Capstone Consultants will help you stay motivated

How to keep yourself motivated

Original Writer- Editor in Chief, Pick the Brain

Keeping yourself motivated can be a struggle no doubt. Drive is constantly murdered by negative thoughts and worries about things that haven’t even happened yet. The thing that separates successful people from people who fail is the ability to stay motivated and keep moving forward.

To be honest there really is no simple solution for this problem even after getting motivated again there will always be those negative things that try and drag you down and squash your motivation.  The thing to be constantly working towards is learning to understand your thoughts and how they drive you emotions. You have to learn how to nurture motivating thoughts, focus at the task at hand, and you’ll be able to achieve anything you set out to.

3 Most common reasons why we lose our motivation

1- Lack of confidence: if you don’t believe you can succeed, then why are you trying?

2- Lack of focus: if you don’t know what you’re working towards, then is there really anything you want?

3- Lack of direction: if you don’t know what to do, how can you be motivated to do anything at all?

How to boost confidence

The first way to lose your motivation is a lack of confidence. When you lose your confidence it is usually because you’re choosing to focus on what you want and are neglecting what you already have. When you only think about want, your mind will create reasons and excuses for why you aren’t getting it. This creates negative thoughts. 

The way to steer away from these thoughts is to focus on gratitude. Set aside time to focus on the positive things in life. Keep a mental list of your strengths and accomplishments. Most of us have a tendency to take our strengths for granted and focus on our failures. Learning to feel grateful will help you to realize how competent and successful you already are. This will rejuvenate your confidence and help you get motivated to accomplish your next success. 

When you think negatively your mind finds examples and distorts reality to confirm your beliefs. When you really believe that you deserve success, your mind will generate ways for you to accomplish it.

Developing Tangible Focus

The second way to kill your motivation is lack of confidence. Don’t focus on what you don’t want, focus on a tangible goal. Normally we think in terms of fear, afraid of being poor, afraid of being alone, afraid of losing respect. When you focus on your fears, it feeds on itself and grows and drains you.

Focus all of the energy you’re wasting on fear on a well defined goal. When you set a goal, you have a set of actions or a step by step process in place that will assure you reach that goal. The key is moving from an intangible desire to concrete, measurable steps. 

By focusing on a positive, attainable goal instead of an ambiguous fear, you put your brain to work. It instantly begins devising a plan for success. Instead of worrying about the future you start to actually do something about it. This is the first step in motivating yourself to take action, when you know what you want; it motivates you to devise a plan to achieve it.

Developing Direction

The final piece in the motivational puzzle is direction. Focus is the ultimate goal; direction is how you get there. Having a lack of direction will make you lose your motivation because without that step by step process, you’ll succumb to procrastination. The key to finding direction is identifying the activities that lead to success. Make an action plan that focuses on the activities that lead to big returns on your goals

Capstone Consultants rules for setting goals

The Rules for Good Goal Setting

Originally posted by Posted on May 13, 2008 in: IQ Matrix Maps, Life Success http://blog.iqmatrix.com/mind-map/smart-goal-setting-mind-map

Happy New Year to all of our readers! Here are some really awesome rules to follow when you’re setting goals that you want to accomplish this year.

1. Write positively: All of your goals MUST be written in a positive manner. This means writing them in a fashion that keeps your mind set on what it is that you want or want to accomplish, not what you want to avoid.

2. Have a personal benefit: Your goals that you set must have a beneficial outcome for you. This means that for every goal you set must help or benefit you in some way with your long term fulfillment and what you want in life.  Lots of people fall into the trap of achieving goals that are set for them by other people. This is definitely something to be avoided. If this sounds like you then you have to break the habit or else you will never be able to reach your full potential. Take control and responsibility of your goals and adjust them so that they benefit you.

3. Preserves current life benefits: Another one of these goal setting traps is when people set goals that have no relevance to their interests and what is best for them and their life style. If goals are set in this manner then the goal can almost become un-motivating.  If you are setting goals that do not benefit your lifestyle it ends up being a waste of time, you’ll be un-motivated to reach it and will also be unsuccessful in attaining it.

4. Desirable: you have to WANT to achieve the goals you set. Without the desire to reach your goals you will consistently have problems staying motivated. When you set undesirable goals you will simply give in to any obstacle that comes in the way. Lack of motivation is a waste of time that will keep you going around in circles for the rest of your life.

