What makes us take action towards our goals? It’s motivation, right?
If you’re like most people, you only get stuff done when you feel an adequate amount of motivation to do so.
But motivation is a slippery thing. It comes and it goes. On some days you have no motivation whatsoever, but on other days, you have so much of it you feel like you could take over the world.
You don’t know where that motivation came from, and in that moment, you probably don’t even care. All you know is that anything you do that day, feels extremely easy.
But sadly, you can’t know when the next time you wake up motivated will come. It’s almost like a coin flip. Sometimes it lands on motivation, other times it lands on no motivation.
So instead of waiting for the coin to flip correctly, I’ll explain how to use the motivation sequence to motivate yourself. This is not about motivational speakers.
Sometimes your motivation comes out of nowhere, other times it comes from emotional inspiration.
Emotional inspiration, could be many things. It might be a fear of being judged by others. That’s the reason you clean the house when someone is visiting. Or it could come from trying to impress someone or prove them wrong.
You might see an Instagram post from your ex-girlfriend which suddenly sparks that fire in you. You might want to make her regret dumping you. Or you might watch a motivational speakers video and something clicks inside. You want to be that successful guy in the video.
That’s emotional inspiration. It gives you the motivation to get up and get stuff done. But you don’t have to watch a motivational speakers video every day, to get motivated.
Nearly everyone thinks that the sequence looks like this: Inspiration leads to motivation, which leads to action. A one way, three step process.
But the next part is something not everyone knows. The sequence doesn’t just end at action. It’s not a linear sequence. It’s actually a loop. Action isn’t just the result of motivation, action is also what causes motivation. Inspiration leads to motivation, which leads to action, which leads to inspiration, which leads to motivation, which in turn, leads to more action.
This means you don’t always have to start with motivation to get things done. You can start wherever you want. Essentially you can re-structure the sequence in slightly different way.
You can start with action. Your actions will create emotional inspirations to further motivate you to take future action. This works because some things require next to zero inspiration to complete.
Do you need to be inspired or motivated to brush your teeth, take a shower or just change your clothes? Probably not, you just do those things. But whenever you do something like that, no matter how small of an action, you start to feel a little better about yourself. Thus creating emotional inspiration and motivation.
Then you want to utilize the inspiration and motivation from those smaller actions, to do the things you really want to accomplish. Like going to the gym or writing an essay.
So the next time you’re avoiding doing something you know you have to do, don’t just wait around for motivation or inspiration to hit your head. That’s what the majority of people do and it’s the reason why they don’t get much done. They wait for motivational speakers to come around and motivate them before they take action. That is the wrong approach.
If you wait for motivation first, you may never get started. Instead, just go do something. Do anything other than what you’re doing right now. Take a walk around the block. Stretch for a few minutes. Clean your room a bit. Take out the trash. Do whatever.
Then use the inspiration and motivation from that action, to fuel further action.You can become your own source of motivation as action is always within reach. Remember: Action leads to inspiration, which leads to motivation, which in turn leads to more action. And that is the motivation sequence.
So don’t wait for motivational speakers.
