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Know Why You Want It!

How did you go with your goals and dreams from last year? Did you achieve most of them? For some people, each year sees dazzling and dizzying growth and success in many areas of their life.

Yet, for some, each year becomes a dreary repeat of the year before. Same quality of life in terms of relationships, finances, health, contribution, inner growth, and career. Why is this so?

Have you ever set a New Years Resolution, and then found by January 10 you're already not sticking to it?

Ever wondered why?

It's because most New Years Resolutions have a built-in self-destruct device. They are activity focused rather than results focused.

Let's take a look at one of the world's favorite New Years Resolutions ... to get fit.

After setting the goal, you, say to yourself: "I'm pumped, this time it is going to be different, this time I’m going to make it happen."

Day One, you find yourself setting the alarm an hour early, to get out and exercise. You jog/shuffle 2 km, come home, maybe feeling good - at the very least satisfied. You did it!

The next morning the alarm goes off. You are achy and sore, feeling like you've been hit by a truck.

You think, "Look I'll give my muscles a day to relax and rejuvenate. I'll go again tomorrow".

The next day comes and it's raining, you think, "Better wait until tomorrow."

Tomorrow comes, you think, "Hmmm, this hasn't been a good week, I'll start again next week, hit the snooze button and get another hour's sleep."

Next week comes and you've got an early Monday morning meeting scheduled ... whoops!

The goal, and your excitement become a fading memory.

Whenever you find yourself losing steam and not taking the actions to achieve your goals, take this as a tremendous clue that you are running on excitement. Which is short-term, temporary energy, and not long-term inspiration.

It’s easy to deflate the initial excitement that comes from setting a goal. A bit like a jet going down the runway, the buzz of setting the goal may thrust you into the air and get you going. But you need something more substantial than excitement to maintain power and momentum.

The secret to getting beyond initial excitement, to get beyond the thrust of takeoff and get into a long-haul flight is to be compelled by long term inspiration. Long-term motivation comes when you connect your goals to something that has a deep, meaningful and emotional connection. Something which inspires you to keep going no matter how tough it becomes.

When you run on adrenaline and excitement, the moment someone says to you, "You're a fool for thinking you can do that" or a challenge comes your way (like aching muscles or rain) your energy and enthusiasm wanes.

There are only 2 things that will get you out of bed:

Inspiration or Desperation

Inspiration is life changing and comes from within.

You will find all the desire you need to get up, and get going when you pinpoint those things that help you feel fulfilled.

Tuning into that inner calling ... that siren that calls you to be at your best. And then doing something about it.

Your passions and interests inspire these internal callings. You'll know you are following your internal callings when you are saying to yourself, "I want to do this. I choose to do this. This is my idea. I love this. This is what I want to do".

Desperation is generally temporary and spurred by the "I have to do this to get that (or get rid of that)" mentality and is mostly driven by external motivators.

External Motivators are factors such as money, recognition, status etc.

Desperation doesn't provide the drive for explosive success. You simply do enough to get rid of the pressure of feeling, "I have to do this".

And, that's the difference from Inspiration. Instead of, "I want to do this", people motivated by Desperation are doing this because they feel, "I have to do this. If I had my choice I'd be doing xyz"

Figuring out if you are operating from inspiration or desperation and whether either of those feelings are being driven by an internal desire or external pressure, enables you to understand what is moving you to action and whether or not you want to continue with that goal or activity.

Let’s use our 'getting fit' example let's see what each of these four combinations (Duty, Fear, Respect/Love and Passion), might look like.

Duty as Your Motivation

The person who operates from Duty, is driven by an internal compulsion but is coming from a space of desperation. 

Using our fitness example, if a person is operating from the Duty quadrant their mindset will be something along the lines of, "I want to stay fit because everybody knows you have to look after your body, if you want to live a long life".

He or she will run,  but not with joy.

Fear as Your Motivation

The person who operates from the Fear Quadrant is operating from desperation and is driven by external motivators. He or she feels they have to act otherwise bad things will happen.

Our person getting fit, might be doing so because the Doctor has given him or her a warning.  

Several years ago, a friend of mine was diagnosed with diabetes. Initially, he was filled with fear and was careful with his diet and alcohol intake. As a result, he lost a huge amount of weight. He looked terrific and his diabetes was well in control.  Then as time went by his fear lessened. Slowly, yet surely, he began eating and drinking just like the old days.  

