Sunday, May 26, 2013

Motivate Me To Study: Motivation Can't Be Faked

By Lachlan Haynes


For those who don't wake up and feel motivated by the prospect of a new day, we often wonder how to "get motivated". But motivation is not something you can just click your fingers and create. Sure, often we read something or watch something and then feel super motivated and ready to take on the world! But then a few hours or days pass by and we've pretty much forgotten how or why we ever got so motivated in the first place. The problem is that the reality of life has got hold of us again and so we just slump back into our old routines.

If you can visualize what you want to achieve and what your final destination looks like you will be far more likely to create desire. Why is this important? Well, your desire will dictate your actions. In order to jump out of bed each day, be thrilled by the prospect of the day ahead, and do whatever it takes to ensure you are working diligently towards your goal, you actually need to have a clearly understood end goal in mind! The challenge occurs when you have no objective in mind. You are just going through the motions.

But let's focus on the mundane tasks we complete each day. It makes sense that if something is going to benefit us (and we understand what that benefit is and agree that it will benefit us), we will be far more likely to complete the task. If I want to learn to speak Chinese, then watching a "learn how to speak Chinese" video is something that will strongly interest me and I am very likely to watch it.

But if the task you have to complete has no benefit to you? How do you feel motivated when what you have to do is completely unrelated to what you are trying to achieve? Well, the reality is that you are likely to revolt against the task or the person asking you to do it. For example, if you want to learn Indonesian you are forced to learn Spanish, you are probably going to be pretty upset! Again, this makes perfect sense. You want to Indonesian, not Spanish. Therefore, there is no motivation to complete the activity.

The real challenge in motivation is just identifying the relevance of the task - because without relevance there is absolutely no motivation to take action. However, just because you can't see the relevance doesn't always mean there is none. Sometimes tasks do have relevance to what we are ultimately trying to achieve but we just can't understand it clearly enough.

The tasks you complete should always help you get closer to your ultimate ambition - and the good news is that most tasks do. What you really need to understand is how they do that. If you want to get a great job that you love and are paid well to do then what do you need to do? Why, get good grades of course! Because good grades equals good college equals good job. Isn't that the line of thinking behind getting good grades? Perhaps you want freedom. You want to lie on a deserted beach somewhere sipping on cocktails. So how do you get that? Well, education equals learn about business equals start a business equals early retirement. But the fact is, you had to get an education in order to find your way to retirement didn't you? You had to complete the tasks required first.

Now is the time to think about your final destination. What do you really want to achieve in your life? If you had to imagine your perfect life, what would it be like? Do you imagine a big house, a big bank balance or a big family? Would you like to travel the world? Would you like to create art all day? Would you like to live in the forest? In doesn't matter what you want because there will still be steps required to get there. So what is your ultimate ambition?

Do what you have to do to get good grades. Do what you have to do to get into a great College or University. Do what you have to do to find a great job you love, or start a business to solve a problem in the world. But whatever you do, don't focus on the task. Focus on the end result. Define your magnificent life goal (something that truly inspires you) and then do what you have to do to make it a reality. If you want something bad enough, you will do whatever it takes. If you're not willing to do whatever it takes, the reality is that you don't truly care if you achieve it and you need to keep looking.




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