Motivation
3 Rules To Kill Procrastination and Give Life To Action
Motivation is the ability to act to achieve your goal.
Successful people have the ability to motivate themselves, but why can they motivate themselves in one area of their life, but can’t motivate themselves in other areas?
Is there a secret set of rules for motivation?
I was recently working with a client who was highly motivated and successful in his career; he would happily sell himself during a job interview, he was motivated to meet deadlines and enthused to make everything he did count, but unmotivated when it came to his health. He wouldn’t exercise, diet or drink enough water, even though his goal was to lose weight!!
What is the secret to motivation? How do you motivate yourself to take action, to be more successful and to keep going when the going gets tough?
These 3 rules for motivation will change the way you approach task and goals, creating instant motivation that will kill Mr. Procrastination and bring alive Mr. Action:
Rule #1: Win the fight – Mr. Procrastination vs Mr. Action
We live each day with 2 invisible buddies, Mr. Procrastination and Mr. Action. These twin brothers have the power to motivate or demotivate you, but with great power comes great reasonability. The only weakness Mr. Procrastination and Mr. Action both possess is that only one can be in the room at the same time. The room of course is in your head! In the fight to get into the brain-room, how is the winner chosen? The winner is chosen by what you focus on
“I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become”. – Oprah Winfrey
In work, my client would focus on the challenge of the task, the enjoyment of the outcome of his project, the ability to use his skills and knowledge to make a difference to the business. He would also focus on building his career reputation as a professional problem solver
Rarely did he think about potential mistakes, getting it wrong or what others may say about his work. This is Mr. Action at his best – think positive and create action
When thinking about dieting the clients focus changed. Instead of thinking about the challenge of dieting, the enjoyment of the outcome of his new health regime, his health, fitness and longer life, he would instead think about the negatives.
Mr Procrastination relishes the negative thoughts. My client couldn’t take action as his focus was on the pain of dieting; being hungry, not enjoying soggy old lettuce and the bland boring taste from a cold weltering salad dish.
Rule 1: Change Your Focus To Win The Motivational Fight
Rule #2: Make Mr. procrastination work for you
Mr. Procrastination isn’t evil. He is a superhero or protector, keeping you away from danger. He can predict future problems, potential pain and hard work. This foresight stops you taking action on something that you wouldn’t, in the short term, enjoy. Procrastinations kryptonite is his attention to detail. Once focused, Mr. Procrastination can’t let go. One problem leads to another. Pain equals more pain. Once caught in Procrastinations trap, it’s hard to escape.
“Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is nightmare”. – Japanese Proverb
All superheroes carry out their duties for the better good. Whisper in Procrastinations ear and he will work for you. When you want to diet, focus on what problems you will have if you don’t diet and allow Mr. Procrastination to get carried away with himself; bad diet = bad health, bad health= clogged arteries, clogged arteries = heart attack…
Rule 2: Focus on The Pain of Not Taking Action To take Action
Rule #3: Mr. Action always chases the carrot
Procrastination gets your engines running. We are highly motivated to get away from pain. Imagine this scenario; You have recently been diagnosed with a curable illness, you simply need to choose which medication to take. The doctor explains that medicine one has a 65% success rate with few side effects and medicine two has a 35% failure rate with few side effects. Which would you choose?
Most people would choose medicine one with a 65% success rate, even though the odds for both of the medicines success rate are the same, because we are more motivated to move away from pain.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”. – Mahatma Gandhi
Pleasure is also motivational – the donkey will chase the carrot. Mr. action thrives when chasing his carrot, creating lots of motivation for you to take action.
Mr. action will motivate you by getting you to focus on the outcome(s) of taking action. My Clients Mr. Action told him “When you eat salad and exercise you will feel good about yourself; your own self worth will increase, you will perceive that others will find you more attractive and research shows that attractiveness plays on unconscious part in the success of a job interview outcome, which can only help your career…”
Rule 3: The More Pleasure You Associate to Your Goal The More Mr. action Will Kick In
My client already had a strategy for success. He simply needed to use his career success formula – focusing on the pleasure of completing task and the pain of not taking action, with dieting by focusing on the positives of exercise and good food (becoming more healthy, living longer) and the pain of eating takeaways (being unhealthy and dying at an early age).
When you feel stuck, change your focus and follow the 3 rules for motivation. Think of the pain of not completing the steps towards your goal and pleasure of achieving your outcomes and let Mr. Procrastination and Mr. Action work for you, rather than against you.
Thank you for reading my article! I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below!
