Motivation + Perseverance + Meaning = Life Success, Part 2

By on April 24, 2012 in Goals, Habits, Motivation, Personal Growth, Productivity, Work

Perseverance is the second steppingstone to a higher quality life. We covered motivation in last week’s post. If you miss that post, I suggest you read Part 1 first.

What is perseverance?

Perseverance, according to the dictionary is a “steady and continued action or belief, usually over a long period and especially despite difficulties or setbacks.”

Perseverance is what keeps us from giving up, when the going gets rough. It’s what helps us get up when we’ve been knocked down. It pushes us to knock on that door, when the last 100 have slammed in our faces. It even helps us keep our focus on the goal when the path seems exceedingly boring. Most of all, it enables us to strive for the goal, even when it doesn’t seem within our reach.

Most of the important things we hope to accomplish in life will require at least a small dose of perseverance. The really important things, a huge dose.

“The more we must persevere, the greater the accomplishment.”

 

Real-life examples of perseverance

  • Building a successful business or career
  • Ahieving a weight goal
  • Running a marathon
  • Completing your education
  • Having a long-lasting, satisfying marriage
  • Parenting through the teen years (enough said)

Perseverance can be learned

Perseverance is a trait, a behavior, a skill that can be learned like any other skill. It’s a muscle. It takes time and effort. But it does get easier with practice. We practice perseverance by being a completionist. By setting smaller goals as well as large ones. By pushing ourselves, a little further beyond the point to which we think we cannot pass. A little bit more each time

Perseverance strategies:

1. Follow through on promises, to others as well as yourself.

2. Set small goals that are just a bit beyond your comfort zone. Repeat.

3. Envision achieving success in your endeavor when your hard work will finally pay off.

4. Use affirmations or motivational strategies to get in the proper mindset.

5. Finish everything you start! (Barring major catastrophes)

6. Tie up loose ends. Everything you leave undone is a constant reminder of your failure to successfully complete a project.

7. Get an accountability partner that you can count on to push you.

8. Celebrate! You are building your perseverance muscle.

All of these strategies help to build confidence in your ability to persevere when faced with obstacles. Building your perseverance skill, it’s all about believing that you can do it. Once you have done it, you know you can do it again. And over and over and over…

We know you can do it. We have faith in you. Now you just have to convince yourself.

Your turn

Where do you most need or want to persevere in your life?

Choose at least one strategy and get to it. Care to share?

 

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Motivation + Perseverance + Meaning = Life Success, Part 1

By on April 19, 2012 in Health, Inspiration, Motivation, Personal Growth

Motivation is one of the stepping-stones, to a higher quality life. When you decide what you want to do this day, this week, this year, this life, you must be motivated or you will not get where you want to go.

We’ll talk about perseverance and meaning in later posts, part 2 and part 3, but for now let’s talk about motivation.

What is it that motivates you?

Motivation needs to be personal, specific, and compelling.

Personal

My motivation is not yours. Good thing, because it wouldn’t work for you anyway. For a motivator to work, it must be truly your own.

Don’t let others determine what your motivation “should be,” or worse, push their own motivations on you. That just doesn’t work. We’ve seen it time and time again.

Specific

Generic motivations are generally not solid enough either. Wanting world peace, to feed the hungry, make more money, have a happier marriage, or be healthy are all lofty motivations, but they’re not specific enough.

To be successful motivation needs to be specific. The more specific the better. I want to avoid another heart attack or I can’t stand this stinking job and I need to get out of here, are much more solid and specific.

Compelling

Is your motivation important enough, strong enough, or compelling enough, to motivate you to successfully achieve what you want? Weak, ambiguous motivators aren’t going to cut it.

If you look again at the specific motivations mentioned above, they are also probably important enough and compelling enough to keep you moving in the right direction. Avoiding a heart attack, or leaving a job that is causing you a tremendous amount of stress, are very strong motivators.

