SUMMARY 

• Believe in Yourself! –  If you are doubting yourself your motivation will be low. Remind yourself of the times you achieved. Look for people around you who have achieved similar things and remind yourself that if other people can do it ‘I can too!
• Zero in on ‘why?’ – Why do you want to reach your goals? If you can understand why, you can ignite the motivation again to continue the journey
• Maintain Positivity –  Maximise the fundamentals in life. How is your diet, sleep and exercise?
• Give Yourself Some Support –  Support yourself through knowledge. Books, courses, articles, whatever you can do to close the gap between what you think you should know and where you currently are. Enlist the support of others, experts or people that accompany you on your journey
• Create Clarity –  Clarify exactly what it is you are working on, or your motivation will inevitably suffer
• Minimize Distractions –  Remove your phone, close down computer tabs. If you are distracted you are more likely to lose motivation.

TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever struggled to stay motivated even though something was really important for you and then as a result, didn’t feel good about yourself or just started to feel down about your ability to achieve whatever it is that you’re going for in life? Well, that’s not how I want you to feel going forward.

Today I want to talk to you about six general areas, which if you focus on these areas, you can dramatically increase your motivation or simply increase your likelihood of sticking with whatever it is that you’re trying to work on.

Hi, my name is Eric Partaker and I’m on a mission to help people reach their full potential in their business and life. Let’s dive straight into it. So six focal points for you to keep your motivation high so that you can achieve the things that you want to achieve in both business and life.

Number one area for you to focus on, especially if your motivation is low, by the way, you could be using this video both to make sure that your motivation is as high as you would like it to be right before starting on something or you can use it almost as a troubleshooting guide to figure out where is your motivation low.

Number one, the number one thing that you can do to increase your motivation is to really focus on self-belief. You may not think that self belief is something that you can increase, but then you’d be wrong. You absolutely can increase your self belief.

If you’re doubting yourself, your motivation will be low. How do you increase your self belief? Well, one simple thing you can do is to remember back in time, other similar things that you’ve done similar to the situation, the thing that you’re working on, where you achieved the success, despite whatever difficulty that you were facing and use that as a point of evidence. An example that you can do this again because you’ve done it in the past in a similar way.

You can also be looking at people around you who have achieved similar things and realize that, wow, okay. This isn’t the first time that this has been done. This has been done by other people before and if other people can do it, I can do it too. There’s a beauty and magic in realizing that others have gone before you that you’re not alone so to speak on whatever this journey is that you’re on.

The number two area that you can focus on to increase your motivation is zeroing in on your why. Why is it that you’re doing this? Get really specific. When we tap into the why behind something, the why behind why we’re doing something, when we really zero in on the benefits that it creates for ourself, for others, it ignites motivation within. It ignites a passion. It takes us to a different level, but if we don’t take the time to understand why we’re doing something, then the first time that we encounter difficulty, we might just stop. If we really understand why, then it ignites that motivation once again and makes us want to continue that journey ahead.

The third general area that you can focus on to increase your motivation is making sure that you’re maintaining your positivity. I’m going to go through maybe a counter-intuitive way to maintain your positivity. I do not maintain my positivity by telling myself to just be more positive. Just be happy. Yes, that can work, but when it comes to motivation, I look at positivity in a slightly different lens. I look at maximizing the fundamentals in my life.

When my positivity is low, I know my motivation is low. Why will my positivity be low? Usually because three things tend to be off. Either my diet’s off my sleep is off, or my exercise is off, or perhaps all three. I’m sure you’ve recognized for example, this in the past, that when you kind of get into a rut and you’re eating poorly, it has a negative effect on your motivation. You kind of don’t feel like doing anything. It’s actually scientifically proven for example, that if you’re eating poor foods, it has a negative impact on your brain. It actually makes you feel a little bit more negative. Makes you feel a little bit more depressed and down and all of that is an absolute nightmare for maintaining your motivation. You’re keeping your motivation at a high level.

Similar with exercise. If your body is not moving and our bodies are designed to move, and if your body is not moving, if you’re not receiving the exercise or giving yourself that energy boost that your body needs throughout the day, some kind of cardiovascular or maybe weight training activity, then it will have a negative impact on your motivation. Maybe not that same day, maybe the next day, or the day after, but eventually a lack of movement and exercise will decrease your positivity, which decreases your motivation.

The third thing that decreases positivity, which decreases motivation is sleep. If you do not get a proper night’s sleep, you’re more likely to feel negative. You’re more likely to just not have a happy spirit conducive to staying in a highly motivated state. If your positivity is low, once again, it’s going to lower your motivation. Rather than just telling yourself to be positive I would look at, are you eating well? Are you exercising well? Are you getting the sleep that your mind and body deserve? Do those three things. Those three fundamentals, your positivity will stay high, which will keep your motivation where it needs to be.

Number four area that I like to look at, to increase my motivation or to make sure my motivation is where it needs to be is just a general area of support. Now, how do we create support? Well, one area, one way in which we can create support for ourselves is just simply through knowledge.