Did you know that more than 57% of Americans hit the snooze button? That adds up to 3.5 months of our lives just snoozing! Why would we waste time snoozing when the intention is to actually get up to get things done? Is it laziness, a lack of discipline, motivation, or commitment? It doesn’t actually matter.
The fact is, you can’t be as productive as you want when you are getting out of bed late! That is the obvious part. The not so obvious part is how to actually get of bed, when every part of you is screaming to sleep a bit longer. Let’s create a bit of pain first, because I’m assuming you actually don’t see the downsides to snoozing, or you are being ignorant and ignorance will never get you the results you want.
Sabotaging Success
Did you know that every time you set yourself an intention to wake up early and you don’t follow through with it, you dramatically lower your confidence and belief in yourself? Your word to yourself start to mean less and less. You can say to yourself, I will do this, but you know you probably won’t.
Nothing will sabotage your success more than losing faith in your own word. You need confidence to get results in life! Are you somebody who follows through with their word or not? You either are or you aren’t.
The second consequence, is that you are losing income and awesome results you could be having sooner. Why choose the easier things now and have a harder life later on, when you can choose the harder things now and have an easier life later on? Don’t settle in life, this will never ever fulfill you.
4 Hacks to get out of bed when that alarm goes off:
1. Don’t negotiate with your brain
If you start negotiating with your brain, you will always lose. So don’t go there, don’t even start that conversation in your mind! If you have decided to get out of bed, then do it, follow through with your word. Why change your mind in the morning?
The ‘pleasure seeking’ part of your brain is always on automatic and it’s so strong, your ‘pre-fontal’ cortex doesn’t have much chance of winning this battle when you are half asleep in bed. Once you are out of bed, habit stack. It’s the 5 second rule – you are up already – don’t you dare go back. Do exactly what you would do habitually. Do you go straight for the shower or do you get a glass of lemon juice? Know what you are going to do already to take any thinking out of it!
“Lose an hour in the morning and you will spend all day looking for it.” – Richard Whately
2. Look at your identity
You behave according to what you believe. You believe what you repeat. Look at your own language, what do you say to yourself about getting up? Do you say things like; “It’s so hard to get out of bed in the morning” or “I’ve never been a morning person.” What you say becomes your reality of yourself and either motivates or demotivates you.
What you want to be saying to yourself is: “Just get out of bed. It’s easy, just get up. I can do this because I want to, I decide and control my actions. I am in control.” I can almost guarantee, if you struggle to get up when your alarm goes off, there is a part of your identity that believes this is who you are. If you change how you talk to yourself, about who you are, and tell yourself you can do anything, because you said so, your actions will be completely different.
3. Leaping out of bed
Unless I have a very compelling reason, I know it would be hard to get out of bed. We need to use our minds to motivate us into action, and the best way to do this, is to get excited the day before. Write down at least 5 reasons on a piece of paper; list why you want to leap out of bed tomorrow. This can take 2 minutes! The next morning, when your alarm goes off, look at that piece of paper, immediately so you know what awaits you and get up.
4. Use accountability and peer pressure
Create a game with your friends, family members, coach, colleagues, or business partner, I don’t care who it is, as long as you know that person will hold you accountable. Have fun with it, take a picture fully dressed and showered and send to your accountability partner, or call a ‘penalty’ if you don’t, like taking your friend out for dinner or spouse every time you sleep in. Get creative and use your support system. The point is, it doesn’t matter what system you set up, how crazy it might seem, what matters is if it works!
Remember, you don’t need to make big changes from the outset, if you feel like an hour or 30 minute change is too much, start with 5 minutes earlier each day or 10 minutes earlier each week. You must be getting enough sleep and not over sleeping either. You have one life and if you are a business owner, I know you are missing out on results and lowering your confidence indirectly too.
“Life is getting up an hour early to live an hour more.”
You can have the best intentions to get up earlier every day, but if you let that snooze button control you, you will never follow through with your intentions or get your results! It is the small changes that can give us the biggest results. Try one these hacks to finally get out of that bed in the morning and finally take back your time! Don’t allow it to be more powerful than you.
If you are not finding challenges that knock you flat on your back then you are missing out. A darker side of success that some have touched on is that you need to fail more. In addition to this, we should consider finding the challenges that punch us in the mouth and knock us unconscious.
The easiest place to be in life is one of comfort and knowing what tomorrow will bring. This brings little growth and requires very little effort because it’s safe. However, if we look at our role models who have done great things, then we will surely see that they have failed spectacularly.
