In my most recent blog I stated that the most important take away from my new book, iMotivateMe: Take Control of Your Motivation to Reach Your Goals and Achieve Your Dreams, and my workshops and teachings is “You are responsible for your own motivation.” This is why I refer to it as self motivation.

If you have a dream, some special change you want to make in your life, I can guarantee you, no one cares about it as much as you do. I can also guarantee you that no one knows you as well as you do, so no one is going to know your motivators, the things that motivate you, and your demotivators, the things that rob you of your motivation. If you want to make your dream come true, you need to take control of your motivation.

In today’s blog I want share with you the best way to take control of your motivation, creating a plan for motivation. Here are the eight steps for making your plan.

Step One: Get ready to do some writing.

Get out a pencil or pen and a piece of paper or your journal, or open up a new document on your favorite word processor. One thing research shows us is extremely motivating is clarity, knowing exactly what you want, and exactly how you are going to get there. Figuring this out and writing it down will give you the clarity you need to become and stay motivated. So as you think about your plan for motivation, take notes. When you are done thinking, write down your final plan.

Step Two: Write down exactly what you want, that is, what special change you want to make in your life that is going to make your life so much better. The more precise you are, the better your motivation plan will be.

Step Three: Write down why you want to make this change. Once again, be as specific as you can be.

Step Four: Write down all the steps you need to take to make this special change come true.

Step Five:  Enlist like minded and supportive people to encourage you and guide you on your path.

Step Six:  Get the training and education you need to help you make your dream come true. The increased confidence that will result will have its own motivational impact.

Step Seven: Celebrate your victories. Making big dreams come true is hard work. Make sure you appreciate all you have done. Give yourself a big pat on the back and maybe even a special reward.  You deserve it.

Step Eight: Revisit and revise. Your motivation plan is a living document. As you move forward on making your dream come true, you will better understand what is required, and you will better understand what you need to do to make it come true. Make the changes in your motivation plan that result from this wisdom.

Motivation doesn’t just happen. It requires attention and hard work, but creating a plan for motivation is well worth the effort. It will make sure your dreams come true.

I belong to a small local organization of professional speakers. We meet twice a month, the second and fourth Monday’s at a local restaurant, for dinner followed by presentations. Another member, Dan, and I got mixed up about the which Monday it was, so just the two of us had dinner and chatted about our respective businesses and in particular our marketing.

Dan asked me what one message was most important for my intended audience. I’d been thinking about that exact question for a while, so I didn’t have to think about it. I told him, “You are responsible for your own motivation.”

If there is one message I want every workshop participant, every reader of my book, and every member of my audiences to leave with, that is it. Take control of your motivation.

There are  many ways you can do that. I think my way, using the model for self motivation, is a really good way, but there are probably other ways as good.  Regardless of which way you use, so long as you stay in charge of it, you will probably be able to stay motivated.

But if you delegate that power to someone else, if you rely on someone else for your motivation, you are taking a mighty big risk that you will not stay motivated. Other people can inspire us. The deeds that these inspirational people do have a universal appeal. We listen to these stories and watch these deeds and we are all in awe. And we are all moved.

Becoming and staying motivated, however, is different, in two ways. First of all, it is a full time job. You need it all the time, so you consistently take the steps you know you need to take to make your dreams come true. You never know when you are going to need that extra boost to get that work done – when you are going to be tired, when you are going to be tempted to do something a little more fun, when you aren’t feeling in tip top shape.

The second way motivation differs from inspiration is that it’s much more personal. Your motivation is as unique as you are. What motivates you is probably not what motivates me. And what motivates me may not motivate you.

And so the only one you can be sure will be with you when you need that extra boost is yourself. And the only one you can rely on to make sure that your plan for motivation is built upon those things that motivate you, is you.  No one else.

So take responsibility for your motivation, make a motivation plan, and make your dreams come true.

I’m sitting in my living room typing up this blog entry listening/watching a DVD of Jeff Beck live at Ronnie Scott’s.  I got it from the library because I wanted to hear some good rock and roll on my big screen TV. I don’t have cable or satellite because it is such a time waster for me, so I am able to limit my TV watching if I can only watch DVD’s. I know myself, which is the foundation for staying motivated, and I stay as conscious as I can. So I have never heard rock on it, and was looking forward to a pleasant afternoon.

In the third song, his bass player takes a solo. She’s a 22 year old out of Australia, named Tal Wilkenfeld. She is truly amazing. She plays this incredible solo and then when she’s done she’s got this big grin on her face. You can tell how much pleasure she gets out of being amazing.

I am always drawn to people who do things incredibly well. I am so curious about what got them to that place. How much of it is hard work and how much of it is natural ability. And what type of support did they get in developing that talent? Did their parents encourage their hard work?

And how did they discover in the first place what they would become amazingly good at? That’s something I am really curious about. How many of us mere mortals could be gods if we found the right thing, the thing we have a natural affinity for?

But even if we did find out, somehow, what we have a natural affinity for, how many of us would be willing to put in the work to develop that talent? Would I put in the work if I knew what I was really great at? Maybe we are supposed to pick something that seems to be a good match for us and then go after it.

