Motivation
Motivation has become a popular word nowadays. There are
motivational coaches and speakers, and motivational books and articles. What is
it actually, and why do you need it?
Motivation is a driving force. In order to accomplish anything,
you need a driving force, otherwise nothing will happen. A wish is not strong
enough to make you take action. A wish is a weak desire. Only a strong desire
can drive forward, to act and accomplish aims and goals.
In order to get motivated, you need to know exactly what it is
that you want, to possess a strong desire, and to be willing to do whatever it
takes to accomplish your goal.
More than often there is lack of motivation or only a short-lived
one. How many times have you started enthusiastically a weight loss program,
began a bodybuilding or aerobics training program or started to learn a foreign
language, only to stop after a short while? Few people possess enough willpower
and self-discipline to go through to the end with what they begin.
It’s easier to show motivation in connection with a subject that
is dear to you. If you desire something, but you don't feel motivated enough to
act, this means that the desire is not important enough. To be motivated to
take action and do something in respect to your desire, you need to possess a
really strong desire.
Motivation has much to do with the emotions and the imagination,
which means that if you want to increase it, you have to work on your feelings
and imagination.
Tips to increase your
motivation:
1. Think, meditate and find out whether you really want to achieve
your desire, and whether it is worth the effort and time.
2. Make your goal very clear. Writing it down will help.
3. Think often about your goal or desire.
4. Visualize your goal as already accomplished, and close your
mind to contrary thoughts.
5. Read books or articles about the subject of your goal.
6. Read about people who have achieved success.
7. Think often about the benefits you will gain by achieving your
goal.
8. Visualize, and think about how you would feel after achieving
your goal.
9. Repeat positive affirmations such as: "I have the desire
and inner strength to achieve my goal". Repeat this affirmation often,
with faith and strong feelings.
10. Start with doing something small concerning your goal. Success
in small matters leads to greater success.
Motivation is the powerful engine that moves you towards success
and accomplishments in every area.
Everyone is motivated and excited about losing weight in
January. The promise of a new year ignites
motivation and will power, but it can quickly wane after the challenges of life
wear us down. The time to intensify motivation is NOW. You must intensify your
will power by tapping into your personal motivators.
The Most Important Motivator
Although you may think that your family is your top motivator,
actually it’s YOU! Because if you’re not healthy, then, your family will not be
healthy. This is the time to be selfish – remember to take care of Number 1 –
You!
Develop and maintain a positive attitude with life as well as an
open mind to new ideas about health and nutrition. Focus on what you need to do
to be healthy, not the reasons why you cannot be healthy. What you focus on
will be what defines you and your journey – so focus on the positive, not the
negative. Establish relationships with positive people full of hope, and
healthy people who have either beat their diabetes or are controlling it with
nutrition and exercise.
Look for what you love about your family members and friends
instead of what’s wrong with them. Acknowledge these positive perspectives to
each of them individually and together. Keep in mind that discord with family
members and friends can create stress. Also, starting out on this new journey
may threaten some relationships that are founded on co-dependency. Some of
their resistance to your changes may be due to their concern that they may lose
your friendship. Assure them that that is not the case. But also assure them
that you will not allow them to deter you from your new journey. Try to find a
partner or friend who will work with you and support you on your journey.
Will Power and Discipline
Will power is the ability to overcome laziness
and procrastination. It is the ability to control or reject unnecessary or
harmful impulses. It is the ability to arrive to a decision and follow it with
perseverance until its successful accomplishment. It is the inner power that
overcomes the desire to indulge in unnecessary and useless habits, and the
inner strength that overcomes inner emotional and mental resistance for taking
action – to lose weight. It is one of the corner stones of success, both
spiritual and material.
Discipline is the companion of will power. It endows with the stamina to
persevere in whatever one does. It bestows the ability to withstand hardships
and difficulties, whether physical, emotional or mental. It grants the ability
to reject immediate satisfaction, in order to gain something better, but which
requires empowerment, empowerment, effort, execution and evolution – The 4 Es of getting things done.
You must feel empowered to go on a journey that will improve your
health. Everyone associates effort with doing physical things, but there is a
mental side to effort as well. Execution is the “implementation of effort” – it
is necessary to make the actual
changes to lose the weight. And, evolution is the change or evolvement of you
as a person – because you will be a
different person after this journey to wellness.
Everyone has inner, unconscious, or partly conscious impulses,
making them say or do things they later regret saying or doing. On many
occasions people do not think before they talk or act. By developing these two
powers, one becomes conscious of the inner, subconscious impulses, and gains
the ability to reject them when they are not for his/her own good.