Michael Jordan locked himself in his room and cried after he didn’t make his varsity basketball team as a sophomore. Walt Disney’s second business that failed miserably was called Laugh-O-Gram. JK Rowling was rejected by 12 literary publishers before she found any success.
Most likely you can think of some challenges that you rose up to beat in your own life. I would venture to say that the most difficult challenges that meant the most to you knocked you on your back right before you conquered them.
“Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache, carries with it the Seed of an equivalent or greater Benefit.” – Napoleon Hill
These obstacles are there for a reason. They are an important part of the puzzle for you. So if you find yourself in a place where you feel stuck or overwhelmed by a burden that seems insurmountable then this is a very good thing.
Life gives you everything you need
Life will give us everything we need, including the message that you have to get back up and go back at it with more determination, more will, and more fight than what you had before. Sometimes the moment we are down and out is the moment we have to regroup, reorganize, and come up with a new strategy to overcome those impending obstacles.
The reason the challenge knocks us down is because we need it. Just like an ocean wave knocks down an inexperienced surfer, it’s just a sign that the young surfer has to grow and become better.
Just like a surfer, the same is true for you and wherever you are at now. You have faced many things in your life which force you to become stronger for what is now in front of you.
However, what is most important in all this is having a challenge that can move you. For the surfer, the thrill of riding that perfect wave is worth the cost of getting beaten down by ocean waves again and again. For the man creating a business and putting his heart and soul into it, the reward of being a success and changing lives is worth battling each and everyday to get his enterprise up and off the ground.
For the woman who runs a marathon, the thrill of running across the finish line and having that experience was worth all the training and the grueling exhaustion she had to endure so that she could get to that point.
These experiences are the ones that can move you, but if your goal can have such a positive affect on you, then it can also have a dramatically negative affect as well. This is why you need challenges that can break you.
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” – J. K. Rowling
Why you need failure
The surfer is devastated after breaking his arm and having to spend time away from his passion, but after his recovery he is reinvigorated. The business fails and the man is crushed, but he comes back stronger and more experienced with another business. The runner fails at finishing her marathon, but trains harder and comes back even better.
For this reason, failure is only feedback and something to be used as a positive for getting to where you want to go. If you get knocked down you might just need to rest and try again. Or it could mean that you should go get some help and try again.
Remember, failure isn’t final and success within failure is having the opportunity to try again.
You should only be alarmed when you have failed challenges that aren’t breaking you. This means that you are playing it safe and need something more compelling to propel you forward.
If the challenge breaks you then you know it means something to you. Even more importantly, you have the opportunity to go again, harder and even more determined.
How do you handle failure? Let us know in the comments below!
We all go through tough times.
A few examples of mine are:
- Multiple consecutive breakups
- Walking away from a business that could have made me a lot of money
- Having my career come to a grinding halt
- Dealing with mental illness
The list is very long and I’m sure yours is similar. It’s not about the tough times we go through though because they are guaranteed and you already knew that before you clicked this article.
What matters during tough times is what you tell yourself.
This is what I say to myself during tough times — well there’s actually four things I say to myself depending on the tough time I’m facing:
“This will pass”
No event in your life lasts forever. Today may be a really tough day, but that won’t last forever. We delude ourselves at times by saying in our head “I’m always going to be like this.”
“Why does this always happen to me?”
“Here we go again.”
These negative phrases tell our brain that things are never going to get better. When we say these phrases to ourselves enough, we start to believe them. During a difficult period in your life, in that moment, things will suck.
The way to get out of your head is to see the truth: this will pass. In one day, one month, or one year this tough situation will have passed and you’ll be onto the next part of your life.
Nothing lasts forever unless you allow your mind to trap you in the moment and believe a lie which is that this moment won’t pass. It will. You will come out the other side.
“I’ll be stronger having dealt with this situation”
When you reframe your tough times into strength building exercises, they take a whole new meaning.
All of a sudden, your current situation that may be wearing you down becomes like reps at the gym. The reps are a struggle and it hurts, but if you keep moving forward, you end up with mental toughness and strength.
“Exchange your tough times for mental toughness”
See this challenging situation for what it is. It’s the chance to come out the other end stronger.
Stack your tough times up like gold medals.
Have you dealt with cancer? Good, then you won’t take your health for granted ever again.
Have you lost a loved one? Then you’ll never take the rest of your family for granted and care for them more than you did before.
Did you lose your job? Amazing! Now you can work somewhere else and discover more of your hidden talents!
Without tough times, you won’t have the strategies you need to deal with the impossible. Your heroes are your heroes because they’ve used their tough times to become stronger.
