Need Motivation? Just Answer These Questions
In 12 Signs You’re Ready For A Change, I wrote that motivation is essential to change. Without motivation, change is just an abstract concept. With motivation, it’s possible to initiate, move through, and complete the change process, and get the results you want. (You can get your own free copy of 12 Signs You’re Ready For A Change at my website, www.barbaradershowitz.guru.)
Here’s what we’re talking about when we talk about motivation. Motivation is the reason, willingness, eagerness, and drive to do something. The operative word in all that is DO. Doing implies action. The end goal of motivation must be action because that’s exactly what the word means: the stimulation to ACT.
Since change is the result of things actually happening, what you are really looking for when you’re seeking motivation is a stimulant that will compel you to TAKE ACTION and DO something. If you need help to get motivated in order to initiate a change in your personal or professional life, answering these 12 questions should help.
1. How bored, fed up, sick and tired, disgusted, frustrated, or angry am I with the situation I want to change?
2. Exactly what about the situation do I want to change?
3. What will my new normal look like after the change?
4. How will I feel about myself after I have successfully navigated the change process and the change has become my new normal … and how will I feel about myself if I do nothing and no change happens?
5. On what deadline date, that I give to myself, will I let go of the ideas that life should be fair to me, that there should be a button I can push to magically make things the way I want them to be, and that I shouldn’t have to work for what I want, … and replace those delusions with the practical acceptance that life is not fair, that everyone has to work for what they want, and that there is no magic button?
6. What steps will I have to take to get from where I am now to my new normal?
7. How can I break those steps into tiny, sequential successes so I can move through the change process by progressing from success to success?
8. Where can I find information and personal accounts and advice from people who have made a similar change in their lives so I know I’m not alone and that I’m not the first person in the world to make this change?
9. Who among my family and friends will encourage and support this change and be willing to serve as my accountability buddy so I stay on track?
10. Where can I find professional guidance, help, and support to manage my change process and make this change a reality?
11. What’s the first thing I need to stop doing in order to initiate this change?
12. What first tiny step can I take right now to get this change underway?
I hope these questions have caused your action muscles to start flexing. Physically writing the answers to the questions, experiencing butterflies in your stomach, starting to ask next generation questions like, How am I going to re-arrange my life to accommodate this change?, and thinking about the support mechanisms that are available to you as your navigate your change, are all signs that you’re moving from thinking about change to being motivated to actually make the change.
Return to these questions whenever you need a reminder about why you’re making your current change, and every time you need to get motivated to initiate movement toward a next new normal.
Read my next blog for Six Practical Ways to Stay Motivated.
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