As we established last week, the drug that produces success is motivation. Not motivation in terms of rah rah speeches and pep talks, but deep personal motivation. This drug will take you to the next level that you are looking to go to.
Contrary to popular opinion, motivation is not something someone else gives you. Motivation is internal, not external. I use the term “motivational speaker” for myself because it is something that other people are familiar with. The truth is, I cannot give you motivation. I can open your eyes to some things that you may have never considered before. I can show you something from a different angle or perspective. But, true lasting motivation can only be powered by the individual- you.
All of human behavior is driven by two forces- Pain and Pleasure. To truly understand human behavior, you must look at these 2 driving forces. We strive to avoid pain and/or gain pleasure in EVERYTHING that we do. Pain and pleasure dictate every decision we make and every action that we take. In this sense, we ALWAYS act with good intentions for ourselves. It is through this lens where you begin to understand the word MOTIVE which is the root word in MOTIVATION.
This is not to say that we always act in our own best interest. Indeed we are often our own worst enemy because we think too much of short term pain and too little about long term pleasure. The point is that people take action to avoid pain and/or gain pleasure all the time.
The tricky part is that almost every action has some pleasurable experiences and some negative experiences associated with it. Consider exercising. Exercising is both exhausting, repetitive, and time consuming AND rewarding, endorphin producing, long term beneficial, and mind clearing AT THE SAME TIME. With elements of both pleasure and pain associated with exercising, will a person decide to exercise or not? The answer is, it depends on what elements the individual is focusing on at the moment of their decision. If at the decision making moment the person is focusing on the soreness they will feel the next day, they probably will decide not to exercise. If the person is focusing on how they will look in a bathing suit in the summer, they probably will decide to exercise. It comes down to the focus of their mind. If both of the soreness and the bathing suit are on our mind, we will go with the activity that has more pleasure and less pain linked to it. Pain and pleasure fuel our emotions. This is why our emotional control is absolutely critical to our success.
The secret is: we need to first decide what we want to accomplish. Then we must decide the action that we need to take that will bring us to our goals. Then, we need to link pleasure to performing this action and pain to not performing the action. It is really that simple. In fact you may say to yourself, I already know that. I will then ask you, how well do you apply this?
Next week we will talk more about pain and pleasure and how our mind naturally links pain and pleasure to objects, people, and activities, and how we can learn to control these two forces to accomplish our goals.
Stay with me…
Gene Zannetti
Peak Performance Specialist
One-on-One Consultation and Motivational Speaking
(908) 337-6143
genezannetti@gmail.com
Visit My Blog- http://genezannetti.blogspot.com/
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