Failure and rejection are the building blocks to whatever your definition of success is. Tough times make you hungryand that’s a good thing.
“Keep taking baby steps forward”
Tough times can feel like quicksand sometimes.
If you don’t keep moving forward though, you’ll eventually sink into the quicksand. The best thing you can do during the toughest of challenges is take baby steps.
When I battled severe anxiety, I took baby steps such as these:
- Walked 15 minutes a day
- Drank an extra glass of water each day to hydrate my body
- Read one book a month on anxiety
- Exposed myself to one small fear each day. It started with going two levels in a lift (something I couldn’t do before). Then I’d go three levels the next day and so on.
That last dot point is critical. Overcoming tough times requires you to take baby steps in the form of being uncomfortable. When you’re growing each day, you don’t have time to be too concerned about a particular tough time.
My battle with anxiety eventually led me to flying long distances (another thing I couldn’t do before) and then speaking on stages in front of a lot of people.
As you can see, the first few steps — like going two floors in a lift — are quite small. Then the steps get bigger and bigger until what used to seem impossible becomes a piece of cake.
Take baby steps.
“It only takes one person”
Tough times often require someone to believe in you. From my experience, you only need one person.
One person to believe in your idea.
One person to love you.
One person who has gone through the same tough times as you.
This one person exists. You have to go out there and find them. That one person for me was a team leader when I was working in a call center. He believed in me enough to take me aside and coach me one on one.
He believed I was going to go on and change the world through personal development. He was right and I did!
Don’t give up. Your one person exists as well.
<<<>>>
These four things are what I tell myself during a tough time. One of these phrases will always be the right one depending on the circumstance.
Believe that there is a way out and you’ll find one. It’s during the tough times that you’ll develop the skills and experience to help others.
What I’ve learned is that to get through the tough times, one of the best hacks is to focus on helping others. When you’re focusing on how you can serve, your own selfish problems become insignificant.
Seek out people who have even bigger problems than you do and listen to them. See if you can help them.
That’s how you deal with the tough times.
Tell yourself the truth. You deserve to hear it.
If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
I was sitting down last week with a friend for lemongrass and ginger teas — because that’s how we roll in Melbourne.
My friend was telling me his recent life challenges and why he’d stopped replying to everybody’s messages.
I’ll get to the point: he’d got stuck in the daily grind.
Your life is not this:
- Wake up
- Eat breakfast
- Go to work
- Have lunch
- Come home
- Ask your partner how their day was
- Play with kids (if you have them)
- Look forward to the weekend
- Go to bed
- Rinse and repeat
If this is how your life is, chances are you’re going to have challenges. Not because these daily activities are a problem but because there’s so much more to life.
When every day is the same, and you don’t know why, you become lost.
What do I mean by lost?
You go back to old ways. In my friend’s case, his mental health issues kicked in again. He started feeling sorry for himself. He lost his way.
For me, getting lost looks like going back to a state of negativity. A state where the world is against me and everything feels impossible.
Your life can be different if you choose it to be.
This is not hyperbole. Your life can be different.
How?
By not getting stuck in the daily grind. The way you do this is by being present. Noticing right now instead of looking down at your phone.
You can also break your routine. Don’t do the same thing every day. Add some small twists and turns to how you do things.
Your life doesn’t have to be boring and full of routines. Habits are good to have as long as they don’t become 99.9% of your day. Having nothing but habits takes the variety out of your day.
You end up thinking the same way day in and day out. This stops you from seeing the endless opportunities that are available to you if you can only see them.
There has to be meaning.
No matter how big or how small, meaning gives you a reason to wake up outside of just following some pre-defined routine.
My friend that was going through issues last week didn’t have a meaning. He’d forgotten why he came to work. To shake up his reality, I told him about the day before where I’d volunteered at the local homeless shelter.
He asked me why I did it.
I told him “It gets you out of your head. It makes you think and feel completely different. You stop feeling sorry for yourself. It reminds you of what it’s like to have a meaning.”
We make the mistake of thinking everyone’s life is perfect except ours.
“I get this all the time. People think I live some rockstar blogging lifestyle full of free lunches, endless high-fives, smiles and opportunities. The reality couldn’t be further from this fake idea”
I have the same battles and challenges.
I get stuck in routines too.
I sometimes chase productivity over meaning as well.
No one has a straight flush of perfect days where all their hopes and dreams come true. Rejection, punches to the face, and disappointment affect us all.
The way you choose the good life is to acknowledge and push through the difficult parts of life.
