Motivation
6 Lessons You Can Learn from The King of the Jungle
Do you watch documentaries on lions? If yes, then you must have seen that they dominate their territory and are apex predators. Lions are among the strongest animals in the world, and no one dares to confront or challenge them. They are called ‘kings’ because they have a touch of royalty in everything they do. From eating habits where 20-25 royal members dine at the same to conquering huge lands. A lion always has a bold attitude and lives like a true ruler.
But their life is full of obstacles and problems. There is less space for errors, as one mistake may make them lose their life, reign, or offspring. Also, hunting is not an easy task; their success rate is only 17-19 percent. Compared to human beings their quandaries are bigger because they never get a second opportunity.
But, have you ever seen a depressed lion or one who wants to give up? They always struggle to hunt and rule lands, but they never quit. Sometimes they fail in hunting a zebra, a gazelle, and a wildebeest. But do they give up? No. They try hard and succeed in hunting.
So, what motivates them to not surrender to the harsh life? The answer is survival. The only thing that keeps them moving is survival. Many lions lose their reign, children, and queens to other lions, but they never give up on life.
Here are six life lessons from the king of the jungle:
1. Your goal is the only way to survive
Set a life goal and work hard to achieve it; consider that there are no alternatives. As lions are born to hunt and rule; acknowledge that you are born to accomplish your life goal. Consider your purpose and work as a source of motivation. They will keep you going through good and bad times because fame is temporary, but work pleasure and sense of achievement are permanent.
2. Fail and evolve
Lions fail eight out of ten times in hunting, but this makes them fine-tune their skills; thus, they can catch bigger prey to feed their family. Likewise, we should also embrace our failures and evolve each time we face them. We must study and analyze our failures and make sure to not repeat them. As Jack Ma has rightly said, “If the guy only checks himself, yeah, something wrong with me here, something wrong with me there. Then, this guy has hope.” Also, we must follow this law of nature: ‘Evolve and survive’ to achieve success in life.
“Everyone wants to eat, but few are willing to hunt.”
3. Focus is the key
When lions go on a hunt, they make less noise and focus on the prey. They always have an element of surprise and keep everything low to make their raid successful. Now imagine, if a lion makes noise, will they be able to hunt? The answer is no! So, what do we learn? Too much talking makes us lose focus. Don’t tell everyone about your goals and what you are doing, keep it low and completely focus on your aim.
4. Always trust each other
A pride of lions always back each other in good and bad times. Rather in tough phases as an individual they contribute more to the survival of the pride. We should also learn that strength is in the pack. It’s necessary to not break each other’s trust for a short-term gain. Also, we must support each other in overcoming tough problems and situations.
5. Survival is everything
Lions don’t harm anyone without any reason. But, when someone tries to mar their territory, life, and family, they leave no stone unturned in giving a tough fight. Likewise, we should concentrate on our own betterment. However, if someone is trying to ruin our career or life, then instead of getting disappointed we should fight back and overcome such smotherers.
“The world is a jungle. You either fight and dominate or hide and evaporate.”
6. Have fun in life
Lions go through a harsh life filled with everyday challenges. But they don’t let them ruin their daily moments. They always enjoy every minute with their pride members. They play with each other and take care of everyone. You should also make sure to relish each moment of your life. Leave your stress and worries in your workplace, and when you are at home, relish the time with your family.
Lions teach us to dominate problems in life and live like a true winner. As someone has rightly said, “If size really mattered, the elephant would be king of the jungle.” Similarly, every animal’s life is full of struggle, and we can learn a lot from them to become successful and prosperous in our own lives. So next time you watch a documentary on lions, try to learn from them.
How will you become a lion in your everyday life? Comment below!
Motivation
A Step by Step Process That Will Help You Make the Impossible, Possible
We have all been there, looking at something and wishing we had it. The girl, the car, the money, the family, the lifestyle…but then we tell ourselves “Yeah, but that’s not me”. The people who get that are cut from a different cloth and we keep telling ourselves that until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We waste the wings we got believing the entire time that we can’t fly and that it’s impossible for us. We don’t even see our wings most of the time. (more…)
Motivation
How to Stay Motivated to Achieve Your Goals
Time is the raw material of our lives. How we choose to spend it, shapes our life accordingly. So having the motivation to spend it on achieving goals is crucial to creating a life we want.
What is Motivation?
The Oxford dictionary defines motivation as the desire or willingness to do something – our drive to take action.
Scientifically, motivation has its roots in the dopamine pathways of our brains. When we do something that feels good, that’s dopamine kicking in. Our actions are driven by the desire for that reward (the good feeling).
Author Steven Pressfield describes motivation more practically. He says we hit a point where the pain of not doing something becomes greater than the pain of doing it. He sees motivation as crossing the threshold where it’s easier to take action than it is to be idle. Like choosing to feel awkward while making sales calls over feeling disappointed about a diminishing bank account.
However you choose to think about it, we all want to harness motivation to achieve our goals.
