Dawn Grant Blog

The secret of motivation is that it begins between your ears. Motivation is like a puzzle and you have to see how the pieces fit together before you can get the full picture. How you view the world, beginning with your mind and attitude, will hinder or help you on the path to getting and staying motivated.

I can’t say this enough. Motivation does not come from external sources. On the contrary, it’s all driven from your internal resources. In my experience, some of the pieces to this puzzle can be found in the following life principles:

1. Change Your Attitude: Attitude is at the foundation of motivation. Success and even how you deal with failure and challenges will depend very much on your attitude, first and foremost. Everything that happens to you has to be viewed through a certain lens. That lens is either positive or negative attitude and motivation. A friend of mine was told years ago that he had less than a year to live. He spent the rest of his days focusing on the 10 percent chance the doctors had given him. His final days were positive.

2. Take Ownership: You own your life. No one else does. Your boss, your spouse, your job, etc. are not the owners of your life. No one can “make” you feel happy, sad, overwhelmed, motivated or whatever else. Only you can make yourself do that. It is you who wholly owns your life. You are where you are because of your own actions or inactions. When you assume ownership, it empowers you and gives you control. And, that control helps provide you motivation.

3. Erase “I Can’t” and the Excuses: When my daughter was young, I taught her early that she should not use the word “can’t.” To be motivated, you have to believe in your potential and opportunity. Saying, “I can’t make money,” or, “I can’t find a new job,” is defeatist. All you’re doing to yourself mentally is providing excuses. To recharge your motivation, erase the “I can’t” and dispose of the excuses. Life is not easy. We all have challenges, but your chances of success increase exponentially if you get out of your own way.

4. Get Off the Couch: Newton’s First Law of Motion is absolutely correct: An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion. Motivation comes when you are moving forward. If you’re looking to get and stay motivated, you have to move. One of the easiest things you can do for yourself to help you nurture your motivation is to get out and connect with nature. Move. Exercise. If you live in a concrete jungle, then join a group and connect with others. But, whatever you do, don’t sit on the couch and watch the world pass by.

5. Commit: Motivation comes by committing to something. In other words, making a decision. And, when you’ve made the decision and the challenges arise, stay committed to what you decided to do. Anything worth having will become a challenge, which is always an opportunity to reaffirm your commitment. This is how we all grow as human beings. Commit to a decision, stay the course and you will see your motivation increase. 

6. Do the Work: Sustained motivation takes consistency and the only way to place fuel on the fire is to do the work. Big goals take time to achieve. It’s important to spend a little bit of time each and every day working on it–even if it’s only 15 minutes. A friend of mine is looking to begin his own business; however, he has to work at a job and cannot afford at this time to work on his own. He wakes up 2 hours before so he can work on his products and then when he returns from work at night he makes phone calls and has networking meetings. He does this every business day. 

7. Accept the Consequences: Finally, accepting responsibility for consequences is actually an opportunity to stay empowered and motivated. Again, you are the owner of your life and you have control. Take responsibilities for mistakes you’ve made along the way. This is an opportunity to learn and master your goals, with the mistakes that will occur along the way. And once you accept the consequences and learn from them, move on.

If you are not as productive as you'd like or tend to procrastinate, you can become motivated by changing your personal style. The trick lies in making the activities you put off more interesting, easier, and less unpleasant.

One way to make a job easier is to break it into smallerjobs. If your task is to file your income tax return, youmay view it as time consuming and tedious.

But if you break it into smaller categories such as gatherrecords, download tax software, and prepare a rough draft,the tasks don't seem as difficult and you are likely tocomplete them in considerably less time.

Some other ways to make those undesirable jobs seem morebearable are to prioritize, use self-discipline, and rewardyourself for small accomplishments...

Try to do the least desirable tasks early in the day soyou'll look forward to having the rest of the day toconcentrate on more pleasant jobs.

Keep in mind that self-discipline is something you do foryourself, not to punish yourself. Make a schedule and stickto it. Don't forget to reward yourself for each step youtake in overcoming procrastination.

Positive reinforcement goes a long way in changing negativebehaviors.

Here are a few more suggestions as to how you can getmotivated and quit procrastinating...

1. Tasks will seem less daunting if you break them intoseveral steps over a few days or weeks. Don't expectyourself to do everything all at once.