As hard as I try, some days just suck. Some days I don’t feel like writing or my career is in the dumps.
The only difference is what you choose.
For me, I choose to keep moving forward. I choose optimism even when nothing makes sense and all the chips are stacked against me.
There’s no secret hack other than choosing to not settle for a life of routine and one that contains no variety.
You get to make that choice. That’s the difference.
The life you want is your choice. It’s not made for you.
Choose to change things up.
<<<>>>
If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
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How You Can Effectively Achieve Your Goals by Using the Puzzle Analogy
I was building a 500 piece puzzle the other day with many tiny little pieces. When I opened the box, I was completely overwhelmed. There were so many pieces and many of them were very similar in color. I took a breath and thought “just do one piece at a time”. I knew that I had to come up with a plan and organize the pieces into groups before I got started. This helped me to focus and take away some of the overwhelming feelings that were coming up. I came up with a plan and executed that plan. (more…)
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Great analysis of Mr. Procrastination Chris – especially Rule #2! This guy often gets such a bad rap that we miss the point. Your statement “Mr. Procrastination isn’t evil” is important. In fact as you point out he’s a great diagnostic tool for the areas where our insecurities and fears lie. When we look him in the eye and say “I see you” his power to limit and disrupt is greatly diminished 🙂
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Thanks for these powerful tips, they are very true! Another way to put it, is to look at the “Opportunity Cost” of doing or not doing. Bravo!
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First – Thanks for the tips that you have mention, really helpful!
How I Motivate Myself? – Just think “Why you have started working on”Cheers! Nice!
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HI Esther
Thats a great frame – often with clients I ask a similar question and get the client to write a list of what it will cost if they do not take action. This technique increases motivation
Chris
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HI Esther
Thats a great frame – often with clients I ask a similar question and get the client to write a list of what it will cost if they do not take action. This allows them of really focus on the outcome of not taking action creating high levels of motivation
Chris
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Hi Chris,
I love how you shift the general focus by suggesting “ focusing on the pleasure of completing task and the pain of not taking action “ It is really powerful.
Another way to put it could be “What does it cost me if I do not do it?”
Thank you,
Esther
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Great tips for motivation! Your entertaining approach with superheroes really kept my attention. Nice work!
Did you know that more than 57% of Americans hit the snooze button? That adds up to 3.5 months of our lives just snoozing! Why would we waste time snoozing when the intention is to actually get up to get things done? Is it laziness, a lack of discipline, motivation, or commitment? It doesn’t actually matter.
The fact is, you can’t be as productive as you want when you are getting out of bed late! That is the obvious part. The not so obvious part is how to actually get of bed, when every part of you is screaming to sleep a bit longer. Let’s create a bit of pain first, because I’m assuming you actually don’t see the downsides to snoozing, or you are being ignorant and ignorance will never get you the results you want.
Sabotaging Success
Did you know that every time you set yourself an intention to wake up early and you don’t follow through with it, you dramatically lower your confidence and belief in yourself? Your word to yourself start to mean less and less. You can say to yourself, I will do this, but you know you probably won’t.
Nothing will sabotage your success more than losing faith in your own word. You need confidence to get results in life! Are you somebody who follows through with their word or not? You either are or you aren’t.
The second consequence, is that you are losing income and awesome results you could be having sooner. Why choose the easier things now and have a harder life later on, when you can choose the harder things now and have an easier life later on? Don’t settle in life, this will never ever fulfill you.
4 Hacks to get out of bed when that alarm goes off:
1. Don’t negotiate with your brain
If you start negotiating with your brain, you will always lose. So don’t go there, don’t even start that conversation in your mind! If you have decided to get out of bed, then do it, follow through with your word. Why change your mind in the morning?
The ‘pleasure seeking’ part of your brain is always on automatic and it’s so strong, your ‘pre-fontal’ cortex doesn’t have much chance of winning this battle when you are half asleep in bed. Once you are out of bed, habit stack. It’s the 5 second rule – you are up already – don’t you dare go back. Do exactly what you would do habitually. Do you go straight for the shower or do you get a glass of lemon juice? Know what you are going to do already to take any thinking out of it!
“Lose an hour in the morning and you will spend all day looking for it.” – Richard Whately
2. Look at your identity
You behave according to what you believe. You believe what you repeat. Look at your own language, what do you say to yourself about getting up? Do you say things like; “It’s so hard to get out of bed in the morning” or “I’ve never been a morning person.” What you say becomes your reality of yourself and either motivates or demotivates you.
