If you want to learn how to get motivated, you need to understand what motivation really is.
Motivation in one word is excitement.
When you’re excited to wake up and work on your mission every day, you don’t need to watch motivational videos or read motivational books. If anything, you’ll find it hard to pull yourself away from your work.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I still think motivation is not enough on it’s own and that it’s dedication that gets you across the finish line. But, life is a lot better when you’re motivated instead of grinding it out. With motivation you get a lot more done, and more importantly you enjoy the journey.
How To Get Motivated
The key to being motivated every day is excitement.
When you’re excited about what you do, you don’t need to do all kinds of mental work to get things done, because you’re naturally motivated. When you were a kid you didn’t need motivation to go play with your friends at recess, you couldn’t wait for class to end. And you didn’t need motivation to go home and play a new video game, you couldn’t wait to play that game.
And the truth is, that level of excitement is possible in your adult life. You can wake up excited for the day and not have to rely on reframes and state boosting exercises to make it through (although, those things are useful).
Instead of having to force yourself to work, you’ll have to force yourself away from your mission because you’re obsessed.
When I was a kid I was obsessed with soccer. I would play all day after school with my friends or just kicking a ball against the wall.
Then in high school I got obsessed with guitar and would play all night until my fingers bled driving my mom crazy trying to master the solo to Stairway To Heaven.
And then at 18 I found the gym and I would work out 2-3 hours a day obsessively after school every day.
And then at 22 I found trading and it was trading all day at work, then going to the library to read profiles on market wizards until it closed, then going to the internet cafe to study chart patterns obsessively until midnight.
And then at 30 I found my mission in life RLD, and you couldn’t pull me away from it, and that mission is still with me today.
The key question (you are the questions you ask yourself) what would make me excited to wake up everyday?
The answer to that, is your mission.
For most guys I recommend a service business, from real estate, to copywriting, to coaching, because no other business has a higher probability of success.
But maybe the idea of selling real estate for the rest of your life isn’t all that motivating. But it doesn’t have to be. You can use the cash you make from that business as a motivator instead.
You picture making 100K this year and saving 25k of that. And you get high at the idea of a new deal, because that’s 7k in your pocket. And you know that cash is going to buy you out of the rat race. And maybe that cash will give you the freedom to travel and live in the tropics. And maybe your end game is to transition into a location-independent sales trainer doing seminars based on your success in real estate.
When I worked in sales, between trading and when I started RLD, I hated it, from 24 to 30 I didn’t have a mission, I had a job. I job that I hated, but a job that I was good, and that made me a lot of money. But once I found my mission, I found a way to get excited about selling. Every deal became cash stacked for my permanent exit from the rat race. And every dollar I made went into funding my dream of living in the sun and working on my mission full time.
My end goal when I started was to get out of Canada and go down to Florida by 38. That got me going but eventually it wasn’t enough. So I dialed that goal in even tighter, moved my timeline to 32 and my destination to Thailand and that lit a fire under my ass – my excitement level was off the chart.
And it turned something I hated, selling, into something I was fired up about because I knew I was buying my way out of wage slavery for ever. And because I’d moved the goal closer, the finish line was now in my sights. Never again was I going to have another man calling himself my boss or have to deal with another coworker.
And when I got out here I was in heaven. I was excited to wake up every day. I would take my motorbike up the mountain on a Wednesday afternoon and have tears running down my cheeks because I was so happy. I finally had the freedom to fulfill my mission and the freedom to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.
But soon that wasn’t enough. I set high expectations for myself and spent a year cranking out an article a week and 3 products. And all of a sudden my dream had become a job. And I was now working for the toughest boss I’ve ever had – myself. And I got burnt out.
So at the start of 2017 I said, no more products. Instead my plan was to power out 365 articles, videos and audios. And this had me fired up for the first four months of the year. But I began to realize I’d put too much pressure on myself. A good article and video takes time and I found myself getting burnt out again. Not only that, but there we’re a few videos that I wasn’t happy with. Because I felt that I’d rushed them just to get something out for the day.
So in August I took a much needed mini-vacation and spent a lot of time thinking about what would re-energize me. I needed a goal that would get me excited to wake up again. And then I found it. My goal would be to clean up and clear out all the drafts I had in my Evernote. To cut out every article that wasn’t good enough, to combine the big ones and to get everything out by end of this year.
This energized me for a lot of reasons:
- Getting all the content out that I’ve been sitting on for years
- Clearing out my drafts folder to see no drafts pending
- Doubling my monthly YouTube view count (and ad revenue)
- Getting more YouTube and newsletter subscribers
- Increasing my traffic
- Only writing and talking about stuff that I was really interested in
And not only that, the goal was big enough that it would stretch me, but not too big that it would burn me out. And the finish line was in sight.
And that’s when lightning struck and I found the massive key to staying motivated. It’s not just about having your decade-long mission goal. And it’s not just about having your yearly wealth goal that will get to your decade long mission-goal.
The key, key, key is having the yearly goal be EXCITING. If it’s just about grinding through the year for a few more dollars you might be able to hit it, but you won’t be excited about it. And if you’re not excited you won’t be enjoying your life. And if you’re not happy, then the money and all the things you’re trying to achieve don’t matter.
The key is finding a yearly goal that’s not too big that it overwhelms you. But also not too small that it doesn’t excite you. And it’s not all about the cash. My goal this year is as much about expressing my creativity and growing my brand as it is about making money, if not more so.
And not only that, but I’ve got a gameplan for the rest of my life. Every year on January 1st, I’ll be setting an exciting goal for myself. And I’m fired up just at the idea of it.
But enough about me, you’re not reading this to hear about my goals, you’re reading this to learn how to get motivated in your own life.
So the real question is, if you’re not motivated right now, why not? Why aren’t you excited to wake up?
If you’re not excited to get up everyday, you have a major problem, in fact it might be the biggest problem in your life.
Which leads to the next question, what are you going to do to solve that problem?
The answer comes down to 5 things:
- Finding your mission in life, what you’re here to accomplish
- Setting a decade long goal to achieve that mission
- Setting a yearly goal to get you to your decade long goal
- Making that yearly goal exciting
- Making sure your yearly goal is not too big and not to small
When you get all that together you get to wake up excited every day. And you won’t need to worry about finding the motivation to get things done. Because motivation is just excitement, and you get that naturally when you create an exciting life for yourself. And you can create that life for yourself starting today…if you want it.