that have overcome feats in way worst situations than you. I mean Donald Trump is a good example. He was over 900 million dollar in debt at one point, but after ten years from that experience, somehow managed to pull himself out to become one of the wealthiest people on earth today. It may take some work to looking into their biography, but it’s worth it. Find out who inspires you that works in the same field you are in and read up on them. Post a picture of them on your wall and use their pathway to success to help you give you motivation whenever you are feeling down.

Just Taking Action

Believe it or not, some people think it’s ridiculous that one needs motivation to get to work. If you just take action, you might find that motivation will come to you when you are deeply in tuned with what you are doing. You will feel the momentum! An example might be turning something you hate doing and then diving straight into it and turning it into an obsession. And as you are taking action and “in the moment”, you may gradually be more aware of all the little things that you never noticed before, which might interest you, give you more motivation to dive deeper into your work, and perfect it.

Stimulating Pain

Some people can’t feel motivated if they don’t feel pain or a sense of desperation to do something. These would be times of need, when there is no other option but to work. This type of “urgency” gives a person a burst of energy to get things done. You can create pain by going back and remembering the painful consequences you had to deal with when you needed to get something done or if you don’t get something done such as getting yelled at by someone you’re afraid of or the feeling of living out in the streets and having no home.

I remember my freshman high school basketball coach was one of the scariest people on earth; every time he barked, we would listen. He turned what I thought was going to be a fun basketball experience into a physical living nightmare, but it motivated each of us to struggle, work, and fight for our lives, or we would be punished at even more and eventually be cut from the team. Sometimes discomfort may be the best motivators of all, since if we feel to comfortable with ourselves we lack discipline and don’t want to talk action at all.

Competition

Are you blood thirsty to be the best? Do you have that killer instinct to out compete your opponents? In every field of work, when more than one person is trying to achieve the same thing, there is always going to be competition no matter what. Some people are afraid of it, others use it to motivate them to become better and work harder. Maybe it’s time for you to be aware of who is your competition right now, the ones that you see and don’t see, and put it on your wall, so you know you’re objective is beat them, to get ahead, to win. Go into the “survival-of-the-fittest” mode and use that drive to make you take action whenever you think about competition.

Music

It’s a no brainer that music affects our mood. If you put on a blues song, you’ll feel sad. If you put on a jazz song, you will feel relaxed. If you put on pop song, you will feel happy. If you put on a motivational song, you will feel motivated. And how many songs are there like this that you can find? Millions. People have different preferences of songs that affect them; you just have to find a song that motivates you. Songs that have made me motivated usually have a fast beat. If you enjoy hip-hop, try listening to “Changes” by Tupac or “Opportunity” by Eminem.

Creating Laughter

Laugh your way to motivation. Life doesn’t always have to be serious, nor it does it always require a an awe-inspiring, perfectly crafted way to get motivation. Sometimes all you need is just a good laugh, shrug off your worries, and you’re good to go. Imagine something funny in the past that was so stupid that it made you laugh, or if your good at improv, take any current situation and turn it into something so ridiculously pointless that it makes you laugh as well. Use self-deprecation, act stupid, be an idiot for once, pretend your work is funny and just wants your attention, then make fun of both of you guys. Use humor; it’s a wonderful feeling.

Small Bits

One little, small, single, tiny… step goes a long way. When you feel you like you can’t even get yourself to get to work, just do one thing that can, even if it’s the littlest thing possible. Then, reward yourself every time you take small step. Give yourself a pat on the back. It’s supposed to be a psychological effect to trick you mind into thinking you’re doing more work than you actually are, but then end results are that you are already doing work so why not just go forth with it.

For example, I used to hate doing math homework in high school. Many times I’d procrastinate and put it off to the side. I found that if I just took the energy to just open my backpack and flip it to the page of my homework and just look at it for a few seconds; I knew I could at least do the first three problems. From there, I could do the next one, then the next one, and before I knew it, I would subconscious be in the process of doing my homework.

Knowing Why

Finally, do you know why you are working? Or are you just blindly working for no reason? We all do things for a reason and sometimes if you know exactly why you are doing what you do, it will be enough to motivate you. Maybe this beyond materialism, maybe it has to do with helping a love one, or getting yourself out of an ugly situation, or maybe it just has to do with personal growth. What is your purpose? Whatever it is, make sure your why is something that makes you desire it and motivates you whenever you think of it. This will help you take action.

What Motivates Me?

There isn’t one thing that specifically motivates me. I usually get motivated by random things that happen to be around me during that specific time. But the one thing that usually always help motivate me is knowing what is going to happen if I do something. What is going the outcome or the result of something. What is going to be inevitable.

For example, I know if I take the time to read a book I will educate myself and learn something new. Sometimes reading isn’t always fun, but I know it’s inevitable that I’ll at least get something out of it and that is enough to motivate me to take action. And if you keep doing something enough times, you know, what will be the result of not only for the short term but in the long term? Look ahead. I mean, sometimes motivation is necessary to give you that quick burst of energy but, ultimately you want to use it produce an inevitable outcome that you know will happen ahead of you. Don’t rely on needing motivation every single time just to get something done.

Find a way to make your work into a consistent habit and you’ll soon realize that you won’t need that much motivation to do something; you’ll motivation will die down but you’ll be able to do what you need to get done. That, in my opinion, should be the reason for motivation – not just having a “high” and forgetting about the next day, but using it a crutch to make your actions a consistent habit so you can always take action without always thinking, “I need motivation today in order to get to work.”

Photo Credit: OakleyOriginals

There are times where I do not want to write a blog or an article. I would rather just sit down in a chair and look at the clouds move, listen to the cars pass by, and let my thoughts take over, taking me wherever they happen to take me. Then as I’m thinking, a sudden moment strikes me.