A lot of times when you feel that you’re not motivated, it could simply be that you don’t have the right knowledge to tackle whatever it is that you’re working on. There are so many ways that you can increase your knowledge. You could be reading a book, you could be taking a course. You could be researching various articles. All of these represent ways to increase that knowledge in your mind so that you could feel more motivated with whatever it is that you’re working on. So it doesn’t feel so daunting as a task.

If you’re not feeling motivated, think about support. Do you feel supported? Do you feel supported in terms of having the right knowledge? Then secondly, do you feel supported by having the right people around you?

One thing that can take away from your motivation is not having the people around you who perhaps have done what it is that you’re trying to do, or have an expert opinion, or expert advice on whatever it is that you’re trying to work on. Having that support can really help, especially if it’s coming from an expert, but it doesn’t just need to be an expert.

Sometimes having that support is just having somebody that we’re working on a project with. If you’re trying to stay motivated, another thing that you can do to increase your level of support around the project is just to work on whatever it is that you’re trying to do. A goal, or a project, or an activity in the company of a friend. Have an accountability partner. Have somebody there who can provide support in that way.

Another fantastic way to create support is to specifically create a challenge around whatever it is that you’re trying to do. Once again, this can be done with friends or people in your network, but get together as a group and say, “Okay, let’s try to achieve this together. Within the next week, two weeks, month, three months, whatever the goal is, let’s set ourselves a challenge.” Perhaps there’s a prize associated with achieving it, perhaps there isn’t, but create that support mechanism and you will see that your motivation increases.

Again, a quick summary on the whole support area for increasing your motivation. Support yourself through knowledge. Books, courses, articles, whatever you can do to close that gap between what you think you should know and where you currently are. Enlist the support of others in the form of experts or just simply in the form of having other people accompany you on that journey.

Number five area to focus on to make sure that your motivation is as high as you would like it to be is in the area of clarity. We need clarity on whatever it is that we’re working on, or our motivation will suffer. If we’re not clear, it’s sort of like just walking through a maze blindfolded. You’re trying to find your way out, but you keep hitting walls and you get stuck. As a result of getting stuck, then eventually you will just give up.

We create clarity by knowing exactly where is it that I’m going? What’s the goal? When is it that I want to achieve this goal? What are the sub steps to the goal? This is a very important point, the sub steps because our goal can’t be too far out in the future. We need clarity in our goals by defining not just what it is that we want to achieve by when, but also by breaking them down into three or five steps on our way to achieving the big thing that we’re after.

This by the way is also scientifically proven to increase motivation by bringing that first taste of success sooner rather than later in the form of a sub goal. On our way to achieving the bigger goal, we’re more likely to stay motivated.

Ask yourself at the start of a project or at the start of a goal that you’re working on, “Okay, what is the goal? Where is it that I want to go to? What is the destination that I’m trying to get to? But then what are the milestones along the way? What could I be doing on a weekly or a monthly basis that shows that I’m making progress?”

Another little hack here that you can do to increase your clarity is to not have the goal of just being milestone things that you’re seeking to achieve, but also just more behavioral things. Let me give you a quick example.

Let’s say that one of your goals is simply to get into better shape and you want to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain time. That feels like it’s a great goal, but that’s an outcome that you’re trying to achieve. Another simple hack here is to actually break that goal down into behavioral goals.

Suddenly while we’re working towards that in the future, our goal could become the number of gym sessions that we’re going to do each and every week or our goal could become the number of minutes that we’re going to spend in the gym each and every day.

Think about creating clarity in all of those ways. Having a clear outcome for what you want to achieve by when, making sure that you’re breaking it down into the sub steps, and asking yourself, can the subset goals just be milestones, just mini versions or mini points on the way to achieving whatever it is that I want to achieve or could they also be behavioral things? Things which if I do every single day will add up to achieving the goal that I’m trying to achieve.

The number six area to focus on to keep your motivation high is distraction. We want to minimize distraction in order to keep our motivation where it needs to be. How do we minimize distraction? Well, when it comes to working on a particular goal or project, keep your phone for example, out of sight. That’s going to be very distracting to have that with insight at all times.

If you’re working on something on the computer, close down all those browser tabs. You do not need all 30 of those tabs open. You don’t need to be constantly researching the next new thing as you’re working on whatever it is that you’re trying to do. Close down all the tabs, work on a document for example, in full screen mode, keep your phones, devices out of sight. All of that will help you stay motivated.

Of course, if you’re exercising and that’s your goal, a device here might be helpful. It might help you stay focused and stay in the zone for example if you’re listening to music on your device. Obviously you have to kind of take this and adapt it to whatever it is that you’re working on at the moment motivation-wise, but know that our goal here is to minimize distraction.

Sometimes minimizing distraction when we’re exercising or working on our health could be getting ourselves into a zone with music or something like that. When it comes to working on things in isolation, often those devices, our telephone for example, can really, really distract us. If we’re distracted, we’re less likely to stay motivated.

I hope you’ve enjoyed that and if you head over to my website at ericpartaker.com, you can also subscribe to my weekly Peak Performance Insights Newsletter.