What you want to be saying to yourself is: “Just get out of bed. It’s easy, just get up. I can do this because I want to, I decide and control my actions. I am in control.” I can almost guarantee, if you struggle to get up when your alarm goes off, there is a part of your identity that believes this is who you are. If you change how you talk to yourself, about who you are, and tell yourself you can do anything, because you said so, your actions will be completely different.
3. Leaping out of bed
Unless I have a very compelling reason, I know it would be hard to get out of bed. We need to use our minds to motivate us into action, and the best way to do this, is to get excited the day before. Write down at least 5 reasons on a piece of paper; list why you want to leap out of bed tomorrow. This can take 2 minutes! The next morning, when your alarm goes off, look at that piece of paper, immediately so you know what awaits you and get up.
4. Use accountability and peer pressure
Create a game with your friends, family members, coach, colleagues, or business partner, I don’t care who it is, as long as you know that person will hold you accountable. Have fun with it, take a picture fully dressed and showered and send to your accountability partner, or call a ‘penalty’ if you don’t, like taking your friend out for dinner or spouse every time you sleep in. Get creative and use your support system. The point is, it doesn’t matter what system you set up, how crazy it might seem, what matters is if it works!
Remember, you don’t need to make big changes from the outset, if you feel like an hour or 30 minute change is too much, start with 5 minutes earlier each day or 10 minutes earlier each week. You must be getting enough sleep and not over sleeping either. You have one life and if you are a business owner, I know you are missing out on results and lowering your confidence indirectly too.
“Life is getting up an hour early to live an hour more.”
You can have the best intentions to get up earlier every day, but if you let that snooze button control you, you will never follow through with your intentions or get your results! It is the small changes that can give us the biggest results. Try one these hacks to finally get out of that bed in the morning and finally take back your time! Don’t allow it to be more powerful than you.
If you are not finding challenges that knock you flat on your back then you are missing out. A darker side of success that some have touched on is that you need to fail more. In addition to this, we should consider finding the challenges that punch us in the mouth and knock us unconscious.
The easiest place to be in life is one of comfort and knowing what tomorrow will bring. This brings little growth and requires very little effort because it’s safe. However, if we look at our role models who have done great things, then we will surely see that they have failed spectacularly.
Michael Jordan locked himself in his room and cried after he didn’t make his varsity basketball team as a sophomore. Walt Disney’s second business that failed miserably was called Laugh-O-Gram. JK Rowling was rejected by 12 literary publishers before she found any success.
Most likely you can think of some challenges that you rose up to beat in your own life. I would venture to say that the most difficult challenges that meant the most to you knocked you on your back right before you conquered them.
“Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache, carries with it the Seed of an equivalent or greater Benefit.” – Napoleon Hill
These obstacles are there for a reason. They are an important part of the puzzle for you. So if you find yourself in a place where you feel stuck or overwhelmed by a burden that seems insurmountable then this is a very good thing.
Life gives you everything you need
Life will give us everything we need, including the message that you have to get back up and go back at it with more determination, more will, and more fight than what you had before. Sometimes the moment we are down and out is the moment we have to regroup, reorganize, and come up with a new strategy to overcome those impending obstacles.
The reason the challenge knocks us down is because we need it. Just like an ocean wave knocks down an inexperienced surfer, it’s just a sign that the young surfer has to grow and become better.
Just like a surfer, the same is true for you and wherever you are at now. You have faced many things in your life which force you to become stronger for what is now in front of you.
However, what is most important in all this is having a challenge that can move you. For the surfer, the thrill of riding that perfect wave is worth the cost of getting beaten down by ocean waves again and again. For the man creating a business and putting his heart and soul into it, the reward of being a success and changing lives is worth battling each and everyday to get his enterprise up and off the ground.
For the woman who runs a marathon, the thrill of running across the finish line and having that experience was worth all the training and the grueling exhaustion she had to endure so that she could get to that point.
These experiences are the ones that can move you, but if your goal can have such a positive affect on you, then it can also have a dramatically negative affect as well. This is why you need challenges that can break you.
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” – J. K. Rowling
Why you need failure
The surfer is devastated after breaking his arm and having to spend time away from his passion, but after his recovery he is reinvigorated. The business fails and the man is crushed, but he comes back stronger and more experienced with another business. The runner fails at finishing her marathon, but trains harder and comes back even better.
For this reason, failure is only feedback and something to be used as a positive for getting to where you want to go. If you get knocked down you might just need to rest and try again. Or it could mean that you should go get some help and try again.
Remember, failure isn’t final and success within failure is having the opportunity to try again.
