What is your Motivation?
There are times when people ask me about motivation and what drives me on to achieve the things I want to do. The thing is, I could tell you, but it would probably not resonate with you. Everyone is different and what motivates me won’t necessarily motivate you, even if our goals are similar. So you have to ask yourself…..”what are my goals?, what do I want to achieve? and how can I realise them?”
However, many people have dreams but few realise them and there are a variety of reasons and I find a lot of them are to do with fear.
Fear
Fear of failure, fear of losing friends, fear of success (after all success might be an unknown to you and mean the people you know and care about may resent the fact) and even fear of fear! Fear is a big driver on holding people back and even though this is about motivation, fear can stifle you dreams if you let it.
But wait, many people don’t realise than fear is just an emotion, a feeling, just as happiness is and sadness and anger. My point is is that fear cannot hurt you! in fact motivation is a big factor in overcoming your fear! the bigger the motivation the bigger the chance that despite feeling fear, you will do it anyway.
Motivation
Another reason for a lack of motivation is the result of your individual programming and who you associate with! Surrounding yourself with the right people has a massive influence on success. If you want to do something and everyone around you is telling you that you can’t, what do you think you will want to do? On the flip side, if everyone around you is full of encouragement, where do you think that could lead??
Two Motivation Types?
The other point on motivation is that there are two types. Internal and external.
External motivation is provided by other people giving inspirational speeches or talks, or a training partner or coach encouraging you to push hard to achieve your desired results. This is great to give you a kick start, but I am sure you have experienced that once you finish training or come away from a motivational talk, your motivation and desire can fade. Now I am not saying that it is pointless, it is far from it but after a while your inner voice will then fall back into how it is programmed and will start finding every reason why not to do something and encourage you to do what you have always done.
This is why you have to reinforce your desires through Internal Motivation!
I have mentioned on here before about your inner voice, your subconscious, which takes in every bit of information from around you, what you say and how you say it , what you listen to and see on the tv, what other people are saying and even what you are reading. It is like food for the brain and like food you can consume good stuff that keeps you healthy and Junk that makes you feel crap.
Because of that it is very easily to fall into a habit of capitulation that your inner voice will reinforce, just as you have programmed it to do.
Change your habits
The good news is that you can change the way you think to help sustain your motivation and to get exactly where you want to go. Change they way you speak, use more positive words, “keep going” is way more positive than “don’t stop”. Even though they are taken as meaning the same thing, one is a negative sentence and one is positive and your brain will read it as such.
Use positive affirmations about yourself, tell yourself how great you feel, how great you are. You may not beleive it, but your inner voice doesn’t judge and just accepts it! Pretty soon you will be able to change you old habits to new good habits that with push your motivation through the roof!
Make sure you are hanging around and talking to more like minded people more often, than comes under external motivation, but both internal and external go hand in hand to get you where you want to be.
Visualisation
One final technique is through the use of visualisation. Thinking about what you want achieve isn’t enough, but by using visualisation you think about it, but to the point that you see every detail of where you want to be, how it sounds, smells, looks like and how it feels. The more information you can use the more believable it is, especially to your brain.
Motivation is a great thing, DO NOT let yourself keep your dreams as dreams, REALISE THEM. Make it happen, find like minded people, Bin the media (TV and newspapers), read inspiring books by inspiring people, think positively and talk to yourself in positive way regardless whether you believe it and just see what happens!
I have added some links to some books I recommend on motivation from amazon…..
Take your life and move it forwards.
Take care
Dean
Bad Training Days
Having an Off day?
I am sure everybody has gone through this, you get all fired up for a training session, got a real good feeling, get to the gym and it just doesn’t go right for you, in fact nothing went right!
What do you do when a session hasn’t gone as planned, in fact what if it sucked?
Do you:
- Go in a strop for the rest of the day?
- Let it affect your next session by not doing that exercise again?
- Stop training for a while?
- Never train again?