And what about the role of risk? Do we need to take some type of risk to get to that exalted place?

I don’t think that I am the only one who asks these question.

Now that my book teaching self motivation is all done, except for the promotion, I am getting geared up  for writing book number two, working title, Claiming Your Authentic Self, in which I will examine these questions and maybe even come up with some answers.

Maybe writing books is what I am meant to do. Or maybe I just need to buckle down and do it anyway.

One of the most powerful strategies arising out of the model for self motivation, so powerful it is referred to as a super strategy, is the divide and conquer strategy.

The strategy involves breaking down your vision, the important change you want to make in your life, into a series of goals you will need to accomplish in order to make that change come true. Next you break down each of those goals into the tasks you need to make to accomplish the goal. Once you have identified all the tasks, you create a timeline, setting a time for both initiating and completing the task.

This powerful strategy boosts your successability, your confidence in your competence, which automatically boosts your motivation.

I have recently come up with an addendum to that strategy which I am finding is making the strategy even more powerful for keeping me motivated. It involves an additional step, what you do with the tasks after you have assigned dates to them.

That step is simple, put the task on a calendar. I use a calendar planner book that I carry with me. I can write in it ideas that come to me during the day, and I write in it the tasks that I have identified while doing the super strategy, on the dates I am to do them or at least start work on them.

First thing in the morning when I am getting ready to start my work day I look at my calendar and see what I need to accomplish that day.  I know I will be productive that day, because it will be a task that will move me forward on making my dream, becoming a professional speaker, come true.

Want to get your work done? Put it on your calendar

Putting it on a calendar is making a promise to you, a promise to keep moving forward toward your dreams.

Have you ever wanted something but been afraid to go after it, so you never got it?  It’s happened to me, a lot of times. If it’s happened to you, you should do what I do.

First, get supportive people in your social environment. I’m lucky to have them in mine. There was a woman I was interested in. My brother, Bill, and my friend, Mohammad, were both encouraging me to take a risk. It involved a woman. My wife and I had split up a year and a half earlier, and aside from a very brief fling, I haven’t been dating. I felt it was time to start in again, but found myself holding back. But there was a woman I was interested in. I was feeling I would like to get to know her, but I wasn’t following through.

“What am I afraid of?” I asked my brother. He said I was probably afraid that she will say no, that she isn’t interested in getting to know me.  He and I agreed, failure would be so devastating, that neither of us would dare risk it. He and I also agreed that this was more than a little over dramatic, but there it was.

My brother then shared with me the story of a friend of his who was never without a woman. His secret? He wasn’t afraid of rejection. What a difference that makes. When we aren’t afraid of rejection, than we are free to ask out as many people as we wish. And, of course, we shared the story with each other about how a ball player who only gets on base 3 times out of 10, ends up with a .300 average, very respectable.

We both agreed that not being afraid, that asking out anyone you wanted to get to know was very reasonable.  On the other hand, we aren’t dealing with reason, we are dealing with emotion. And emotion, by definition, isn’t reasonable.

Here I am looking back on that conversation with Bill, thinking what a wuss I was. Because, yes, I did talk to her, and I did get her number, and we are friends now.

Notwithstanding my fear, my fear of rejection, I took a swing and nothing terrible happened.

So what was the cause of the change? Two causes. One was the discussion with Bill, in which I examined my fear, my fear of rejection, and examined the devastation that could possibly result, and realized how truly over dramatic I was being. So the first way to deal with fear, I learned, was to examine it, and see if it made any sense at all.

The second cause was my conversation with Mohammad. He said he thought my plan to ask her if she wanted to get a cup of coffee some time sounded like a good idea, and encouraged me to ask her.  He said he had my back. As long as he had my back, I figured how could it go wrong. And if it did, I could always blame him!

But it didn’t go bad, and we had a cup of coffee together. So the second way I learned to overcome fear of taking an action was to have a friend tell you it’s okay to take it.

If there’s something you’ve been wanting to do, but have been hesitating about, I urge you to learn from me, and do the two things I did to overcome my fear, one, deeply examine the possible consequences, and two, get a friend to watch your back. And then take that swing.

It worked for me.

Those who are familiar with my writing and speaking know that I am not a motivational speaker, I am a teacher of self motivation. I teach people how to motivate themselves. Nevertheless, one question I am frequently asked, and it’s usually asked by an employer, about his employees, is whether you can motivate another person, and, in particular, whether you can use the model for self motivation to motivate another person.

For the longest time my answer was no. You can inspire other people, I would respond. That is what most motivational speakers do, they inspire others to take certain steps or to look at new ways of doing things, or to have more confidence in themselves. These things can all help a person motivate themselves, I would say, but they don’t, by themselves, motivate a person.

The more I study motivation, however, my view is starting to change. I now believe you can motivate another person, but ultimately you can only motivate them to do what they want to do.  The key therefore, is to get them to want what you want. If you aren’t able to make the person see the benefit to himself, you won’t motivate him.

The model for self motivation explains this. The model is:

MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).

This means that your motivation is related to your vision (that special change you want to make in your life), your successability (your confidence in your competence, that is, your ability to make the change) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).

