Juice Up Time

When you are really motivated, you go through an amazing process, which you don't even notice. Psychologists describe it as an unconscious pattern. Here's how it goes - let's say that someone decides to organise a wild night out. This someone will first of all probably imagine how it will be - they may get a picture of it, they will think through who to ask, where to go, then they will probably get a feeling of excitement about it. Now that pattern is made up of three common stages:

1. a SEE stage
2. a THINK stage
3. a FEEL stage.

A positive motivation pattern that is fully juiced needs to be at least three dimensional, just like that. Motivation fails when it is one-dimensional - someone just thinks to themselves "I must organise a night out" - they think about it, but they don't fully imagine it and so they probably don't do anything.

Good motivation means that you have almost imagined how your desired outcome will be. You have seen and experienced it ahead and that image and feeling along with your thinking makes a strong and powerful driver, which makes you take action.

Try this out.
Just think about your favourite team winning some major game or think about watching your favourite band. It is likely that you will naturally slip in to imagining mode - you will see yourself there, hear the noises and get the buzz.

Now think about taking some tough exams. It is likely you will get some voice in your head that says 'This is going to be tough - I wont be able to do this' and you may get a sinking feeling.

The pattern is different in these two scenarios and your motivation would also be very different. It's pretty obvious that to motivate yourself to do something tough, your motivation pattern needs to be using all your imagination to rev you up.

So any time you need to improve your motivation, you need to almost rehearse it in your imagination - research shows that highly motivated achievers all have incredible imaginations.

Let's say you want to ask your boss for a wage increase. Instead of imagining catastrophic scenarios, you would be better to see how you want it to be, hear how you want it to be and get the buzz (feel) you want to get. This will act as a positive driver and will make you appear more confident, because you have become so certain of what you want to happen by imagining it over and over again.

Motivation Formula
Here's a motivation task you could rehearse:

• Know your outcome (What do you want?)
• See how it will be
• Hear everything you will hear/think about it
• Feel what you will feel

Practise this sequence regularly to rev yourself up and then decide to take some action - what do you need to do to get what you want?

Related Links
One Life: Ulterior Motives
One Life: What Job?

For other useful links and contacts, check out the Further Information - Confidence section.

Page 5 of 5