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Whether you're looking for the motivation to get up and exercise, stop smoking or find a job, there are two basic strategies people use to motivate themselves. Most people never learned both of them equally. One strategy is Towards Pleasure. The more popular strategy is Away From Pain. Nearly everyone has these in their neurology, but most of us resist or fear change because we habitually move away from what we don't enjoy. The trouble is that Away From strategy is short term, reacting to events and not sustainable.
Pain is often the first reason why people choose to change. Unfortunately they don't often keep motivated because they don't add the durable, sustainable motivation of focusing on a rewarding goal or outcome. The don't make plans nor establish habits for taking action on a plan. They continue to suffer and focus mainly on the problems in their lives, not the solution.
So what do you need to do? Utilize your brain, start to change and learn the habit of moving toward a goal. Link pleasure and reward with your goal and the steps required to reach it. This is really the long term, sustainable strategy. Successful people use this strategy and achieve great things.
What is the obstacle? Negativity in the messages we receive or pay attention to. Protect your mind from these negative messages.
The Basic Solution
With the endless negativity in the world about us, how do we keep motivated? Begin with the basics:
- Know your outcome. What specifically you want to achieve. Avoid negative people, things and places. These distract from your motivation and achieving your goals.
- Overcome past conditioning that trained you to interpret experiences as "bad." It's a good day or a bad day depending on whether you think so.
- Believe in your self, in your outcome and in what you can do. Avoid negative people, things and places. These distract from your motivation and achieving your goals.
- Make a plan to achieve your goals. Break it down into achievable steps.
- - Commit to achieving your goals in a reasonable time. Motivation comes from determination. To be able to succeed, you simply take actions every day. Keep doing that until you know you've made a habit of it.
Sometimes people need help to do these basic steps. A good Master Practitioner of NLP can help you.
Finally, no one else can achieve your goals for you. Only you can. The most important way to keep motivated is keep your goals in view. Remind yourself what to do then do it. Feel good about that. If you know the rewards for reaching your goals, then you know it's worth it to do what it takes to succeed.
