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Motivation the key to happiness

Motivation the key to happiness

Five tips to motivate yourself in all situations

By Chuck Groot

  1. People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents. — Andrew Carnegie

 

All too often we slip into mediocrity without even knowing it. We take the easy way out, cut corners. The tough questions are rarely asked like, “Is good, good enough even though we could  do better?” It is all a matter of self-respect, self-love, and self-esteem. Take the road less travelled and do the best you can in all situations. You will be glad you did.

Here are a few tips to help you rise above.

  1. Think Like Those You Admire - Think about what they would do if they were in your position.
  2. Forget Money - If you love what you do, the money will come eventually and on your terms!
  3. Forget Fear – Fear puts a glacier where there is only a puddle. Mentally push it aside and it will be conquered.
  4. Forget toxic Relationships – You make the same amount of money, do the same things, are as motivated as the closest five people around you. Look closely at your relationships and see whether or not they are moving you forward or holding you back?
  5. Forget Complacency - When you’re comfortable, you stop achieving. You hit a plateau and you stagnate. When complacency prevails, enlightenment dissipates.
  6. Forget the Word “No” - Say “yes” more. Saying yes will get you out of your bubble and living life the way it’s meant to be. You will meet new people and have new experiences.

 

   2. Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days. – Zig Ziglar

 

Something just doesn’t feel right,” I thought to myself as I walked into my house after a long commute from work, being greeted by my exhausted. My stress and anxiety were heightened by the increasing uncertainty in my career, the unpredictability of events, and the complicated, fast nature of life, especially over the last few years. I became stuck, frozen, and paralyzed by the chaos of life and work I felt all around me.  spouse, who was trying to manage the kids after putting in a long day at her own job.

Here are four lessons I learned on how to find the right direction in life:

  1. Stop overthinking - By recognizing and ultimately accepting the unpredictable nature of life, we can stop overthinking and overanalyzing, and start living more in the present moment. This helps to open the mind up to the possibilities of today.
  2. Try anything. Do something. - When you take action and start doing things, you begin to feel better almost immediately. Instead of thinking about some far-off place in your head, full of uncertainty, you will be working on something that is really certain: your actions.
  3. Follow your inner voice -  just let go. I let go of all evidence and started following my gut.
  4. Believe in yourself - No longer suppressed by someone else’s ideas of the way things “ought to be,” I continued on my newly discovered path. The more I focused on my own voice and the voices of encouraging friends, the more I grew to believe in myself.

 

3. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” Les Brown

Overcoming Fear: The Only Way Out is Through. The experience of anxiety involves nervous system arousal. If your nervous system is not aroused, you cannot experience anxiety. Understandably, but unfortunately, most people attempt to cope with feelings of anxiety by avoiding situations or objects that elicit the feelings. Avoidance, however, prevents your nervous system from habituating. Therefore, avoidance guarantees that the feared object or situation will remain novel, and hence arousing, and hence anxiety provoking. Moreover, avoidance tends to generalize over time. If you avoid the elevator at work, you will soon begin to avoid all elevators, and then all buildings that house elevators, etcetera. Soon enough, you'll be living in a prison of avoidance.

Steps to overcoming fear:

  1. Breathing is the short circuit for anxiety - So if you start to feel fearful:
    1. Stop,
    2. Focus on your breath,
    3. Take a breath in (to the quick count of 7 in your mind),
    4. Then slowly breathe out (to the quick count of 11 in your mind).
  2. Prepare for peaceful performance
    1. Prepare for the expected fear bout by thinking about it ahead of time and breathing in a relaxed 7/11 way whilst imagining the upcoming situation ahead of time calms the association down, priming your mind to feel more relaxed naturally and automatically when the actual situation arrives.    
  3. Use a different part of your brain - use parts of  your 'the thinking brain'
    1. The easiest way to do this is with numbers. You can scale your own fear from 1 to 10, 10 being the most terrified it's possible to be and 1 being the ultimate relaxed state.
  4. Get control of your imagination - Fear and anxiety thrive when we imagine the worst.
    1. Sit down and do your 7/11 breathing.
    2. Count yourself down from whatever number you deem yourself to be to a 2 or a 1.
    3. Imagine seeing yourself in the situation you were dreading, but see yourself being calm, composed, cool, and comfortable and things going well. Doing this starts to recondition your mind to feel calmer and more upbeat about upcoming events or regular situations which were causing anxiety.

