oday is another gentle day, but another powerful one. When I have spoken to people about this in the past it’s always been a surprise to them to find out what their motivation direction is.
I’d like you to think about your motivation direction and what your primary direction is.
What is Motivation Direction?
You might have heard already that all motivation is either moving away from pain or moving toward pleasure. Most of us tend to have a dominant direction. This is a completely unconscious direction and many of us will never have thought about it before. However if we consciously think about it we can begin to strengthen our motivation, and that’s the aim of today’s exercise.
Your motivation direction is asking yourself if you are moving toward pleasure or moving away from pain. Think about the words you use when you are hoping to fulfil your outcomes in life.
For example if you want to stop smoking you might think to yourself; ‘I want to stop people nagging me about smoking’, ‘I don’t want to spend so much money on cigarettes’, ‘I don’t want to get cancer’.
You’ll notice all the above reasons for giving up have a ‘don’t want to’ about them. So the primary motivation is moving away pain: Moving away from the pain of getting cancer, moving away from people nagging, moving away from the pain of spending so much money.
Another person, who smokes and wants to give up, has a different reality from you might be thinking; ‘I want to be much healthier’, ‘I want to be able to climb that mountain I’ve always wanted to climb.’ ‘I want to fit in socially’.
All of the reasons above have a ‘want to’ statement in them. The primary motivation here is moving toward pleasure: Moving toward being healthy, moving toward climbing that mountain.
Toward Motivation
People who move toward what they want in life tend to look at the possibilities of the future, with little regard for the obstacles that could get in their way.
Away from Motivation
People who move away from what they don’t want in life are people who look at solving the problems in their life in order to make it easier for themselves and others.
Thinking about your own motivation
Think about 4 of your smaller outcomes for the next month e.g. To give up smoking, to go to the gym 3 times per week, to lose weight, to get another job.
Look at the words you use and determine if your motivation direction is moving away from pain, or moving toward pleasure. Once you have done this for all of your short term outcomes you should begin to build up a pattern of your motivation direction and what your primary direction is.
This becomes important when we go on to do the work on your outcomes which we will spend a lot of time on in day 5 of the course.
Increasing your motivation
You will notice that sometimes you are ‘away motivated’ and sometimes you are ‘toward motivated’. If you find yourself putting something off, or your ‘away from’ motivation is not particularly strong, you can use your imagination to make it stronger, completely change direction or use a combination of both directions to help you fulfil your outcomes.
For example:
I used to be a smoker, I told myself I enjoyed it and it didn’t matter what anybody said I was going to continue to smoke. Then due to the kids getting at me all the time and feeling their worry about me dying from smoking, I decided to give up. Well when you give up for someone else and not for yourself it can be a recipe for disaster. I was away from motivated: I wanted my children to stop worrying, and I wanted them to stop getting on at me (just some of the reasons to give up). I set a date in my head and made the move to stop smoking.
I realised that the images in my head weren’t particularly strong, I would imagine the boys nagging at me, but it was off in the distance, I imagined them worrying, but the image was very small and not very bright. So I blew the images up, made them close, made the sounds boom at me, I put myself right in the picture and sure enough my motivation would increase. I also decided to use a mixed approach, some ‘toward motivation’ images, such as me being healthy, playing around with my boys without feeling out of breath and really made the movie inside my head bright, colourful, up close, loud, and very vivid. I also used some ‘away motivation’ as I mentioned above.
So, knowing what your motivation direction can be important. Knowing how you are seeing the images and movies in your head is also very important. If the images in your head are small, in black and white, off into the distance, bring everything up very close, make it bright and colourful, make the sounds loud, and use as many of your senses as possible. Also think about your outcomes often whilst making them as vivid as possible.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow we will be looking at unearthing your core principles and adding some new ones as a way to live your life. Until tomorrow my fellow Mind Alchemists……..
Today we look at weather we move towards pleasure or away from pain.
I think this is a bit vague for me as its not 100% black and white.
Only someone who catagorically thinks in the black and white manner can think that..... and i dont think i do.
Take one eg. Loose 40kg-- its that away from pain because i hate being this size and uncomfortable or towards pleasure because i want to be healthy, able to get pg and be a size 12? its not one or the other, its both!
But as i degress it occurs to me i should just do the set thinking for today, and not over think it all
after going through my list of goals and marking them as T or A i find myself with a score of - 9xT and 4xA which makes me a towards type person, and that worries me.
To me, from the above quote, it seems to be that Towards people wont succeed ( or at least succeed easily) because they dont consider any obstacles. Where as away people see every possibility and think of the path that makes it easier to cope and overcome... but here is my homeworkToward Motivation
People who move toward what they want in life tend to look at the possibilities of the future, with little regard for the obstacles that could get in their way.
Away from Motivation
People who move away from what they don’t want in life are people who look at solving the problems in their life in order to make it easier for themselves and others.
Think about 4 of your smaller outcomes for the next month
fill out the following
1)
Outcome: I will have lost 6.2kg by March 17th ( 5.5weeks = 1.1kg a week)
Why do you want outcome: To complete the goal on time. Up my motivation to keep going and give me something to be pleased about to help get through the 1yr anniversary of dad's death.
Motivation Direction: Towards and away from
2)
Outcome: Finish Post Processing and album design on all images
Why do you want outcome: To get album printed in time for delivery. Stop Jasmine Hassling me
Motivation Direction: Towards ... completion & away from hassling
3)
Outcome: Complete at least 2 weeks of Couch to 5km program
Why do you want outcome: To increase fitness and muscle toning
Motivation Direction: Towards completing the physical challenge of the system
4)
Outcome: have Posted 3 blog posts a week, ( so atleast 12 posts total) both for personal and for JKS
Why do you want outcome: Increase writting ability, gather a folowing and motivate the girls to follow through
Motivation Direction: Towards. goal and improved skills
So the next month is all about TOWARDS with a little away from ;)
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