What is your why? This is what gives you the energy to do stuff. Knowing who you are and what you are about, helps you understand your WHY for every big decision or life plan. To feel motivated to do things, we have to actually want to do them. Lets take a look at Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle:
Later in this course we are going to unpick and build up from our core values and skills. So for now, without thinking too deeply, take a deep breath and visualise your WHY. What is your why? Why are you studying your subject? Why are interested in your hobbies? What drives you? This is your motivation.
Apply Your Thinking:
What keeps you motivated? Lets think now about practical motivation tricks. Write down things that help you stay on track and keep going with the task at hand, whatever that is…
You know when you can feel your concentration dwindling, and your thoughts go elsewhere, away fro the task at hand? What do you know works, to get you back on track? Is it going for a quick walk, making a to do list, free writing your loud thoughts, hoovering the hallway?
Knowing where you are going can help you feel motivated to do things… Having a goal or aim is functional, it allows you to work backwards from that point and put in place steps to action it. Writing down your goal may seem like a small step, maybe even one that you don’t think is important enough to do.
- When you write your goal down, you give yourself a tangible source of motivation. You will never forget what you are working towards because it’s written down and you can look at it every single day.
- You have to process a whole lot of information on a daily basis. In a process called encoding, our brain decides which information will be stored long-term and which information can be discarded. Writing down your goal helps the brain to encode it – essentially, to realise that the information is important enough to hold onto.
- It helps to keep you accountable. When you write your goal down, especially when you use positive language, you make a written agreement with yourself. You begin to build self accountability into your future.
See Also: Rachel from the Play Philosophy talk about ADHD and motivation
Feel like you think differently or need help unlocking your motivation or tactics for getting stuff done? Watch Rachel discuss what she is learning about ADHD and her own brain, and how this might be useful for anyone! What can we do to unlock the box to make things happen?
Motivation to stay on track doesn’t help us if we don’t know what the goal is, right…?
It is easy to buy into the illusion that if you know exactly what you want, can you get it. In the last visioning activity, your dream might not have been that tangible, or maybe it was super complex, pulling you in different directions, with choices to make and lots of options and unknowns ahead?
We are going to think about tactics and tools in which you can build a dream for yourself, when you just might not know what you want. That feeling of having a dream, will be underpinned by your WHY. And your WHY will give the motivation to persevere…
Watch: Inspiration is Different to Motivation
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I want you to take note of something really important here, when listening to Simon Sinek talk briefly in the video. Feeling inspired to do something gives us motivation, but inspiration and motivation are different. We need our WHY to get us out of bed and keep us excited, curious and ready to do more. So… How can you stay optimistic and realistic?
“Inspiration is different to Motivation”
Simon Sinek
Activity
1) List four focus areas in your life
These focus areas are things that encompass parts of you, your everyday and your identity. It might be things that you love, places you regularly visit, family and friends, a way you hope to live, a skillset that you use regularly or are developing, a career or future hopes in a career, things you value. For example, this might look like:
- Family: my home life, siblings and looking after them in the week, my extended family and our busy schedule of commitments and shared time.
- Creative: being creative, following my enjoyment of creating things, going to my evening class and learning.
- Job and career: Earning a good income, being able to provide and be independent, supporting my family
- Running and exercise: being able to run regularly, run with friends, volunteer with my running club, support social runs and push my own endurance within running.
2) What kind of feelings and experiences do you want in your life?
When you don’t know what you want it is not fruitful to set goals based on achievement, but based on what kind of days you want to live in your future. A useful exercise might be to think up The Perfect Day. Write down what happens in a course of one day from waking up to going to bed if it were the most perfect day for you. You can cram as much in as you like and describe whatever is important to you.
Look over your day, and note down the feelings and associated specific experiences from the day.
3) Are you doing things that point you in a direction that excites you more?
Based on the things you have identified above, ask yourself if you are currently doing things that excite you? Highlight the stuff you have listed that genuinely excite you, it doesn’t matter if they’re not going to make you money, just pay attention to the important factors for you…
4) Still feeling like “I don’t know what I want”? Then try and list what is ‘Hot’ and what is ‘Cold’
You have thought a lot about positivity, hopes and dreams and ways to encourage ideas for your future. Not to bring a downer on things, but take a look at it all and list what is hot and what is cold for you. eg. Making money and earning a good salary HOT….Sitting at a desk and looking at a screen COLD.
These opposites will help you to identify ways that you can see what you want, and the ways that won’t work for you when thinking about how to get there.
Stop and Reflect:
Make a list of the things (anything from an emotional vibe, to a tool, to a skill…anything) you feel you DO NOT HAVE to progress the above list. Write these down, bullet points are fine. Its super useful to acknowledge where we feel we need help, need to learn, feel we might need support or acknowledge an emotion towards something.