Will power and discipline help us to choose our behavior and reactions, instead of being
ruled by them. Their possession won't make life dull or boring. On the
contrary, you will feel more powerful, in charge of yourself and your
surroundings, happy and satisfied.
How many times have you felt too weak, lazy or shy to do something
you wanted to do? You can gain inner strength, initiative and the ability to
make decisions and follow them. It is not difficult to develop these two
powers. If you are earnest and are willing to become stronger, you will
certainly succeed.
There is a misconception in the public mind regarding will power.
It is erroneously thought to be something strenuous and difficult, and that one
has to exert and tense the body and mind when expressing it. It is a completely
wrong concept. This is one of the reasons why people avoid using it, though
they are conscious of its benefits. They acknowledge the fact that the
employment of will power in their life and affairs will greatly help them, and
that they need to strengthen it, yet they do nothing about it.
Will power gets stronger by holding back and not allowing the
expression of unimportant, unnecessary and unhealthy thoughts, feelings,
actions and reactions. If this saved energy is not allowed expression, it is
stored inside you like a battery, and it becomes available at the time of need.
By practicing appropriate exercises, you develop your powers the same way, as a
person who trains his/her muscles in order to strengthen them.
Developing Will Power and
Discipline
An effective method for developing and improving these abilities
is to perform certain actions or activities, which you would rather avoid doing
due to laziness, procrastination, weakness, shyness, etc. By doing something
that you do not like doing or are too lazy to do, you overcome your
subconscious resistance, train your mind to obey you, strengthen your inner
powers and gain inner strength. Muscles get stronger by resisting the power of
the barbells. Inner strength is attained by overcoming inner resistance.
Remember, strengthening one of these abilities, automatically
strengthens the other one. Here are a few exercises:
1) You are sitting in a bus or train and an old man or woman, or a
pregnant lady walks in. Stand up and give up your seat even if you prefer to
stay seated. Do this not just because it is polite, but because you are doing
something that you are reluctant to do. In this way you are overcoming the
resistance of your body, mind and feelings.
2) There are dishes in the sink that need washing, and you
postpone washing them for later. Get up and wash them now. Do not let your
laziness overcome you. When you know that in this way you are developing your
will power, and if you are convinced of the importance of will power in your
life, it will be easier for you to do whatever you have to do.
3) You come home tired from work and sit in front of the TV
because you feel too lazy and tired to go and wash. Do not obey the desire to
just sit, but go and have a shower
4) You may know your body needs some physical exercise, but
instead you keep on sitting doing nothing or watching a movie. Get up and walk,
run or do some other physical exercise.
5) Do you like your coffee with sugar? Then for a whole week
decide to drink it without sugar. You like to drink three cups of coffee each
day? For a week drink only two.
Do you hate Brussel sprouts or broccoli? Then, for a whole week,
eat Brussel sprouts for breakfast and dinner. Then, for the next week, eat
broccoli for breakfast.
6) Sometimes, when you want to say something that is not
important, decide not to say it.
7) Don't read some unimportant gossip in the newspaper or magazine,
even if you want to.
8) You have a desire to eat something not too healthy. For the
sake of the exercise refuse the desire.
9) If you find yourself thinking unimportant, unnecessary,
negative thoughts, try to develop lack of interest in them, by thinking about
their futility.
10) Overcome your laziness. Convince yourself of the importance of
what is to be done. Convince your mind that you gain inner strength when you
act and do things, in spite of laziness, reluctance or senseless inner
resistance.
Never say that you cannot follow the above exercises, because you certainly
can. Be persistent no matter what. Motivate yourself by thinking about of the
importance of performing the exercises, and the inner power and strength you
will gain.
Please Note: Trying to attempt too many exercises
when you are still a beginner, might end in disappointment. It is better to
start training yourself through easier exercises at first, and gradually
increase the number and difficulty of the exercises. Practice will improve and
increase your power, giving you a lot of satisfaction.
Most of these exercises can be practiced anywhere, anytime. You do
not have to devote special times for them. Believe me, they are very effective.
Practicing them enables you to be strong and exercise will power and
self-discipline in everything you do. This power would become available
whenever needed.
If you practice weight lifting, running or doing aerobics, you
strengthen your body. When you need to move something heavy, you have the
strength for it. By studying French each day, you will be able to talk French
when you travel to France. The same thing happens with will power and
self-discipline. By strengthening them, they become available whenever they are
needed.
