(Focus + Opportunity) - Distraction = MOTIVATION.

A winning formula.

Without a shadow of a doubt my biggest hold up to advancing towards my goals has been a lack of motivation. I read a great saying the other day ” If it’s important to you you’ll find a way, if not you’ll find an excuse” and now I am having a very real look at what makes me make excuses.

Excuses are like outfits we wear and put on. Some of them fit for a while, some of them wear out, and some of them become like best friends that give us confidence or comfort and we wear them continually to every event in life - even once they are full of holes, and no longer fit.

Excuses are different from reasons. Reasons are things that are blocks or obstacles, but like that saying says “you’ll find a way” to get round them, under them or over them if its something that matters. Surely, though, every goal matters doesn’t it? So why would we hold ourselves back if we could move away from these blocks? I think the answer to that is that sometimes it matters so much that we allow a reason to become an excuse deliberately. The root of that problem probably lies in our life experience and conditioning as a young person. For instance, I know that as a child I was mainly motivated by guilt. If I didn’t want to do something that was suggested to me, then it was easy to get me to change my mind if I had it explained to me how my non compliance would affect others badly. That may sound like a reasonable way of making someone do something, but do you see the word “Guilt” anywhere in the formula above? It means now, that if it is a situation to which guilt can not apply (i.e. I am the only one to suffer as a result of not doing it) then I won’t be motivated to do it at all. No one ever dealt with my excuses or reasons - I wasn’t taught that skill of organising them and quashing them.

Similarly, if your life has made you feel that you are not an achiever, not a winner, or that the stakes are so high in achieving your goal that it seems risky, you may make reasons into excuses because you are scared to try. The results of trying and failing would only further compound your disbelief in yourself and your abilities, and it would make a statement about you to the rest of the world - it’s not that you are not a winner, but now you are a LOSER! Right?

No - LOSERS are people who try, fail, and walk away. People who try, fail and try again are TRIERS and everyone loves a trier! Eventually a try will become a success and then you will be a WINNER, it’s just a game of numbers.

Now lets look at the formula more closely. Focus (which is the trying, and is something you give yourself. You don’t need motivation to try, you just need a good attitude about it) is only going to work if you have opportunity. Without opportunity your goal is a dream - no less aspiring, but just a little further out of reach. You should NOT however wait for opportunity to come knocking. It’s great if it just turns up, knocks and puts an idea in your head, but if you have already had the idea you need to go find the opportunity.  It’s another block, another reason, and if you want it you will go look for it in any amount wherever possible.

So now you have those two things you are set to reach your goal right? Wrong - distractions are commonplace in life. Their purpose? I’m not sure they have one, they just exist like the sky is blue and grass is green, but even then that can be down to perception. It is how you perceive these distractions that counts - you need to eradicate them and decide if the distraction that keeps you from your goal is an excuse or a reason, but in either case you now know what to do with them.

And the end result = MOTIVATION. That means you now have it, you no longer need to keep getting it, you no longer will want to procrastinate or block yourself you will just want to move towards your goal and do it, get it, have it. Now doesn’t that sound like a nice feeling? No more talking yourself into it, no more carrying the weight of the put off inevitable. You now just go and do it and it’s done and you can enjoy the benefits. Really, when you think of it like that, why on earth are we making excuses?! What’s fun about that?!

This entry was posted on 28/08/2011 at 06:26 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.