If the answer is yes to any of the above questions then you need change how you think and soon.
Some of the above might sound a bit extreme to some of you, but I have actually seen it happen with some people!
Bashing yourself up about it ain’t the way to go. It can lead to all kinds of negativity and self doubt, eventually leading to stopping doing things altogether.
Back in the saddle
The first thing you must do is don’t get so wrapped up in it. If the session was crap, then deal with it and move on. Use it to push yourself the next time, do not over analysis it and continually question, this is the path to self doubt, so that the next time you are at the gym you will be thinking about how you couldn’t lift a particular weight and it will have an adverse affect.
I deal with it by getting mad with myself for losing the battle and making damn sure next time that I win it, whether it is with the iron or with a conditioning drill. Whatever it is will be destroyed the next time.
Injury & Illness
Of course there are times when there will be other situations, such as if you get injured or if there is something underlying like a bug which doesn’t allow you to perform at the level that you are used to. In these cases, each issue should be assessed on its own merits, however these are only lapses, don’t allow them to manifest into weeks off the gym (unless of course it is serious!).
Journal it!
Of course the only way to remember what didn’t go right is to keep a training journal. Sometimes reflecting back over the previous week provides an answer to what happened, but at the very least, it gives you that target that you will be gunning for.
Get mad and annihilate it!
Internal Chatter – Positive Self Talk
Positive Thoughts
You know the feeling, The alarm goes off for work on a dark morning and you just want to turn over and go back to sleep. Or you are running and you are struggling to keep going and something is saying “just stop, it’s alright, just walk for a bit”. Or you are in the gym, you are lifting heavy, and something in your head is saying “that’s enough, don’t need to train anymore, you are gonna drop that”.
Inner Voice
That something is your inner voice, your subconscious mind trying to stop you to achieve. All too often in this day and age people just accept and listen to this voice and do what it says!
Why?? Quite often ignorance, not actually realising it is a voice inside your head that has been programmed by you, Yes YOU!
You see, your inner voice listens to everything, it never switches off. So if you are a negative person or even just someone who always gives in or keep themselves down, your inner voice will tell you to do just that, it becomes programmed by yourself to be negative and uses every opportunity to tell you.
Be Positive
This is where positive self talk comes in. Because your subconscious listens unconditionally, feed it positive things, you don’t even need to believe it, your inner voice doesn’t judge what you are saying, it just accepts it and over time you can condition the mind and it’s responses to positive messages that will actually help you. DO NOT make the mistake of feeding your mind with negative information, be conscious of what you are feeding it, whether it be your thoughts, what you watch on the television, what you listen to on the radio, even what you read. Take positive action!
Of course this is only one facet, you need to do this in all areas of your life, having positive affirmations coming out of your head when you are hill sprinting for example, may not happen when you are lifting. The stimulus is different.
A few years back I did a few ½ marathons. I am a big believer in being prepared so I built up to run more than the distance and did speed training round the track. Every time I ran I used to chant a positive affirmation consciously. This had the effect of training my mind and blocking out the negative chatter from my inner voice. It was something like “I am fit, I am fast, I am relaxed, I am strong”. Notice how they are positive statements?
Over and over I did it. To the point now, that when I struggling, more times than not it is my inner voice telling me to keep going.
Positive Words
One thing you must must remember to do is use positive words. Phrases like “don’t quit” or “don’t give up” are negative words, it enforces the opposite of what you are trying to achieve. A phrase like “always keep going” is always going to be better, because it is a positive phrase.
Next time you catch your self saying, “I could never do that”, stop, all you are doing is creating a self fulfilling prophecy, you are training your mind to believe that phrase!
No matter what you think, make sure it is positive. And remember the great thing is, you don’t necessarily have to believe what you are saying to yourself, all you have to do is enforce it by changing the way you talk to yourself and what you ingest through your eyes and ears.
Make sure it is POSITIVE!
Stay strong
Dean
