After my conversation with Legend this weekend (on the upcoming 07.26.08 audio file), I am thinking about what motivates us. My motivation has been waning in other areas of my life, mainly meditation and exercise/dieting – I want to take my motivation back.
What I realized is that the visions and conditions that I had set to motivate my actions no longer applied. Like wind coming out of my sails, I simply stopped doing the good things I was doing and even enjoyed doing after the vision I had created had come to pass.
For example, I stopped working out since my motivation was to look great by mid-July. The moment mid-July past, I stopped!! I didn’t even realize it. Same with meditation… My motivation was to become incredibly good at meditation so that I no longer feared approaching and chatting with women I didn’t know. Now I have no problem with it and have had a whole bunch of great experiences this summer with new women. Once the fear left and the success started coming, my motivation went out the window for meditation. The conditions were met or no longer applied, so the motivation strategy disappeared!
When I realized this, my motivation started to make sense. Actually, I’m excited because I see a possibility to start taking my motivation to the next level.
Here are the questions I am going to ask myself for my different goals:
1) What do I really want? What is my goal?
2) What does it look/sound/feel/taste/smell like to be living in this goal?
3) Does this goal/vision inspire and excite you? (In the words of John Kehoe, “Does it have juice?”)
4) How can you make this goal/vision even more vivid and exciting?
5) How will doing process X (workout, meditation, whatever) help you reach your goal?
6) How will it feel to do process X, knowing on every level that it will be moving you closer to your goal?
What do you guys do to get motivated? I am tweaking this and I would love ideas to help me streamline it.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
how did meditation help u get rid of approach anxiety?
I’ll write a post about it when I have time. I’ve become a believer in yoga / meditation as a powerful self-improvement tool. Really powerful stuff…