Five Motivational Mistake That Sounds Like Good Ideas

To achieve great things – to achieve anything – you need to understand how motivation works.
The thing is, our minds don’t work the way we often think they do. (It’s the Inigo Montoya effect: “You keep using that mind. I don’t think it works like you think it works.”)
Therefore, there are some very popular motivational techniques that sound plausible, but are actually counterproductive if you don’t know exactly how to use them. Here are five of these techniques. For each of them, I’ve given an alternative that does work to produce more motivation and more goal achievement.

 

1. Affirmations

Affirmations do work – but only if you’re affirming something you actually believe to be true.
If you keep telling yourself what you know to be lies about yourself, all it does is create dissonance and disillusionment. If you don’t believe you’re beautiful, standing in front of the mirror saying “I am beautiful” is an exercise in futility. Rather than improving your self-image, it will make it worse.

Your alternative: Find phrasings that reflect reality, that talk about progression rather than achievement, until you have achievements to point to. “I am taking steps towards my goal of…” is a better phrasing than “I am achieving my goal” if you actually aren’t achieving it yet.

 

2. Visualisation

According to a very popular teaching which rhymes with “Flaw of Distraction”, visualising your end goal is pretty much all you need to do in order to achieve it.
In fact, this is an excellent way to ensure that you never achieve your goal, no matter how many seminars you attend or products you buy in an attempt to find out why you haven’t “made it” yet.
Why you haven’t “made it” is that you’re not taking action. And one of the reasons you’re not taking action is that you’re spending your action-taking time convincing your mind that you already have what you want.

Your alternative: Visualising the process of reaching your goal, rather than the outcome, increases the likelihood that you’ll achieve it. This is because you’re practicing the steps that you will have to take in order to reach the goal. It lowers the barrier to taking those steps in reality, because they already feel familiar and achievable. What’s more, you’ll perform them with more skill, just from having mentally rehearsed.

 

3. Willpower

Willpower works to motivate you – up to a point. That’s the point at which you run out of willpower, because like energy or strength, it’s a finite resource.
Whenever you motivate yourself to do something that you don’t, emotionally, want to do, there are measurable changes in your body and brain. You use up blood sugar, for example. It’s an effort, just the same as running round the block is an effort. And just as you can’t run round the block forever, so you can’t keep making yourself do things that you feel negative about doing forever, however important they are to your long-term happiness.

Your alternative: You actually have several alternatives to willpower. One, of course, is finding ways to achieve your goals that you actually enjoy. Another is finding new goals. Yet a third is reducing other drains on your willpower so that you will have more to devote to your most important goal.
But if none of those are options, work on finding the enjoyment and worth in the process of working towards your goal – so that you don’t have to exert willpower all the time in order to keep doing the essential steps. At the very least, find ways to reduce your resistance.

 

4. Rewards

Rewards can be motivational – but only if they relate to what you’re actually doing.
Whether it’s bribing children with candy to get them to draw pictures or offering workers more money instead of more fulfilling work and more autonomy, “extrinsic” motivators tend to backfire and produce less motivation, not more.

Your alternative: “Intrinsic” motivation – rewards directly connected to doing the activity you are trying to motivate – is the way to go here. Again, it’s about making the process itself worthwhile, rewarding and enjoyable, and about celebrating milestones towards your goal, not putting off all the happiness for when you eventually achieve it.

 

5. Punishment

Punishing or scolding yourself (or someone else) may be one of the most commonly practiced forms of motivation. It’s true that negative consequences are motivational, but only if you use them in a particular way. Otherwise, they just produce resentment and backfire – not only because the emotional associations with the goal become negative, but also because the punishments, like the rewards, that are offered are often extrinsic to the goal itself.

Your alternative: First review the positive consequences of the behaviour you want to motivate. Then review the negative consequences of the behaviour you have at the moment. It’s very important to look at them in that order. For some reason, the mind is more compelled by a negative consequence preceded by a positive than the other way around, or by either consequence alone.
Notice that these are the intrinsic consequences, the consequences that arise directly out of the behaviour itself. It’s not an external carrot and stick.

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You’ll notice that there’s a common theme in what works. It’s the process – the very thing we don’t want to think about, don’t want to go through – that holds the key to success. By paying attention to your process,
you give yourself a motivational advantage and you’re much more likely to achieve your goals successfully.

Getting to the Root

Getting to the Root 

 

Weeds. Plants that are considered undesirable, unattractive, and troublesome. They grow where they're not wanted. They seem to be much more hardy than the vegetation planted on the hillside. I'm talking about the kind of weeds that are tough! The kind that won't come out of the ground without a fight.

Once when I stared at the hillside , I tried to calculate the amount of ground not covered with weeds. Not too much. Okay, so it's been awhile since I've weeded. But who'd have thought the weeds would take over so completely? Within a couple of minutes I'd made a discovery. There weren't as many weeds as I'd initially thought...they were just much bigger than I had originally anticipated.

When I began yanking on the long, green, tentacle-like growth, I came away with handfuls of weeds, but no root. Without successfully extracting the root, the weed would continue to grow. When I eventually came to the root, I was flabbergasted to find that these weeds were huge. Easily three to four feet in diameter. The shoots that radiated from the root seemed to grasp the soil in a death-grip. Not only did the tentacle-like shoots need to be pulled, but the roots needed to be removed from the earth, as well. When I was patient enough to follow the shoot from beginning to end, I was always able to find the root.

Concentrating on one section at a time, the hillside began to be transformed. The weed pile grew and became a hillside in its own right. The plants that remained seemed to breathe easier, having sensed the removal of the weeds that threatened to choke them.