You should only be alarmed when you have failed challenges that aren’t breaking you. This means that you are playing it safe and need something more compelling to propel you forward.
If the challenge breaks you then you know it means something to you. Even more importantly, you have the opportunity to go again, harder and even more determined.
How do you handle failure? Let us know in the comments below!
We all go through tough times.
A few examples of mine are:
- Multiple consecutive breakups
- Walking away from a business that could have made me a lot of money
- Having my career come to a grinding halt
- Dealing with mental illness
The list is very long and I’m sure yours is similar. It’s not about the tough times we go through though because they are guaranteed and you already knew that before you clicked this article.
What matters during tough times is what you tell yourself.
This is what I say to myself during tough times — well there’s actually four things I say to myself depending on the tough time I’m facing:
“This will pass”
No event in your life lasts forever. Today may be a really tough day, but that won’t last forever. We delude ourselves at times by saying in our head “I’m always going to be like this.”
“Why does this always happen to me?”
“Here we go again.”
These negative phrases tell our brain that things are never going to get better. When we say these phrases to ourselves enough, we start to believe them. During a difficult period in your life, in that moment, things will suck.
The way to get out of your head is to see the truth: this will pass. In one day, one month, or one year this tough situation will have passed and you’ll be onto the next part of your life.
Nothing lasts forever unless you allow your mind to trap you in the moment and believe a lie which is that this moment won’t pass. It will. You will come out the other side.
“I’ll be stronger having dealt with this situation”
When you reframe your tough times into strength building exercises, they take a whole new meaning.
All of a sudden, your current situation that may be wearing you down becomes like reps at the gym. The reps are a struggle and it hurts, but if you keep moving forward, you end up with mental toughness and strength.
“Exchange your tough times for mental toughness”
See this challenging situation for what it is. It’s the chance to come out the other end stronger.
Stack your tough times up like gold medals.
Have you dealt with cancer? Good, then you won’t take your health for granted ever again.
Have you lost a loved one? Then you’ll never take the rest of your family for granted and care for them more than you did before.
Did you lose your job? Amazing! Now you can work somewhere else and discover more of your hidden talents!
Without tough times, you won’t have the strategies you need to deal with the impossible. Your heroes are your heroes because they’ve used their tough times to become stronger.
Failure and rejection are the building blocks to whatever your definition of success is. Tough times make you hungryand that’s a good thing.
“Keep taking baby steps forward”
Tough times can feel like quicksand sometimes.
If you don’t keep moving forward though, you’ll eventually sink into the quicksand. The best thing you can do during the toughest of challenges is take baby steps.
When I battled severe anxiety, I took baby steps such as these:
- Walked 15 minutes a day
- Drank an extra glass of water each day to hydrate my body
- Read one book a month on anxiety
- Exposed myself to one small fear each day. It started with going two levels in a lift (something I couldn’t do before). Then I’d go three levels the next day and so on.
That last dot point is critical. Overcoming tough times requires you to take baby steps in the form of being uncomfortable. When you’re growing each day, you don’t have time to be too concerned about a particular tough time.
My battle with anxiety eventually led me to flying long distances (another thing I couldn’t do before) and then speaking on stages in front of a lot of people.
As you can see, the first few steps — like going two floors in a lift — are quite small. Then the steps get bigger and bigger until what used to seem impossible becomes a piece of cake.
Take baby steps.
“It only takes one person”
Tough times often require someone to believe in you. From my experience, you only need one person.
One person to believe in your idea.
One person to love you.
One person who has gone through the same tough times as you.
This one person exists. You have to go out there and find them. That one person for me was a team leader when I was working in a call center. He believed in me enough to take me aside and coach me one on one.
He believed I was going to go on and change the world through personal development. He was right and I did!
Don’t give up. Your one person exists as well.
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These four things are what I tell myself during a tough time. One of these phrases will always be the right one depending on the circumstance.
Believe that there is a way out and you’ll find one. It’s during the tough times that you’ll develop the skills and experience to help others.
What I’ve learned is that to get through the tough times, one of the best hacks is to focus on helping others. When you’re focusing on how you can serve, your own selfish problems become insignificant.
Seek out people who have even bigger problems than you do and listen to them. See if you can help them.
That’s how you deal with the tough times.
Tell yourself the truth. You deserve to hear it.
If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
I was sitting down last week with a friend for lemongrass and ginger teas — because that’s how we roll in Melbourne.
My friend was telling me his recent life challenges and why he’d stopped replying to everybody’s messages.