It is important to remember not to choose exercises that might
affect adversely your body or health. Deny and give up what is not necessary,
futile or is harmful, but not what is vital for your well being. Always use
your reason and common sense, so that you do no damage to yourself.
If for the sake of an exercise, you stop doing something that you
usually do, and overcome the inner resistance concerning it, you may resume
doing it, if it is not harmful. For example, if you love drinking orange juice,
and for the sake of an exercise you switch to drinking apple juice, after doing
so for some time and after it makes no great difference to you, you may go back
to drinking orange juice, if you still like it. The point here is to develop
inner strength, not making life difficult for you or continue doing things you
don't like to do.
Advantages of Possessing
Strong Will Power and Self Discipline
You need both of them in order to rule your thoughts and to be the
boss of your mind. The stronger they are, the more control you have over your
thoughts, and consequently your powers of concentration get stronger.
When you are the master of your mind you enjoy inner peace and
happiness. Outer events do not sway you, and circumstances have no power over
your peace of mind. This might sound too unreal for you, but experience will
prove to you that all the above is true.
These abilities are essential for self growth, spiritual growth
and meditation. They give you control over your daily life, help you improve
your habits and behavior, and they are the keys to every success.
Practice the exercises presented here earnestly and with persistence,
and you will go really far.
Discipline
Once
you’re motivated and understand will power, you must have the discipline to
continue with your weight loss goals.
What
is discipline? Discipline is the training of your mind to control, perceived
harmful, urges, and to continue to control these urges until a satisfactory
resolution has been sought.
Discipline
occurs in every part of your life right now, you might not have recognized it
but it does. When you get out of bed in the morning to go to work, that is self
discipline; when you brush your teeth every morning, that is self discipline;
when you have a shower or a bath every morning, that is self discipline.
Although you might not have recognized it as such we use this skill every day
in our lives.
Imagine
if you harnessed this power to change different aspects of your life. There are
many areas of your life it could benefit; in fact it could benefit every area
of your life. If you want to give up smoking, no matter what programs are
available to do so, it ultimately comes down to self discipline. If you want to
lose weight, yes it’s great that there are groups of people who are doing the
same as they can be a good motivator but again it comes down to self
discipline.
Who’s in control of your
mind?
With
television, computers, e-mail, radio, mobile phones, video, iPods, newspapers, magazines,
etc there has never been an easier way to reach our minds through advertising.
A lot of us don’t realize that we are all being manipulated in some way to do
things that may be harmful to us. I am not talking conspiracy or anything like
that, it’s been a natural progression. Advertisers have become a lot smarter
and appealed to our psyche rather than our rational minds, there are some great
adverts out there which slip into our minds and build up and eventually get us
to act to buy something or do something.
For
example our children are bombarded with advertisements for fast foods
(MacDonald’s anyone?) or a new toy (because they have to have the latest thing).
Why is so much spent on advertising for children when it’s the adults who are buying?
Because it’s the children who ultimately apply the pressure for us to go to
MacDonald’s or to buy the latest toy.
The practice of self
discipline
While
it’s hard to control your thoughts and actions as a child it should be easier
for an adult, you would think! However this is not necessarily the case. If
you’ve not been taught self discipline as a child how are you expected to self
discipline yourself as an adult?
The
truth is self discipline comes automatically for some us as our
responsibilities become greater. For example when we get a job, we have to get
up at a set time, we have to work a set number of hours, we have to conform to
the companies rules and procedures, that’s all self discipline. Usually the
things we learn to practice self discipline in are the things we are rewarded with
e.g. our job, going to the gym, saving money, making love.
Depending
on the person some of these rewards will be bigger and have more meaning than some
of the others.
What
good would self discipline have in your life?
What
if you could practice self discipline in everything you do? How would your life
change? Would it change? Think of these questions for a moment. Some of the
areas in your life you could change might be:
• The
amount of time spent with the kids
• Your
health
• Your
weight
• Your
fitness
• The
tidiness of your house or office
• Fixing
all the broken things in your house (fix that shelf once and for all)
• The
amount of time spent watching TV
• Watching
what you eat
• Fasting
for one day per week
• Having
a cold shower every morning
• Get
your finances sorted out
• Write
those letters you’ve been meaning to write
• Make
the phone calls you’ve been meaning to make
• Organize
your life
• Getting
up early to be thankful of all the things you have
The
list could go on and on ... the key is to identity the things that you want to do.
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