   

Things I struggle with can often mimic this monster weed. Several 'shoots' grab for footholds in my life - desiring my own way, ignoring words of wisdom, speaking words out of anger. Only as I peel these 'shoots' away from the soil of my heart, do I get to the root of the problem. Pride. The 'shoots' are only symptoms of the real issue. Treating the symptoms won't extract the root. Pride has to be dealt with first...Wonder how nature teach us such awesome lessons for our lives !!!.

Ups and Downs

Ups and Downs

 

We all experience ups and downs. Whether we’re talking about jobs, relationships, energy, motivation, happiness - life is often about moving from ups to downs and so on without losing faith.
If you’re experiencing an up, I hope you are enjoying the moment. It must feel special. It must feel great. Enjoy it. Do more. Make the most of it. Spread joy, love and happiness. Be careful about over promising in a good mood while you’re at it. Laugh !




If you’re on a down, I hope you are keeping the faith. As dreary as things seem when we go through downs, they don’t last. And the best things about these downs is that they keep us humble and grounded. Of course, we don’t like or want them for sure... but what would life be if we ever given everything we liked and wanted? Look around. You probably have everything you need. Now what do you think at this moment?

And if you’re in the between, that’s a great place to be too. The next up or down will arrive soon enough. And when that happens, do remember to come back and read this post.!!  :)

Happy weekend folks...

On Cookies, Radishes and Self Control

On Cookies, Radishes and Self Control 

 

This week's book learning draws inspiration from 'Switch' by Chip & Dan Heath.

A group of hungry student volunteers were led to a room that smelt of chocolate chip cookies.
There were 2 bowls - one with cookies and the other with radishes.

Half the group were asked to eat from the cookie bowl and not touch the radishes. The other half had to do the opposite. Researchers left the room for 10 minutes to bring about temptation and studied the situation with hidden cameras. They found that, despite looking longingly at the cookies bowl, the radish eaters stuck to their word - that was will power at work!

A couple of hours later, they were called for a second 'unrelated' study about problem solving and given complicated unsolvable puzzles. And the results were telling.

The cookie group i.e. the untempted students spent, on average, 19 mins on the task making 34 attempts. The Radish group, on the other hand, gave up in 8 mins, after 19 attempts on average.

Self control, as this experiment dictates, is exhaustible . Exercising it is like doing bench presses at the gym - the first one is easy and then it gets progressively difficult.

I think the big question here is - Are we wise in our use of our exhaustible self control every day?

Happy week, all!

Success breeds success - a story

  

There was a farmer who grew superior quality, award-winning corn in  his farm. Each year, he entered his corn in the state fair where it won honors and Prizes.

One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew his corn. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors.

"How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?" The reporter asked.

"Why brother" the farmer replied, "Didn't you know? The wind picks up pollen grains from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior, sub-standard and poor quality corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I have to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors to grow good corn."

The farmer gave a superb insight into the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbor's corn also improves. So it is in the other dimensions and areas of life!

Those who choose to be in harmony must help their neighbors and colleagues to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others live well. The value of a life is not measured by how long one
lived it is measured by how many lives it touches.

Lessons to Learn from this Story: Success does not happen in isolation, it is most often a participatory and collective process. So share the good practices, ideas and new knowledge with your team
members and colleagues.
--
Even if there is an apparent 'loss' sharing ideas in the short run, in the long run, it is sure to help us all get better! :)

Do we learn more from success or failure?

Do we learn more from success or failure? 

 

A ton of research over the past years has pointed us in the direction of learning from bright spots or successes. So, do we learn from failure? And do we learn more from success or failure?

I believe we learn from both. That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise coming from someone who writes under the banner of a blog called “lessons for life.” That said, I do believe learning from success is more powerful. 

Out of every 100 projects we attempt, it is likely we have about 80 failures and 20 successes. So, failures are a huge part of our life and learning from them is essential. That said, their primary function is to teach us that something doesn’t work. However, for every 10 ways that work, there are a 100 ways that don’t and thus, successes are few and far between.

So, we should learn from failure. That’s how we grow up, become wiser, and stay humble. But, we must focus our energy on learning from success. Luckily, we don’t have to restrict ourselves to our successful experiences - learning is an equal opportunity employer. When you see something working, copy it.. and then develop your own style. I have my eye on learning from Ben Franklin’s Junto at the moment..

Isn't failure a wonderful thing?

Isn't failure a wonderful thing?

 

I was just grappling with a few thoughts and it occurred to me that failure is among the best things that can happen to us, like it or not..

Let's visit Man Utd after the Champs league final in Moscow after beating Chelsea. The mood is jubiliant, players partying and the like. It's only when Ferguson gets back to Old Trafford does he go back to the drawing board to plot next season's trophy attack..

How about when Utd were given a lesson in Rome this summer? Every player's mind must have had just 1 thought - what could we have done differently? What went wrong?

It is true that we must focus on things that go well but if it isn't for failure, we would never question, we would never ponder as to what went wrong...

1) Failure makes us humble. It does to me at atleast.. else I'd be flying too high for my own good..

2) Failure makes me think as to the things I can change - that within my circle of influence that would make me a better person that I would not have thought of had every step of mine led to success..

3) Failure makes me thankful for the things I take for granted.. a lovely family, wonderful friends, blessed teachers and mentors and great blessings like lovely food, money to spend and the like..

4) Failure makes me question my own deepest values, as to what really matters and whether this would matter to me 50 years from now.

5) And failure keeps me prepared for change..

Failure unfortunately is treated as a negative word. I've never felt its wrong to fail.. Falling down and staying down are two very different things.

And in the words of Rocky Balboa(from memory..inaccuracy alert :)) - 'Life will make you fall down to your knees and stay there if you let it. It is never about how hard you hit but about how hard you get hit and keep moving, how hard you get hit.. and keep moving..'  :)