Let me give you a quick example, from my own life:

I go out for my morning run. I have good intentions. I usually have a specific goal in mind. But good intentions only go so far. If I don’t keep my motivation in front of me, I often fall short.

Think motivation. Keep it in front of me. Get results I want.

In my case, the motivation is more about improving my strength, endurance and energy in the immediate future. The quality of my long-term health and longevity are affected as well, but they are not compelling enough by themselves.

In addition, I have a very real and compelling desire to make the most of opportunities that others do not have. I feel almost a personal duty to move, because I have the ability to do so. This odd rationalization works for me.

I have legs, and I will darn well use them. I have health, and I will darn well guard it. I have the opportunity and the ability to run, and I will darn well grab it.

For me this is personal enough, specific enough, and important enough to get out there, and keep going.

Your turn

Think of a personal or work situation in your own life where you are not getting results.

What is your motivation?

Ask if that motivation meets these three requirements.

Is it personal, specific, and compelling?

Spin it around, tweak it and turn it on its head until you own it, it’s real, and it pulls at you.

How can you make motivation work for you?

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Have Your Best Day in 4 Steps

By on April 17, 2012 in Health, Personal Growth

Step back for a moment from those ever-present goals, resolutions, and glorious new habits we’re bent on creating. Knowing where you want to go and what you want to do is only half the battle. Knowing how you will best use each day, will shape the rest of your life.

Try asking yourself these questions at the start of each day:

 

What thought will I begin the day with?

What happens in the first 10 minutes of our day, to great extent determines how the rest will follow. We have two choices; we can either take a few brief moments before we rise, to choose the thought or intention, which will guide our day. Or, we can jump out of bed and hit the ground running, rushing blindly through the rest of our day.

Which sounds nicer?

If your first thought upon waking is, “O Lord, not another day!” Or, “I hate my job, I hate my body, life sucks. Here we go again…” Try a new one. How would you like your day to be? What would you like to do today? Not tasks, think bigger picture.

“Today I will focus on actions, which align with my business goals.”

“I am shaping the minds of tomorrow.”

“Today, I will lead with kindness.”

“I am making healthy choices that will shape the quality of my future life.”

Whatever your thought is, make it a good one. Make it a positive one. Make it a truthful one.

 

What do I want to do today, that will improve my life, or the lives of others?

Is it a phone call? Is it an overdue task, which has been hanging over your head? Is it a bold action that you have been putting off, hoping that the courage will come?

Maybe it’s as simple as do the laundry or get groceries. Maybe it’s finish that proposal or that project. Maybe it’s work on writing that chapter. Maybe it’s ask for help. Maybe it’s look for new job or revise your resume. Maybe it’s pay the bills or balance your checkbook. Maybe it’s even volunteer to help someone else.

Sift through your list of intended goals, behavior changes, or items to achieve or complete. See if there is anything that you can do to make progress towards any of those objectives.

Highlight this action, and put it at the top of your list.


What qualities or behaviors do I need to call on today?

Even when we know what we want to do, and how we want to be, often our attitudes and behaviors undermine us. Look at how you’d like your day to be. What qualities do you need to demonstrate to make that day a reality?

  • Courage – I need to be brave and bold in my actions. My day will not be driven or derailed by my fears.
  • Patience – I need to be patient with others and myself. Things do not always happen on my timetable and people do not always move at my pace. That does not mean that the results I want will not come.
  • Positivity – I need to stay positive, and optimistic whenever possible. Criticism and complaining will get me nowhere. They only serve to keep me stuck in my own negativity and will not help me achieve my goals in any way.
  • Perseverance – I need to stay on course, and keep going, even when I no longer want to. When work or life become tedious, boring, or difficult, I need to keep pushing myself to finish what I have started.

The behaviors are qualities that you need to call on will be different from mine, and they will very likely change from day to day, according to where you are in your life and what you want to get done. The important thing is knowing which ones will best serve you in this day.

How will I determine if my day has been successful?

It’s extremely important to define what would make today successful or “good enough.” Be reasonable and realistic in your expectations. Most days, “good enough,” will be… well… good enough.

