Tag: MOTIVATION

This is a guest article by my friend Dr. Pedram Shojai, O.M.D.  Recently I sat down with Pedram, affectionately known as “The Urban Monk”, and we talked about how to deal with the challenging problem of finding balance. You can check out the full video interview here.

 

So many people I’ve worked with over the years have trouble sticking to their resolutions. They commit to a diet and fail. They join a gym and stop going. They say they’re done with cigarettes and then the stress overwhelms them back into a habit they hate.

Why does this happen?

Have we run out of willpower? Is it in such short supply that we are doomed to bail on everything? Can we not take a stand for anything we deem important to us?

The answer is a resounding NO!

The problem is that most people do not understand the “Anatomy of Consciousness” and, therefore, keep making the same mistakes in life. They push through and “spend” their willpower, repeatedly failing at things and “proving” to themselves that they can’t do it. Repeated failure reinforces a belief system that we are failures.

This is not the case but again, none of us were taught how to tap into our personal power. We try to push the boulder up hill and find ourselves exhausted and out of energy. In fact, most people are in “enthusiasm bankruptcy” nowadays. After all, how many times must you fail at something before you throw in the towel and accept being overweight or “week”?

I studied with the Dalai Lama. I traveled the world as a Taoist monk and learned meditation, qi gong, tai chi, yoga, kung fu, and anything else I could find that helped me. I learned about the Anatomy of Consciousness and applied it to my daily life successfully. People often ask me what my secret is and I’ve taken it for granted that I learned something very powerful in all of my travels…something I’ve been teaching students and patients over the past few years with amazing results.

The key is that most of us try to push our willpower or INTENTION without locking in our focus or ATTENTION first.

Ready, Fire, and maybe Aim…that’s where most people live and that’s why they never hit the mark.

Learning to focus in on what your goals and priorities are and then making a definitive plan that helps you get there is key. Most people don’t understand that the word “no” is very powerful. By me agreeing to meet the guys for a bite tonight, I’m effectively saying “no” to my family, my workout, my sleep, and the book I’ve been meaning to read. Most of us impulsively say “yes” to too many things which crowds our “Life Garden” with too many plants to water and far too many weeds.

If your willpower was the “water” you had to nourish the few plants in your garden, then where is it going? Are you feeding too many plants? Are you unaware of the weeds in your garden that are sucking off your life force?

The answer for most people is yes. We bleed our Vitality into scattered dreams and a hectic schedule. We then try to push through with more willpower but that tank is usually running on empty. We are all sick and tired of being tired.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. The way out is in.

Learning to meditate and gain clarity is the first stop. After that there are specific practices that help enhance Vitality and bring up our personal power. Over the years, I’ve learned to work both sides of that equation for people and seen amazing results.

The key is to wake up to what we’re doing and gain clarity before we move in life. From there, there are lots of time management tricks that can help us get more efficient. From there, we can adjust our lifestyle to get more energy out of our cells.

What can you do with more energy? A lot if you’re focused. Most people will squander it though because they have no “Life Mastery System” to help them navigate.

I invite you to check out an amazing program we’ve developed. It is designed to walk you through a step by step program that teaches you how to optimize your energy, gain clarity, raise your willpower, and operate more efficiently in life. Our graduates are having life transforming experiences and its all because we are putting themback in the driver’s seat.

Jump in and feel like you’re in control of your life again. Get clear and get the life you want.

CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT

Pedram Shojai, OMD
Founder- Well.Org
Author- “Rise and Shine”
Producer – “Vitality” and “Origins”

If I had to pick the one question I’m asked most frequently, it would almost certainly have to be this: How do I get motivated?

Well, get ready to be shocked by my answer:

You don’t need motivation.

Oh, sure, it’s nice to feel really gung ho about your new eating plan and about the exercise you’ve finally decided to start doing, but if you don’t feel that way, that’s fine too. The fact is, you don’t need motivation to make changes in your life.

As you catch your breath and nod your head in disbelief, pull up a chair and I’ll tell you why.

People who talk about “getting motivated” tend to have a conception of this thing called “motivation” as something outside themselves. They talk about “getting” motivation like it’s something you can go out and buy. They search for teachers and gurus who can “make” them get motivated. This particular way of looking as motivation, common as it is, actually turns out to be really self-defeating.

Look, suppose I ask you to stand up from your chair right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you do it. Ready? Stand up. Then come back and keep reading.

OK, so you either stood up, or you didn’t. If I had a video of you taken during the last few minutes, it would show you either standing up or not standing up. There would be nothing on the video about whether or not you “had motivation”. There would be nothing on the video about whether or not you felt like standing up.

There would only be the simple video evidence of whether you did or you didn’t. It would be entirely within the realm of possibility that you stood up and didn’t feel like it at all. You might have even thought it was a really dumb idea, but you did it just to see where I was going with this whole thing.

The point is this: “motivation” isn’t necessary for an action to take place. How you feel is not the same as what you do.

To get something done- whether it be standing up, exercising, eating certain foods (or not eating certain foods) you don’t need motivation- what you do need is an action plan.

You need a strategy.

I had one client who knew himself well enough to know that he’d find any excuse not to go to the gym in the morning. So he’d make sure to always leave something there “by accident” so he’d have to stop by the gym on the way to work whether he felt like it or not. He short circuited the whole question of motivation by simply developing a really good action plan.

You can too.

One of the reasons the question of “motivation” tends to derail us is that when it comes to weight, we set up goals that tend to be result oriented rather than action oriented. “Losing fifty pounds” is a result. “Walking ten minutes a day” is an action. It’s far easier to develop and implement a plan for taking one small action than it is to wait until you “feel” differently about exercise.

And speaking of “feeling” differently about exercise and diet,  here’s a little secret I’ll let you in on: The easiest way to change your feelings about it is to change your behavior.

Most folks think it’s the other way around. We wait to change our behavior- diet and exercise being prime examples- until we “feel” like it. Guess what. If you wait to “feel” like it, you gonna have a long wait. But if you realize you don’t have to “feel like it” in order to do it, you can sidestep the whole motivation issue in a cakewalk.

And once you see yourself actually taking an action, guess what else happens, (much more often than you might imagine)…

…You wind up “feeling” differently about it anyway!

There is virtually no better way to change how you feel about something than to change your behavior. And that’s a lot easier to do if you set small, reasonable, action oriented goals.

Try this at home.

As an exercise, try the following: First, pick a small doable goal in the area of diet or exercise: it can be as simple as doing one set of crunches, turning down one meal at McDonald’s (or one portion of French fries), walking around the block once before dinner, or adding one portion of fresh vegetables to the evening meal. Doesn’t matter.

Now here’s the exercise: Don’t try to change one thing about your feelings. Whatever you feel about the thing you picked to do, let it be the way it is.

Now figure out a plan for doing it.

If you’ve stayed with me so far, you’ve noticed something very important. How you feel about doing the action in question- whether you’ve got “motivation” or not- is really beside the point. You can come up with an action plan regardless of your feelings. You can invent a strategy.

And guess what? You didn’t even have to answer the question of how to get motivated. All you had to do was form an action plan.

Form an action plan for an action based goal, no matter how small. Rehearse it in your mind. Figure out a strategy to accomplish it. Then do it, regardless of how you feel about it.

You will have taken the first step towards changing your life.

And you will have released yourself from the tyranny of “motivation”.

For more information on how to create massive results by incorporating tiny lifestyle changes check out my weight loss program…

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