How to Get Motivated
James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, says that most people misunderstand motivation. They think that motivation is what gets us to take action. In reality, motivation is often the result of action, not the cause of it. Once we start a task, it’s easier to continue making progress. Like Isaac Newton’s first law: objects in motion stay in motion.
This means most of the resistance when working on your goals comes right before we start. Since motivation naturally occurs after we start, we need to focus on making starting easier.
4 Ways to Make Starting Easier
1. Schedule it
One reason people can’t get started on things is that they haven’t planned when to do it.
When things aren’t scheduled it’s easier for them to fall by the wayside. You’ll end up hoping motivation falls in your lap or hoping that you’ll muster enough willpower to get it done.
An article in the Guardian said, “If you waste resources trying to decide when or where to work, you’ll impede your capacity to do the work.”
2. Measure something
It’s easy to feel uninspired when you don’t know if you’re making progress or what you’re even working towards. That’s why you need to make your success measurable in some way. Starting is easy when you know exactly how much closer your current actions will bring you to achieving your goal.
3. Extrinsic motivation
This type of motivation is from external factors. It can be either positive or negative. Positive motivation consists of incentives like money, prizes, and grades. Negative motivation consists of deterrents like being fired, having a fight, or being fined. Extrinsic motivation doesn’t work effectively long-term, but it can work well in the short term to get you started on something.
4. Make it public
Keep yourself accountable by telling friends and family your goals, or even sharing them on social media. This makes it easier to start something because you’re pressured to not let others down.
How to Stay Motivated Long Term
When we say we want to feel motivated to do something, we don’t want to be pushed or guilted into doing a task. We want to be so attracted and drawn to the idea that we can’t resist not taking action. That’s why it’s important to build a foundation that will set you up for consistency.
These are 5 techniques that will help you do just that:
1. Stay in your goldilocks zone
The goldilocks zone is when a task is the perfect level of difficulty—not too hard and not too easy. In this zone, we reach peak motivation and focus.
For example, let’s say you’re playing a serious tennis match against a 4-year-old. On this level of difficulty, you’ll quickly become bored and not want to play. Now let’s say you’re playing a serious tennis match against Serena Williams. On this level of difficulty, you’ll quickly become demotivated because the match is too challenging.
The Goldilocks zone is in the middle of that spectrum. You want to face someone with equal skill as you. That way you have a chance to win, but you have to focus and try for it. Adjusting your workload and goals over time to stay within your Goldilocks zone keeps you engaged and motivated long-term.
2. Pursue intrinsically motivated goals
Being intrinsically motivated to achieve a goal is when you want to achieve it for what it is. There are no external factors like a reward or the risk of being fired. The drive behind your actions is coming from within.
For most intrinsic goals we pursue them because they will enrich our lives or bring us closer to fulfillment. That makes these goals extremely sustainable long-term because they directly affect our quality of life and the things we care about.
3. Use “chunking”
Chunking is the technique of breaking down a goal into smaller short-term targets. By doing this you achieve multiple successes in your pursuit of the main goal. This triggers the brain’s reward system and drives you to keep going.
Traditionally, you may set a goal that you expect to achieve in one year. That’s a long time to commit without seeing any results along the way. By chunking your goals into monthly or quarterly targets, you get the consistent positive reinforcement you need to stay motivated long-term.
For example, instead of trying to lose 50 pounds in one year, try to lose 4 pounds every month for 12 months.
4. Be flexible
We’re all victims of circumstance. Things happen along our journey that we can either adjust to or quit because of. That’s why it’s important to have leeway and flexibility when you’re pursuing a goal. If you expect everything to go perfectly, the inevitable failure can make you disengaged and desireless. When you plan for things to go wrong, you make sure you can keep up for the long haul.
5. Pursue your goals in a sustainable fashion
Don’t lose hope when you’re not an overnight success. Overnight successes are the 1%—for the most part, they don’t exist. What we see as an “overnight success” is actually countless hours of work behind the scenes finally hitting a tipping point. Pursuing goals is a story of patience, persistence, and unseen effort.
Don’t compare yourself to others. Comparison is a recipe for a drop in self-confidence and satisfaction. It also cultivates a mindset where you think you haven’t done enough. As a result, you may raise your expectations and put more pressure on yourself.
This is pointless because things worth achieving take time. So we obviously won’t compare to the things around us when starting.
Mastering motivation is a superpower. With that ability at your fingertips, you can accomplish your goals and shape a life you want to live in.
Motivation
What Is Dark Motivation and How Can I Use It to My Advantage?
It’s Thursday, 8 PM. I’m relaxing at home, doing normal things, and scrolling social media. Tomorrow is a big day. There are lots of things to do with moving pieces of furniture because I’m moving to another city. On top of that, a repairman is coming to my house at 8AM, so I’ll have to get up early. (more…)
Motivation
The Killer Morning Routine to Boost Motivation
If you’re anything like me, waking up in the morning is a hard task. Over the course of a number of years I’ve built a routine that helps wake me up and keeps me motivated. (more…)
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