Helping people achieve a balance between their work and personal lives has been a priority on Dave's list for many years. He has been able to help hundreds achieve that balance through his seminars and now he wants to help you through his BLOG; Articles and Books; all can be accessed at The First Step where you can also get his free e-book 'Creating Tomorrow's Reality Today'
Everyone suffers from low motivation and confidence from time to time, however what separates the successful from the not so successful is that successful people use simple techniques to lift their motivation and confidence levels.
So what are these techniques and how can you apply them to your situation to achieve your goals and gain self confidence?
Usually lack of motivation appears because you do not really know what you intend doing as far as your goal is concerned, so the first technique is to organise your efforts to keep you motivated.
Get out a pad of paper and write at the top where you want to end up as far as your goal is concerned. Let us say that you want to put a fish pond in your garden! Starting at the top of your sheet write something like:- 'I have built a fish pond fully stocked with fish and plants with a nice water feature in the form of a waterfall to keep the water fresh and oxygenated- these are your goals.'
Now instead of seeing that patch of grass and weeds see what you have just described on paper which goes a long way to removing your lack of motivation.
Then on your paper write down all the activities you carried out to have the pond looking exactly as you described on the pad. Notice that wording it is important, write out all the activities YOU CARRIED OUT, notice I did not say all the activities you need to carry out, Once you get your head around this and think in terms of writing things as though they were already achieved the task becomes easier to complete removing once and for all your lack of motivation.
Going back to our fish pond illustration simply write 'filled pond with fish (describe the fish if you want); switched on waterfall, purchased fish; bedded plants in; purchase aquatic plants; placed plastic pond liner, etc; so the skill is building your short term goals backwards from successful completion to start of task. There are more steps but this gives you the idea, at least now you have a PLAN OF ACTION made up of your short term goals.
The next stage is to look at each activity and determine a time scale you need to complete the task, be sensible and allow extra time in case you hit snags, it is a better motivator to be ahead of your plan instead of behind it because you were too ambitious in your time estimation. Falling behind your tasks leads quickly to more lack of motivation.
If you cannot complete the short term goal in one session you need to plan how many sessions are required and more importantly when you will schedule these sessions. For example I find I carry out mental tasks such as this article first thing in the morning when I am fresh and the house is quiet, you may find a different time of the day more suitable. I find early afternoon my time for lack of motivation, short term goals for the day keep me busy and the lack of motivation does not come into play.
Now that you have written everything out in as much detail as possible with enough time allowed to complete each task you can take action on step one. In case you have not worked it out this is called WORKING YOUR PLAN! You have lain out before you every step of the way and you know without doubt that the completion of each individual task is taking you closer to your overall goal - SUCCESS and total removal of your lack of motivation!
Try to complete as many of your individual tasks one after the other in the same day if possible, this increase your sense of achievement and your motivation. Why? Simply because the busier you are the more progress you will make and the more progress you make towards your goal the more motivated you are to achieve it.
You will recall that I tried to get you to write out the tasks you completed on your way to achieving your overall goal and setting realistic time frames so you knew you could achieve each one possible with time left over.
The reason I asked you to do this and do it with as much detail as possible is that this exercise is simply setting short term goals. One simple method of curing procrastination and low motivation is to set short term goals that can be quickly achieved.
It is amazing how little effort appears to be required in short term goal achievement as you achieve and tick off each one on the way to your main goal, goodbye lack of motivation.
there is little repetitive work in building a fish pond but other goals could entail a great deal of repetition. So listen to the next bit very carefully, if you have a number of repetitive tasks to carry out try to intersperse them with another task to maintain your interest. Doing the same task over and over can lead to boredom and boredom kills goal achievement and self motivation.
One of the most important short term goals that you can set your self is rest time. In fact I would go as far to say that unless you schedule enough relaxation time when you are not carrying out some short term goal task you will not achieve your main goal. Do not allow yourself to become weary or you will lose focus and drift off your track toward non-achievement. As a senior sales manager I used to ensure that my team blocked out all of their non-selling time in their diaries BEFORE starting to make appointments!
This is called work life balance today, in my day it was called common sense!
You need to re-energise your batteries when you do focus and achievement follow close behind leaving lack of motivation far behind you.
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