If you've been sitting on some dreams of your own lately, or have been feeling stuck in some area of your own life, here are a few simple steps (simple, but not always so easy) that I'm using to stay focused on the goals and dreams in my own life that I recently shared with you. You can use these very same techniques - it's not rocket science, but it does take a bit of determination and a firm decision to go for it, despite the bumps in the road...more
I know that people are constantly striving to get more out of life. I know that many people wish for, hope for, want for more success, more happiness, more wealth. But wishing, hoping and wanting something is simply a useless mental activity - a waste of energy - because the only thing that will get you what you want is beyond wishing, hoping and wanting - it's believing. More of that later! For now, if you really look around and observe the...more
What is the most frequently heard complaint in business? How about, "I don't have enough time?" Do you say it to yourself? Do you say it to other people? Do you take work home? Do you return to work on the weekends? Do you identify the cause of the complaint of not having enough time? After all, we all have the same amount of time in every 24-hour period. Now, let's turn the complaint around. How do you use your time?ANSWERING THE QUESTION - For starters, look at your calendar for the last week or month. What occupied the bulk of your time? What do you remember of each event? How many meetings did you attend? How many of those meetings were simply up-dates of past work or on-going work? How many phone conversations did you have? What was the purpose of those calls? How many people were involved simultaneously in the calls? How many lunches were on your calendar? What was accomplished during those lunches? Get a sense of what gobbles-up your time, especially what is non-productive.If you do not maintain a calendar, take any work-day and document how you use your time. To see patterns, divide the day into modules that are small enough for you to identify wasted time. Fifteen minutes...more
Across 17 chapters, mental preparation concepts and techniques have been discussed in detail in this book. We now look at how to bring it all together in an easy step-by-step approach for a grappler or combat athlete to start applying these methods on a regular basis. Some key points from earlier chapters will be highlighted here to emphasize their...more
1. Not having a clear goal in mindNot knowing exactly what you want, or knowing that but not keeping it in mind, makes it very hard to remember what you need to do or why. If you don't have a clear, short explanation of your goal that you could give anyone who asked at a moment's notice, talk with a friend or write down your ideas until you can...more
One of the most encouraging pieces of information I've turned up lately about self-motivation is that willpower can be strengthened by practice. However, the exact kind of practice is important if you want good results.Some articles I've read liken willpower to a muscle, and suggest that all you have to do to strengthen willpower is to exercise that muscle. A New York Times blog entry makes the recommendation as an example that you try strengthening willpower by making yourself brush your teeth on the wrong side.The problem with this kind of view is that it assumes willpower is the same thing as self-control, ignoring the other pieces of the puzzle.Willpower usually involves overcoming ingrained habits we don't like (like staying up watching television too late every night) or developing new habits that we do like (like taking ten minutes to straighten up at the end of every work day). And while building or breaking habits can be done with self-control to some extent, trying to increase your self-control in general in order to build or break a particular habit is like trying to build a brick wall by lifting weights: sure, you'll get a stronger over time, and be able to lift the...more
Writing-especially writing and trying to sell large projects, like novels-is a clear-cut example of an area where self-motivation is essential. While this post is written especially for writers, the techniques I'll talk about can be applied to...more
Some of the tasks that are hardest to get ourselves to do are the big, overwhelming ones like cleaning out a junk room or garage, doing a full-scale edit on a novel, or organizing papers or files. Often we think about these kinds of tasks as...more
Here's an issue Merrie Haskell, a writer, mentions in a comment to an earlier post: "I've noticed that I go through periodic surges of willpower. (I guess that's what I mean.) I will be in a rut for months, and really feel stuck; then wake up one...more
A recent article on the Psychology Today site by psychologist Kelly McGonigal, "The Self-Control Costs of Moral Flexibility," talks about research that seems to show that it's easier to make good choices when we make a rule of them. For instance,...more
As a rule, our culture tends to think of emotions as things that well up inside us in a way that's more or less completely outside our control. We can avoid emotional situations, this point of view goes, or we can suppress them, but they are what we...more
I've talked recently about how emotions can amplify themselves, an effect called "mood congruity." This phenomenon is like an overzealous lunchlady, who sees a spoonful of mushy peas on your plate and keeps serving you more and more on the assumption...more