I realize writing isn’t something that I can do whenever I want. If I want to get good at something and have an impact on other people lives, I must practice at it, I must continuously get better at it, I must stay committed to it.

Commitment isn’t something where you just wake up one day and say you’ll do it; it’s an understanding within yourself that even when you don’t feel like you want to go on, you end up doing it anyway.

In college, I was excited to join one of those “hardcore partying” fraternities. I moved in with someone I knew from high school that was already in a fraternity so I ended up pledging for it as well. What I had in mind was nothing I was expecting it to be.

I ended getting myself into a fraternity that emphasized on “brotherhood,” “friendship,” and “service.” It wasn’t a bad thing, but it sounded something more like economy club from high school. And in order to “cross” and become a member, you had to go through I think it was twenty plus hours of community service and five to six hours of meetings every Thursdays at 8PM along with a responsibility to suck up to the members above you.

At first I thought it was stupid. I remember doing essays at meetings right before the next day where they were due. I remember that these meetings would actually last up until 3 AM while we spent an hour discussing if girls should wear gold dresses or not for a skit we had to put on. I remember playing silly little games similar to Duck Duck Goose. I also remember doing community service that involved ten people to plant one tree. It was a bit ridiculous, as well very time consuming.

During this pledging period, I could have quit at any given time but I didn’t. It could have been because everybody around me was so passionate about finishing this pledging process together (a quarter of a year) or that I was so far into it that I was committed to finishing. But even during pointless times where I felt my time could have been spent somewhere else, I continued anyway. I don’t think a lot of people thought I was going to cross, but I did end up passing a test at end enabling me to become a so called “brother.” And even up until today, that fraternity process is something that I’ll never forget.

Take a look at what goals you currently have right now. Are you in “a process” right now as well? Or are you being indecisive and worrying about not finishing?

When you make the decision to be committed to something, it means that despite any situation, you’ll do whatever it takes to see that it is carried out until the very end.

Too many people make goals that they cannot commit to and up end up feeling angry at themselves or discouraged.

Remember, if you plan on committing to something, you are promising yourself that you are going to finish it and see the results that you have intended in the first place. Don’t start committing to something if you even the smallest doubt in your mind. It’s not worth it if you’re not serious about. I’m sorry to sound harsh here.

Anything in life is achievable. This does not mean however, that it’s going to be an easy task. If you want to achieve the impossible, an immense amount of commitment needs to be put in. It’s crazy to think that some people get pissed off when they set a near impossible goal and then end up failing to commit to them.

• I’m going to do whatever it takes to lose 20 pounds by the end of this week.
• I’m going to do whatever it takes to make a million dollars by 6 months.
• I’m going to do whatever it takes to find my soul mate in one year.

The truth is although it’s good to have big goals, it’s unrealistic to create goals that out of your commitment level. I know it can give you a brief spark of motivation to set big goals and say to yourself, “Man I’m going to do whatever it takes to finish this!”

But when you actually do it, not when starting out, not at the middle, but towards the very end, when everything just seems to crash down on you; you remember back when you said, “Man I’m going to do whatever it takes to finish this” and now it’s starting to turn into, “I can’t get this done; I just can’t get this done!”

Then the process of beating yourself up begins, whether this is feeling a sense of aggravation when time’s almost up or a feeling of failure because you didn’t complete what you assigned yourself to do.

I know this because in the beginning of the New Year, on New Year’s Day people make insane resolutions, but rarely do that every stay committed for 365 days until that reach that goal. Have you ever made a new year’s resolution but never finished it?

Sure we all have. I’ve been there and I know how good it is to start the new year fresh and make brand new goal for the year. I also know how it feels to be on New Year’s Eve and realize, “Wow it’s been a year and I have completed forgotten what my last year’s goal was… oh well let’s start a new one tomorrow.”

To cure this, don’t set what seems like impossible tasks for yourself if you have any doubts you can’t do it. Instead of trying to lose 20 pounds by the end of the week, starting a website and attracting 1000 daily visitors in a month, making a million dollars within a half a year, or finding your soul mate in one year, try doing things may seem extremely difficult, but you know that if you were to give it your all, you could commit to it.

• I’m going to do whatever it takes to lose at least 2 pounds by the end of this week.
• I’m going to do whatever it takes to make a million dollars in the next two years.
• I’m going to do whatever it takes to approach 100 new people that I am interested in, have a conversation with them, and see if any strong, intimate relationship comes out of itwithin one year.

These are all things that are difficult to do. They are challenging, but not out-of-reach impossible. They are simply doable if you make the serious decision to commit to them.

That’s kind of the point I’m trying to get across to in this post. Don’t set goals that are unrealistic that you will get bitter or discouraged over. You should have big dreams, you should have big goals that are challenging, ones that takes your current level of commitment and turns it into something that you’ve never experience before.

But realize that once you make a decision to be committed to something, there should be doubts; there should be no more worries, no more procrastination, temptation, debates, mind games, and options.

There should just be pure, focused action.

It’s time to think about this and reframe.

• What things do you have that are not finished?
• What “near impossible” things were you doing that you can make possible to finishing?
• What things do you have in the next week, month, year, and even two years do you want to accomplish?

When you have figured this out, ask yourself out loud, “Are you committed?” You may feel the need to repeat question ten times until you know inside that the answer is, “Yes I am!”

And when you have made the commitment; now it’s your responsibility to carry it out until the end despite whatever negative situation comes your way.

When you a commitment; there is no turning back my friend.

You’ve cross the bridge and now the bridge behind you has disappeared and turned into an empty gap above a bottomless pit. The only choice you have now is to move forward.

Photo Credit: Shlabotnik