Consider both measurable and qualitative results. Clean the house, finish the project that’s due today, or make 20 sales calls, are clearly measurable. While laugh with my children, enjoy the company of others, or do the highest quality work possible are more qualitative, and therefore subjective.

The good news is, you are the only one who gets to decide.

 

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Round-up: Great Reminder Apps for iPhone

By on April 12, 2012 in Inspiration, Life Balance, Productivity, Time

Despite text messages, email and a constant stream of notifications, it’s still easy to forget things. We can all use a little help staying on track and bringing a little life back into our days. Any app that can help me do that is a wonderful thing.

I recently wrote a review for Lifehack.org on three reminder apps that I have personally found very helpful on my quest for better life management. Read the entire post…

Alarmed  - An all-in-one time app for iPhone/iPad that is packed with useful features; a pop-up reminder, timers, wakeup alarms and sleep timers available in the iTunes store.

TellMeLater – Simple and easy to use, it’s a great little app for all those times you want to remember something later. $.99 in the iTunes store.

Timeless Reminders – Timeless Reminders allows you capture your most inspiring photos, videos, music, audio, and text to create personally meaningful reminders that inspire you to take healthy and productive action in your life. It’s free in the iTunes store.

One is simple, one is multi-faceted, and the other is highly motivational. The most important thing is to choose which approach best works for you, so you will actually use it.

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5 Minutes in the Morning Will Make a World of Difference in Your Day

By on April 10, 2012 in Health, Productivity

plan

A good plan is like a road map: it shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there. - H. Stanley Judd

Do you have a plan for how you spend your time each week? Each day? Whether you are a working in the corner office, a tiny cubicle, from your home or on the road, you need to plan how you will spend your time. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you will look back at the end of the day and ask yourself where all the time went and why don’t you have more to show for your efforts. 

I know you’re anxious to get down to the nitty-gritty task of getting more accomplished in a hurry, but quick fixes just don’t work. You have to do the prep work and set up the foundation first, and then take small steps each day. It’s very similar to the process of losing weight. If you go on a crash diet, the weight will eventually all come back. If instead you embark on a process of changing your eating and health habits, you can have significant, sustainable success.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.  – Jim Rohn

So, how do you decide what to do each day and when to do it? Well, that depends in part on your personality and temperament. You can make this process as simple as 5 minutes each morning to quickly run through it or take 20 minutes to break everything down into GTD categories, context filters, and calendar slots. However, one thing is absolute; you must have a list to work from! No matter which approach you prefer, the linchpin of your system is your task list.

I don’t know anyone, and I truly mean anyone, who is highly productive, effective, and successful without some sort of ongoing list. You might prefer to keep it on paper, your computer or your smartphone – I discourage the use of sticky notes though, they’re too likely to get lost into that void of the “unknown tasks that fall through the cracks.”

Simple Planning

1. Start with your brain dump; quickly brainstorm any tasks you need to add to the list. If it’s a simple task add it to your master task list, if it’s a project, break it up into individual tasks.

2. Add any due dates or time constraints.

3. Prioritize those tasks that are due today or are big picture (cash flow, health, meaningful relationships) as “important.” You can rearrange tasks in order of importance if you choose – I just place a star next to the important ones, so I don’t have to keep moving the items on the list.

4. Choose 5-10 tasks to do today; depending on how full your schedule is and how much time you have available. Don’t overload your list. That’s just setting yourself up for failure and then you’ll beat yourself up, because you failed.

5. Do your top priority task first. Get it out of the way. Alternatively, you may choose instead, to do the task you’re dreading most. That will help eliminate the tendency to procrastinate and make you feel a whole lot better about crossing that dreaded task off the list.

Bonus – Schedule a period of at least 30-60 minutes of uninterrupted work or chore time. If you can do this first thing great, if it’s home chores, block out chunk of time in the evening or on the weekend to tackle them. Resist the temptation to be distracted and wander off to do something else. Make yourself focus.

 

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