Today he is heavier than before his diagnosis and now has daily insulin shots.  At first, like a plane zooming down the runway, he had a lot of energy and impulsion to take care of himself. However, because his motivation was based in fear, the energy petered out.

He has adapted to the threat of diabetes and because years have passed no longer feels the need to heed the Doctor's warning.

Respect/Love as Your Motivation

People operating from the Respect/Love Quadrant generally take action because they want to provide the best for themselves and others. They are externally motivated and yet are committed to those external motivators.

They are often studious, but lack the sparkle that comes from someone living in the Passion Quadrant.

When that friend of mine with diabetes started piling the weight back on, his wife - who had always been overweight - decided to start going to the gym. She believed her husband was heading toward an early grave. Her motivation was her two young sons. To care for them when her husband was gone she needed to be stronger physically and mentally.

Now a few years on, because the boys are in their 20s she's piled the weight back on. She knows the boys will be okay, as they no longer rely on her to look after them. Her motivation for fitness was more for her boys than it was for herself. Because they are capable of taking care of themselves, her drive for fitness waned.

Passion as Your Motivation

The Passion Quadrant is where your values, your skills, your passions and the work you do all collide in the most wonderful way. This is where you become the best in your field. 

Let's go back to that goal of getting fit.  

Why would you set a goal to join the gym or start running? To lose weight? To feel healthier?  

Good reasons, but not overly compelling.  

However, what if you thought about the benefits you would get from being fitter.  For example:

Being motivated by passion and inspiration not only increases your own happiness but also your ability to persuade and influence others. Your passion becomes contagious.

Passion gives the most sustainable energy.

Fear gives the least.

But, fear is better than nothing. It at least gets you out of bed.

For true internal inspiration, you need to find many reasons, (or one compelling reason), that moves you to continue even when the going gets tough.  When you don't hook into an inspiring enough reason you soon lose your fuel/energy.

If your potentialities list looks something like this:

You may find yourself feeling somewhat underwhelmed by this 'to-do' list.

Focus on the Ultimate Result

To provide yourself with long-term inspiration you want to shift from focusing on a to-do list which entails effort, commitment and sometimes discomfort. To focusing on how you will benefit from putting in the effort and the ultimate result you are really after.

Now you will create a very different goals list:

How much more inspiring is this list?

The actions you need to take, to achieve each of these goals, are no different.

When you know why you are doing something you will keep taking action until you achieve your goal/vision. So our 3 step process is:

Answering the question, "Why do I want to achieve this?", deepens your desire to take the steps to manifest your potentiality.

Describe a Compelling Vision and Reason for Each of Your Major Life Areas

Create a vision and identify compelling reasons for moving toward that vision for each of the major Success Areas in Life. Refer back to the Sample Balance Wheels for the Success Areas.

Financial Freedom is a Success Areas most people desire to do well in. But what does financial freedom mean? It will be different for every individual.

For example, your compelling Vision might be something like:

Now neither of these examples may work for you. You simply need to work out YOUR compelling reason. Just make sure it isn’t something that someone has 'should' on you. Don't trap yourself in other people's dreams or what you think 'society' judges to be of value.

You may be wondering about all this writing down. There is great power in the written word. It signifies your intent to the universe in a very real way.

Some years ago, we were going through tight cash flow stage. But that didn’t stop me visualizing and dreaming. I was sitting at the car wash and decided to use that time to write down and describe my dream horse.

I described in detail how he would look. What he would be like in temperament. And, most importantly that he would be come to me at no cost. The horse I had described was probably a $15,000 horse.

As I had a few extra minutes to spare, I also wrote down what I would like in a horse-float. And, that it would come to me for less than $3,000. The float I had described was at least double that price.

Well, 6 weeks later I had in my paddock at home the exact horse I had described. He was given to me, by an acquaintance, whom I bumped into and mentioned I was in-between horses. She said great you can have Jess if you want him. He's standing in the paddock going to waste. And, the float came with him that cost me less than $2,000!

Creating that Vivid Vision and breathing life into it with my heart and soul, and keeping my Reticular Activating System open, brought it to fruition. It felt like a miracle that the Universe conspired to deliver to me.

But our dreams don't always get delivered so quickly and easily. Stay open to it happening fast like it did for me. Sometimes there’s a lot you need to do to get close to your vision.

Describing your vision can be overwhelming. It can seem so huge that you simply don't know where to start. So, in the next module we turn our attention to breaking the vision down and goal setting.