2. Don't worry about doing the job perfectly. Once you quitprocrastinating, you'll have more time to go back andperfect each particular task. Allowing yourself adequatetime to finish a task will give you more time forcorrections later.

3. Find a supportive co-worker or friend to help motivateyou to get moving.

4. Don't schedule important tasks at a time of day whenyour energy is low.

5. Reward yourself for reaching critical points in yourleast favorite jobs. Having something to look forward to isa great motivator.

6. Put the most difficult tasks at the top of your list andwork from there.

7. All times of day are not equal. If you are a morningperson, then tackle the most difficult tasks when you areat your best earlier in the day.

Reserve your most demanding activities for the time whenyour energy is at its highest. Save the small jobs thatrequire little thought for the time of day when you are atyour lowest productivity level.

Accomplish your tasks efficiently and you will see animprovement in your time management and motivational skills.

8. Start yourself down the road to success by settingclear, attainable goals. Break tasks into smaller piecesso they will seem less difficult. Get organized andprioritize your activities from most important to leastimportant.

Eliminating the harder tasks will leave you feeling goodabout your work and motivate you to continue.

9. Keep focused on the end result instead of concentratingon how hard it will be to break your old habits. Having alight at the end of the tunnel will make your efforts seemworthwhile and the reward waiting for you will keep youmotivated to achieve your goals.

Procrastination is unproductive and can even be harmful toyour well being if allowed to get out of control. Stopmaking excuses, organize your thoughts and tasks, and be onyour way to get your life under control and get motivated!

Original Source: https://www.boxingscene.com/motivation/30831.php

In recent years the self-care movement has been gathering momentum, and in many ways it is a natural extension of what came before, which was prevention. Both put the focus of remaining well on the individual. Instead of running to the doctor’s when symptoms appear, prevention taught people to avoid risks in advance. Giving up smoking to prevent the risk of lung cancer was a milestone in prevention over fifty years ago, and since then a host of preventive measures have been discovered.

What if the self, all alone and unaided, is the ultimate healer? On the one hand modern medicine would hotly and even violently reject such a notion. Mainstream medicine still has objections to self-care insofar as it encroaches on the expertise of doctors and the accepted treatments through drugs and surgery. Let’s set aside the possible objections to the self as healer, because it’s more important to get at what the concept is all about.

An opening is provided by a first-person account on a personal website by Joey Lott, who poses what he calls “A cure for anxiety.” Lott presents himself as a longtime sufferer from anxiety whose affliction was intractable: “I failed so completely to make things better (even after years of therapy, meditation, yoga, affirmations, breathwork, prayer, hundreds of self-help books, countless workshops, and on and on) that eventually I grew hopeless. Nothing could help me, I believed. I thought I was broken.”

The cure he ultimately discovered is a form of “not doing,” to use a Buddhist term, although it was the experience, not the terminology, that was key. Lott realized that his anxiety was rooted in thought itself, in the mind’s constant attempt to attack anxiety in self-defeating ways. The cure, he declares, “is completely counterintuitive, because it is not about getting rid of unwanted symptoms. It is not about getting rid of anxiety. It is not about defeating anxiety or breaking free of anxiety. It is about actually discovering directly what anxiety is and welcoming it home.”

The method he has in mind is to stop resisting anxiety in any way; Lott maintains that resistance—along with every attempt to get rid of anxiety—is the cause of anxiety. Instead of getting entangled in so much mental activity, Lott bypasses all of it. “The essential cure for anxiety is …the direct meeting of the experience. Not trying to get rid of it, calm it, change it, fix it, solve it, or anything else. How does one go about direct meeting? Simple. Do nothing.”

Lott is conscientious about telling his readers that the various methods he tried, such as mindfulness and meditation, can help with anxiety. But with the conviction of someone who has healed himself and many others, he believes he has found the real cure. What he proposes is a form of self-care, and needless to say there is no accepted medical model for it; as a physician I must add that I am not endorsing such a cure. And yet there is a trend moving in the “not doing” direction that has been growing stronger.

The trend is known generally as the “direct method” in consciousness studies. The basic tenet is that with any experience, a person has two choices, either to pay attention to the mental activity in the experience or to pay attention to the constant presence of awareness itself. The aim ultimately is to wake up, to realize that the constant presence of awareness is actually the self.