5. Challenging: If you don’t appropriately make your goals challenging you’ll get bored with trying to reach them. You want to your goals to just slightly be out of your reach so that it is physically attainable but keeps you pushing yourself to reach them.

6. In Everyone’s Best Interests: Always keep in mind the moral high ground. Your goals have to always stay consistently in the interest of everyone who surrounds you and will be influenced by its achievement. If your goals don’t support interest and goals of who you are surrounded by then you are guaranteed to face many challenges trying to achieve it and could possibly never reach them. 

Capstone Consultants outline for responsibility and leadership

How not to fall

There are 2 options when it comes to falling in a hole;

1. Fall in.

2. Use your experience, guidance, knowledge and peers around you to game plan a different route to take to avoid falling in the hole.

1. DON’T FALL IN!

It seems like such a simple concept but sometimes it can be difficult to not see it and you’ll end up falling right in anyways. Personally, my parent’s bright idea of teaching us not to touch a hot iron or shut our fingers in the door was to simply let us do it.

You may be asking yourself what we took from that…

Simple, we learned that there are some holes that come along that can be avoided.  For example, if you don’t want to fail your history exam, study for it. This leads me to my next point.

2. Recognize that there is a hole in front of you.

Obviously there’s no way to avoid it if you don’t embrace the fact that there is indeed a hole in front of you.

Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect hole- less world.

Pretending to not see the whole won’t prevent you from falling in it. I would know, I tried that once. See the thing for what it is and come to a realization that it exists.

3. Take responsibility.

Responsibility, a word that some people are scared of or don’t like.

If you can’t take responsibility for yourself, for your actions, and for your life, you might as well live in a hole. I say this because everyone has the choice. No excuses. There’s always a way to protect yourself from falling in a hole.  If you have the ability to say “I made a mistake” then you have just allowed yourself to have the ability to do something constructive about whatever hole you’ve found yourself to be stuck in.

4. Make a change.

The only way to stop falling in the same hole is to do something constructive and solution oriented about it.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

So, what I’m saying to you our reader is that if you keep doing the same things and making the same mistakes over and over and over, you’re defining insanity and you’ll end up in the same holes every time.

5. Walk AROUND the hole.

This is the most important part. Apply all of the changes you’ve made in the previous steps! Make the decision to not fall in the hole, that hole in front of you does not have to be your destiny.

Make the decision to walk on pavement and not to put yourself in holes.

6. Take a different route.

There are so many different roads that lead to success- choose the one that is going to fit your dreams, and goals best.

If you keep falling in holes, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and take a different route.

Everyday should be a new adventure.

Paraphrased from http://www.motivationalmemo.com/6-ways-to-avoid-the-hole-in-the-pavement/

Capstone Consultants with a poem on not giving up

Never Give Up! In that dark lonesome place between a dream dreamed and a dream realized, I have left a little light for you so you will know that someone cares and believes in your dream. Just where it becomes the most dark and difficult to find your way, there is the light I left for you. It will light your way, through the doubt, the confusion, and the fears, It will stay with you all the way to the realization of your dream. And when your dream has come true, please go back to that darkest place where you have been, And set the little light there to give heart to the next sweet soul that braves the path to his or her dreams. Dreamers are the architects of greatness. There wisdom lies within their souls. Dream long enough and hard enough and your dream can be attained.

Capstone Consultants with an excerpt from Awaken the Giant Within

Perception is Reality

An excerpt from:   Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins

He was bitter and cruel, an alcoholic and drug addict who almost killed himself several times.  Today he serves a life sentence in prison for the murder of a liquor store cashier who “got in his way.” 

He has two sons, born a mere eleven months apart, one of whom grew up to be “just like Dad”: a drug addict who lived by stealing and threatening others until he, too, was put in jail for attempted murder. 

His brother, however, is a different story: a man who’s raising three kids, enjoys his marriage, and appears to be truly happy.  As regional manager for a major national concern, he finds his work both challenging and rewarding.  He’s physically fit, and has no alcohol or drug addictions! 

How could these two young men have turned out so differently, having grown up in virtually the same environment? 

Both were asked privately, unbeknownst to the other, “Why has your life turned out this way?” 

They both provided the exact same answer:  “What else could I have become, having grown up with a father like that?”

Perception is reality. 

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” 

–Marcus Aurelius