How often do you feel that you just can’t motivate yourself to do something? You want to do it, it’s on your ‘To Do’ list and you know you will feel better and get a great sense of satisfaction if you do. So, what is stopping you? Why does telling yourself to do it simply not work? You may have even written yourself a great list of goals at the start of the year, and cleverly mapped out all the actions you need to take. But, you still can’t motivate yourself. You are telling yourself ‘I must do it!’ or ‘I need to do it!’ or ‘I have to do it!’ or ‘I’ve got to do it!’ or even ‘I want to do it!’.
Why is this happening?
Well, in my experience, it’s because you are trying to motivate yourself, when what you really need is to inspire yourself. In NLP terms there is a huge difference between motivation and inspiration. Motivation is something you are trying to ‘do’ to yourself or ‘give’ yourself, whereas inspiration comes from within you, and as such is far more powerful.
To do anything, you have to want to do it. That may be because of the negative repercussions if you don’t, for example you go to work on time because you don’t want to lose your job, you pay your utility bills on time because you don’t want them cut off! In such cases we can clearly see in our minds the repercussions, and they are things that we don’t want to happen. Our survival is very much geared to ensuring that we do those things that avoid us suffering in some way. These are things that we need little motivation to do. The challenge comes with those things in our lives where we are trying to realise our dreams, create a happier, healthier, wealthier future for ourselves and make some very significant changes to our lives and the way we lead them. It is with such challenges that inspiration is needed.
Inspiration is about seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting & smelling so powerfully in your mind the lifestyle or dreams that you want to achieve, that the thoughts of it fill you with excitement (and possibly some apprehension) from head to toe. And as long as you hold onto that vision and those feelings, and keep running that movie in your mind, you will feel the inspiration to take the right actions to make your dreams and goals reality.
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