How Do You Motivate Yourself?

by Charles Friedo Frize
(Manchester,England)

You Can Do Anything You Put Your Mind To

"Motivation will almost always beat mere talent."
- Norman Augustine

I greatly believe Augustine's words are true and if you delve into history, you will find it the same. The world is filled with amazing people and talents who realize only a tiny percentage of their potential. We all know people who we can point to.

We are also very familiar with those stories, the modern day folklore surrounding the early failures of such supremely successful individuals as Bill Gates and Michael Jordan.

We can go a bit further back in time to Albert Einstein, Marconi, Sir Edmund Hillary, the Wright brothers, or even further back to Abraham Lincoln. What made each of these people successful? Motivation.

We know this in our gut, but what can we do about it? How can we motivate ourselves? One of the most difficult aspects of achieving success is staying motivated over a sustained period.

Motivation is not an accident or something that someone else can give you or handover to - you are the only one with the power to motivate you.

Motivation can not be an external force, it must come from within as the natural consequence of your desire to achieve something and your belief that you are capable to succeed at your goal.

Positive pleasure-oriented goals are much more powerful motivators than negative fear-based ones. Although each is successful independently, the precise combination of both is the most powerful motivational force known to mankind.

Here are a few tips and methods for motivating yourself:

Use a past defeat as a motivator. Remind yourself you have nowhere to go but up as you have already been at the bottom.

Give yourself the power of responsibility. Remind yourself the only thing stopping you is yourself.

Create a list of your achievements toward your long-term goal and remind yourself that intentions don't count, only actions do.

Do it today. Remind yourself of someone you know who died suddenly and the fact that there is no guarantee that tomorrow will come.

Permit success to motivate you. Get hold of a picture of what epitomizes success to you and then pull it out when you are in need of motivation.

Reflect and experiment until you find the right combination of motivators for your personality and your personal goals.

I will leave you with this final motivating quote:

"What drives me? The thing that drives me most is the desire to find my limits - and extend them." - Richard Marcinko

Now get out there and push your own limits and succeed!