Even when things are going well, we need to make sure that we get and stay motivated. And now, when many are finding the going tough, self-motviation is even more important. Affirmation - often recommended as a way to "turn yourself on" - won't do it. Positive thinking won't do it. You need to start a dialogue with your inner self - because if you can get past your habitual behaviour into your subconscious mind - then, you're on a winner.
Copyright (c) 2009 Willie Horton
For the last thirteen years, in each two-day workshop, I've asked my clients if they love themselves, if they think they're perfect. No-one answers "Yes". It's damn difficult to motivate yourself if there are things about yourself that you don't like. And, indeed, chances are that there are things that you don't like about yourself that you've been meaning to change but never do. After all, research shows that most people have similar New Year's Resolutions from one year to the next! And, on top of all that, people then read so-called self-help books and try to talk themselves into feeling good about themselves and being motivated.
Self-affirmation is pretty much a waste of time. Positive self-talk bombards the conscious mind with feel-good statements that don't make the conscious mind feel good! Because the conscious mind feels nothing - it just thinks - around 50,000 random thoughts each day. And most of those random thoughts are either useless or self-destructive. Your barking up the wrong tree.
It's your subconscious mind you want to get in touch with. It's your subconscious mind that harbours your self-doubts and your misconceived self-perceptions. It's your subconscious mind that uses those incorrect self-perceptions to create your everyday behaviour - your perceived strong points, your perceived weak points and their related self-defence mechanisms. It's your subconscious mind that was programmed with your view or yourself and the world during your so-called formative years, your childhood, when you were "young and impressionable". And, nowadays, today, it's your subconscious mind's out of date (many years out of date) self-view that creates your daily life.
Years - decades - of work in the fields of humanistic, behavioural, clinical and neuro psychology all prove this conclusively. Your subconscious mind, which is visual, took snapshots of the things that impressed you when you were young and impressionable. Those snapshots were programmed into your subconscious and those programs run today to enable you behave automatically through what psychology calls automaticity. Automaticity is great for getting habitual repetitive tasks done without you having to think about them. But your whole life is habitual and repetitive, your work colleagues and your nearest and dearest are so familiar to you that everything you do to them, for them and with them becomes habitual and repetitive. So, in fact, automaticity "enables" you doing almost everything without thinking about it. You don't even have to bother to turn up!
And that's why the University of Chicago will tell you that you only put 1% of you into the here and now. No wonder most people don't love themselves - they don't know themselves. How could they, they're not all there!
So, to motivate yourself you need to stop automatic behaviour. You do this, quite simply, by starting small. Stop doing little things automatically and, sooner or later, you'll start doing really important things mindfully too. Tomorrow morning, brush your teeth with the hand with which you don't habitually brush your teeth. The result will be that you will be more "all there" than normal and you will have started to disrupt your repetitive pattern of normal mindless living. This, in turn, will draw more of your subconscious mind's attention into the present moment, so that less of your subconscious will pay attention to the out of date snapshots that have been, up to now, dictating your automatic behaviour.
You don't have to talk yourself into being motivated - the normal person isn't listening anyway! You simply have to be a little more present than normal - more than 1% present. Then you will suddenly realise that you feel better, are more effective, more efficient and that little bit more turned on. Motivation becomes a useless concept - because concept is all it is. You feel motivated - you feel turned on - you experience the difference between being dead from the neck up and being more alive.
And when you are more alive, more turned on, more alert and more present, you have presence. Presence makes you more impressive. So, not only might you motivate yourself, you might motivate a few people around you too!
Try it tomorrow morning - you've nothing to lose - and so much to gain.
Labels Kill (or the bizarre behaviour of normal people)
"Normal" behaviour is dictated by our subconscious which, "normally" is focused in the past - when we were young and impressionable. One of the most destructive normal behaviours is the way we label people. We offend, hurt and kill each other because of those "labels". And, yet, that behaviour is just a big bad habit, developed over thousands of years. The good news is that we can break even the biggest habits by breaking little ones first.
Achieving Business Success in This Recession
Effortless success in business is now just as achievable as in any other economic environment. It's all about state of mind and whether you are able to focus on the job in hand or prefer to wallow in the "gloom and doom" in which everyone is currently investing their energy. Harness you mental energy - invest it in the present moment - and see an "unbelievable" return on that investment.
So Many Self-Help Books - So Little Change
Bookshops are full of "popular psychology" and "self-help" books - yet most lives stay the same and the world appears to be in a bigger mess than ever. The problem is that an intellectual understanding of "self-improvement" books is not enough - and, in fact, can be quite dangerous. You need to experience the difference between being "normal" and the "altered state of mind" in which you can clearly see the way towards happiness and success.
