Have you ever set a goal and felt like nothing in the world could hold you back from accomplishing it? Maybe it was losing 20 pounds, or making money online?
The day you set that goal you probably felt really motivated, and maybe you even exercised 45 minutes or started to build a website. The next day you’re still working away, but day-by-day, your progress slows to a halt. You wake up months later and realize that you haven’t worked towards that goal in ages. In other words, tomorrow never came.
This is what happens when you rely on motivation alone to accomplish a goal.
The problem with motivation is it comes in waves. There are peaks and lows. When you’re at a motivational peak, it feels like you can take on the world. When you’re at a motivation low, good luck getting anything done!
Plain and simple, relying on motivation alone sucks – but I’ve got good news for you. I’m going to give you a surefire strategy for accomplishing more than you ever thought possible… and it’s actually a lot simpler than you might think.
At the heart of the strategy is the idea that you must balance “motivation” with “ability”. When your motivation is very high, you have the ability and mental strength to persevere and do more difficult things – such as running for 45 minutes.
When your motivation is low, you have less ability and lower mental strength to accomplish difficult tasks.
So how do you compensate for this? Easy – when you are feeling very motivated, get on that treadmill and run. When you’re not feeling motivated, you need to reduce ability and make that task easier for you to accomplish – so instead of running 45 minutes, run for 10.
As soon as you reduce ability you’ll find your mind relaxes and that guilt you were feeling about skipping a day working towards your goal melts away – because at least you’re doing SOMETHING. Something is always better than nothing.
By adjusting to your body’s natural motivation waves you’ll actually find that over time you’re able to get a lot more done. And something else interesting happens…
When you rely less on motivation, you’re able to accomplish a lot more. Your ability really does increase. At first you’re running just 10 minutes on a low motivation peak, then one day you set out to just run 10 minutes but you end up running 15, it’s mentally getting easier for you to run. 15 minutes turns in 20, then 30, then 45. Your ability will increase over time and you’ll be less reliant on motivation alone and this will happen in a very natural way.
So my advice to you is to never just rely on motivation. Doing this is a recipe for disaster. Try and balance ability and motivation and you’ll be able to get a lot more done, and you’ll be developing much better work habits towards your goals.