Some therapists have seen the potential value in getting a patient to experience the constant state of awareness lying behind mental activity. The theory is that awareness by itself has no anxiety, depression or other form of mental suffering. It simply is. Lott found, with himself and other people, that it is possible to “do nothing”—that is, to simply be aware o awareness.

He acknowledges that even a fleeting experience of this kind, lasting a second or two, might require a coach. The mind is habituated to pay attention to its experiences, and when the experience is painful, it is all but impossible to not pay attention. Therefore, one can start by paying less attention. In time, the cure results, according to the direct method, by repetition, until a person’s attention gets attracted to self-awareness instead of the painful symptoms. Eventually, no matter what form of “not doing” being adopted, the affliction is predicted to heal itself. It has been starved of attention, which was what kept it going in the first place.

What I’ve outlined is no substitute for reading Lott’s article and looking into detailed expositions of the direct method and the theory behind it. But we’ve discussed enough here to indicate the revolutionary implications of self-care. Gradually, and mostly at the margins of professional therapy and medicine in general, the possibility of the self as healer is gaining ground. (The reader might want to see The Healing Self, a book I co-write with Harvard geneticist Rudy E. Tanzi. We discuss many modalities of self-care already accepted in both mainstream and integrative medicine.)

Whatever happens in the near future, the direct method is attempting in modern terms to validate the ancient doctrines of mind from Buddhism and even older Vedic sources. The deepest questions about what it means to be human and to lead a conscious life are at stake. In that regard, the healing self is as important today as it was thousands of years ago, and we may discover that the self is as timeless, not to mention healing, as it has always been reputed to be.

Source: https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/chopra/article/Is-the-Self-the-Ultimate-Healer-14032445.php

The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.

James Allen

Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it...Don't allow his anger to become your anger.

Bohdi Sanders

Serenity is knowing that your worst shot is still pretty good.

Johnny Miller

You can't calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.

Timber Hawkeye

While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.     

St. Francis of Assisi

Motivation is rather elusive, isn’t it? Some days you feel it, and other days you can’t grab a measly corner of it no matter how hard you try. You stare at the computer screen, willing yourself to type, create, develop, and instead you find yourself simply going through the motions, barely caring about the work you’re producing. Needless to say, you’re totally uninspired, and you don’t know how to make yourself feel otherwise.

Quora users have been there, and they have real and practical solutions for digging up that lost motivation and getting a job not just done—but completed with a sense of passion. Read on for seven tips and tricks that’ll get you motivated in no time. 

1. Don’t Think About it as Hard Work

Think about it: If the project you’re faced with isn’t viewed as drudgery, but rather as a piece of the puzzle that’s helping you along your career path, then perhaps the energy required to do it will be easier to come by.

2. Create Small, Bite-Sized Goals

You’ve no doubt heard this advice before, but have you applied it to motivation? Completing a large project is daunting when you don’t know where to begin. How can you finish if you don’t even know where you’re starting? So, rather than focusing on a large, scary goal, take one thing at a time, and break the big goal into ideas you can digest one at a time.

3. Read Daily

Although it may sound counter-productive to set aside reading time when really what you’re looking for is motivation to work hard, sometimes it’s necessary to do something seemingly unrelated to tackle the task at hand. Developing a daily reading habit is one thing that’s likely to have a long-lasting impact on your thought processes, ultimately inspiring you in all areas of your life.

4. Stop Caring About the Things That Don’t Matter

Look very carefully and closely at your list, and shave off anything that’s both truly demotivating and unnecessary for you to do. It’s not always best to finish what you started if, down the line, you can’t even remember the reason you started something in the first place. 

5. Set a Quit Time

Raise your hand if you’re motivated 24/7! I didn’t think I’d see any hands. It’s unrealistic to feel energized all the time, to want to plow through tasks all the time. You need to give yourself a rest, and if that means giving yourself a specified set time to unplug or turn away from the demands of your job, then do it. It’s likely to help you perform harder and smarter in the hours that you do allot for work.

6. Just Do It

Now here’s some worthwhile advice: Instead of waiting around, willing yourself to feel motivated, what if you just went ahead and started doing the work you know you need to do? Dive into the project and trust that the focus will be what you need.

7. Celebrate Wins

If you’re constantly waiting for a long-term payoff, you forget how crucial all the little wins are. And it can be challenging to stay motivated and on top of things if there’s no reward in sight. Treat yourself with small things and don’t underestimate how gratifying it can feel to recognize tiny advancements.