 

  1. Use the AWARE technique - AWARE is an acronym standing for:
    1. A: Accept the anxiety. Don't try to fight it.

 

  1. W: Watch the anxiety. Just watch it and when you notice it, scale your level of fear and start to breathe longer on the out-breath.

 

  1. A: Stands for 'Act normally'. Carry on talking or behaving as if nothing is different. This sends a powerful signal to your unconscious mind that its over-dramatic response is actually not needed because nothing that unusual is going on. Like fire fighters coming out and seeing that no emergency is happening and so going back to the fire station.

 

  1. R: Repeat the above steps in your mind if necessary.

 

  1. E: Expect the best. One of the greatest feelings in life is the realization that you can control fear much more than you thought possible.

 

4. “Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision.” – Tony Robbins

Four Tricks to Help You Make Any Difficult Decision. The decision making process is never easy. No matter how many tricks you have up your sleeve, you're bound to lose a little sleep over the big decisions. If you're really struggling, here are a few ways to make the process a little easier on yourself as you work through all the possibilities.

  1. Pretend Like You're Advising a Friend - The reasoning here is really simple: your short-term emotions get in the way of decisions, and that clouds your judgment. It's hard to break free of your emotions, but it helps to know they affect your choices.
  2. Limit the Amount of Information You Take In - It's a pretty common idea that the more information you have, the better decisions you can make. However, at some point, you cross a threshold where you have too much information. It's one of those dumb tricks our brains pull on us that's hard to counteract.
  3. Empower Your Inner Contrarian and Reverse Your Assumptions - It might sound a little crazy, but you're so prone to continue making the same kind of choices throughout your life that challenging yourself and doing the exact opposite is often the best way to get around this problem. The idea here is to confront your default behavior, step outside your comfort zone, and use your imagination to test some completely new ideas.
  4. Spreadsheet It Out - A lot of people love to make charts, and if that sounds like you, then you know a spreadsheet is one of the best ways to help make a better decision. A simple spreadsheet filled with pros, cons, qualities, rankings, and more can help give you the big picture of a decision.

 

5. “The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:11-12)

Research suggests that young people motivated to help others are poised for a successful career - “Nice guys finish last,” the saying goes—but not according to a recent study, which finds that serving others might be linked to personal and professional success. What’s more, their results suggest that the motivation to serve others may actually cause career optimism, not the other way around.

  1. Serving allows us to discover and develop our spiritual and life gifts.
  2. Serving allows us to experience miracles.
  3. Serving allows us to experience the joy and peace that comes from doing what is right.
  4. Serving helps us to be more like Jesus one of the greatest examples who ever lived.
  5. Serving increases our faith and hope in the future.
  6. Serving allows us to experience God’s presence in new ways and live in the present.

We make all sorts of rational explanations for not serving:

I don’t have time.

I don’t know what I would do.

I don’t have any special skills to contribute.

They don’t need me.

It will come to you, try different things, get out and get active. The benefits will greatly outweigh the effort and will change your life. It will help you get motivated to be the best that you can be.

 

Chuck Groot’s CPA, MPA, MBA credentials as an author, teacher, business coach and entrepreneur are noteworthy. His clients credit their success to his uncanny ability to get right to the root of any challenge that they put in front of him.  He credits his success to his clients and their willingness to being open to new ideas and desire in pursuit of excellence. 

As an entrepreneur, his enthusiasm and innovative approach have garnered him both professional success and the recognition of his peers. But his greatest delight is being able to share these skills with others and enabling them to be successful on their own.

 

[email protected]

 

http://www.chuckgroot.com

 

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