The model for self motivation tells us that any positive steps you take to impact your vision, successability or environment will automatically positively impact your self motivation.

So how do you use the model for self motivation to motivate another person? The biggest challenge is the vision, the change the person is to make. A key is the change has to be important to the person who is to be motivated. If it isn’t important to that person, he will not be motivated. This means you will have to present the change in a way that attracts the self interest of the other person. You will often need to be creative to accomplish this. Once you accomplish this, however, the other two factors are much easier.

The actor’s self confidence, their successability, can be positively impacted in the same ways your own self confidence can be impacted. Give the person the tools and the skills that make success achievable.  Work with the other person to identify what, if anything, concerns him as he works on the change. Does he need training? Does he need guidance as he works on the task? Identify the needs and meet them.

The third factor, environment, is also something you will often control. Does the actor have a safe, supportive environment to do the task? Is the environment a place that the actor wants to be in, or is it hostile or uncomfortable? Is the worker productive in the environment? Making the environment a place the actor wants to be in, and is productive in, will go a long way toward motivating the person.

Using the model for self motivation as a guide for motivating another person works for anyone who wants to motivate another person to accomplish a goal, whether it’s an employer motivating a worker or a parent motivating a child. It’s a lot more effective than threats.

In my most recent blog posting I urged you to super power your New Year’s resolutions by answering the why for them. In today’s posting I will write more on how knowing the why has this impact, by applying it to the model for self motivation, as set out in my soon to be published book, iMotivateMe: Take Control of Your Motivation to Reach Your Goals and Achieve Your Dreams.

The why ties into all three factors of the model for self motivation.

The first factor of self motivation is your vision, the important change you want to make in your life. The overriding key to the vision is it must be important to you. It doesn’t matter if it is important to your spouse, your family or your friends. It must be important to you or you will not be motivated to put in the time and energy necessary to make your desire come true. Consequently, you must get in touch with your why, the reason it is important to you.

The why also plays a role in the second factor of self motivation, successability, our confidence in our competence. In a couple of my earlier postings I discussed how we can break down our vision into its component goals, and each of our goals into its component tasks. I pointed out that to make sure our goals and our tasks are motivational, we needed to be sure that each is related to our vision, that we know the why of each goal and each task. We need to know that the reason we are doing each task, the why of that task, is because by completing the task, we will be closer to achieving our goals. We need to know that the reason we are doing each goal, the why of the goal, is because it will bring us closer to making our vision come true.

The why can also play a role in the third element of self motivation, the environment. One strategy I have found extremely helpful in keeping me motivated on those occasions when I have struggled with my motivation is surrounding myself, in my physical environment, with objects that represent my vision. When I see these objects I am reminded of my vision, my why, and I am more likely to not spend the evening vegging out in front of the television.

As an example, my vision relates to me as a speaker and teacher, teaching people how to motivate themselves so they can achieve all their dreams. In my physical environment I keep all my Toastmaster awards. These awards represent for me something I love to do, public speaking, something I will be doing as I make my vision come true.

What are your whys? Discover them for yourself, and you will achieve great things.

Today’s is New Year’s Day and it is customary for us to make resolutions, a list of things we are going to do differently this year, changes we are going to make. But all too often that’s all it is, a list. And all too often it’s the same list we made last New Year’s Day, and maybe even the one before that, too.

If this is true for you, I have good news for you. It doesn’t need to be that way. This year those resolutions can be more than just a list; they can actually come true. The way that will happen is by treating those resolutions as more than just a list.

People will usually be more motivated when they start a project; new things have their own motivation. When something is new, when we initially make the decision that we are going to make a change (and it needn’t be the first initial time either) we are excited and feel good about the prospect of becoming more like that person we think we should be. The problem is, that initial glow soon wears off. Other things in our lives take up our time and our energy, and different new things are more exciting. Our motivation suffers and suddenly we will notice we are no longer taking the steps we need to take to make our change come true.

This is natural, and will occur even if things are going well in our change process. If things are not going well it will happen even quicker. Any roadblocks we encounter will knock us off our path even quicker and our motivation will plummet.

That’s why we need our resolutions to be more than just resolutions. Instead we need to add to them two things, the why and the how.

Adding the WHY

The why tells us the reasons we want this change to occur. Being in touch you’re your why adds your emotions into the mix. This emotional impact will give you the staying power to keep going after the initial excitement has worn off, and after other, newer and more exciting changes beckon.

To figure out your why, apply what Tony Robbins calls the “rocking chair test.” Imagine looking back on your life from your rocking chair at 85, and asking yourself, “If I never made this change, how would I feel? What would I have missed out on? Would I feel remorse?” Then look at how you would feel if you had made the change.

Adding the HOW

The how means planning how you are going to accomplish this change. You need to be clear on the steps you need to take to make the change occur. If you lack clarity, you will be uncertain and insecure. Your confidence in yourself will suffer and consequently so will your motivation.

Planning how means writing down the steps you need to take to make your change come true. It  also means writing down what successfully making the change will look like.

Don’t settle for mere resolutions this New Year’s. Add the why and the how and make your dreams come true.