I’ll get to the point: he’d got stuck in the daily grind.
Your life is not this:
- Wake up
- Eat breakfast
- Go to work
- Have lunch
- Come home
- Ask your partner how their day was
- Play with kids (if you have them)
- Look forward to the weekend
- Go to bed
- Rinse and repeat
If this is how your life is, chances are you’re going to have challenges. Not because these daily activities are a problem but because there’s so much more to life.
When every day is the same, and you don’t know why, you become lost.
What do I mean by lost?
You go back to old ways. In my friend’s case, his mental health issues kicked in again. He started feeling sorry for himself. He lost his way.
For me, getting lost looks like going back to a state of negativity. A state where the world is against me and everything feels impossible.
Your life can be different if you choose it to be.
This is not hyperbole. Your life can be different.
How?
By not getting stuck in the daily grind. The way you do this is by being present. Noticing right now instead of looking down at your phone.
You can also break your routine. Don’t do the same thing every day. Add some small twists and turns to how you do things.
Your life doesn’t have to be boring and full of routines. Habits are good to have as long as they don’t become 99.9% of your day. Having nothing but habits takes the variety out of your day.
You end up thinking the same way day in and day out. This stops you from seeing the endless opportunities that are available to you if you can only see them.
There has to be meaning.
No matter how big or how small, meaning gives you a reason to wake up outside of just following some pre-defined routine.
My friend that was going through issues last week didn’t have a meaning. He’d forgotten why he came to work. To shake up his reality, I told him about the day before where I’d volunteered at the local homeless shelter.
He asked me why I did it.
I told him “It gets you out of your head. It makes you think and feel completely different. You stop feeling sorry for yourself. It reminds you of what it’s like to have a meaning.”
We make the mistake of thinking everyone’s life is perfect except ours.
“I get this all the time. People think I live some rockstar blogging lifestyle full of free lunches, endless high-fives, smiles and opportunities. The reality couldn’t be further from this fake idea”
I have the same battles and challenges.
I get stuck in routines too.
I sometimes chase productivity over meaning as well.
No one has a straight flush of perfect days where all their hopes and dreams come true. Rejection, punches to the face, and disappointment affect us all.
The way you choose the good life is to acknowledge and push through the difficult parts of life.
As hard as I try, some days just suck. Some days I don’t feel like writing or my career is in the dumps.
The only difference is what you choose.
For me, I choose to keep moving forward. I choose optimism even when nothing makes sense and all the chips are stacked against me.
There’s no secret hack other than choosing to not settle for a life of routine and one that contains no variety.
You get to make that choice. That’s the difference.
The life you want is your choice. It’s not made for you.
Choose to change things up.
<<<>>>
If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
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Pamina Mullins
Aug 4, 2015 at 9:22 am
Great analysis of Mr. Procrastination Chris – especially Rule #2! This guy often gets such a bad rap that we miss the point. Your statement “Mr. Procrastination isn’t evil” is important. In fact as you point out he’s a great diagnostic tool for the areas where our insecurities and fears lie. When we look him in the eye and say “I see you” his power to limit and disrupt is greatly diminished 🙂
Joseph Harris
Aug 1, 2015 at 8:05 pm
Thanks for these powerful tips, they are very true! Another way to put it, is to look at the “Opportunity Cost” of doing or not doing. Bravo!
Jagdish Kashyap
Jul 30, 2015 at 10:06 pm
First – Thanks for the tips that you have mention, really helpful!
How I Motivate Myself? – Just think “Why you have started working on”
Cheers! Nice!
Chris Delaney
Jul 27, 2015 at 8:31 pm
HI Esther
Thats a great frame – often with clients I ask a similar question and get the client to write a list of what it will cost if they do not take action. This technique increases motivation
Chris
Chris Delaney
Jul 27, 2015 at 8:30 pm
HI Esther
Thats a great frame – often with clients I ask a similar question and get the client to write a list of what it will cost if they do not take action. This allows them of really focus on the outcome of not taking action creating high levels of motivation
Chris
Esther Mellar
Jul 26, 2015 at 1:53 pm
Hi Chris,
I love how you shift the general focus by suggesting “ focusing on the pleasure of completing task and the pain of not taking action “ It is really powerful.
Another way to put it could be “What does it cost me if I do not do it?”
Thank you,
Esther
Chris Delaney
Jul 23, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Hi Wanda
Thanks for the feedback really appreciated
Chris
Wanda
Jul 22, 2015 at 1:22 pm
Great tips for motivation! Your entertaining approach with superheroes really kept my attention. Nice work!