How to Motivate Yourself – the Carrot and the Stick Approach

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"Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice."

How can I motivate myself to do this?

Read that again… How many times in your lifetime have you asked yourself this question?

And be honest with yourself…

I asked myself this question many times and even now, when I’m more productive than I ever was , I’m still asking myself this question.

And I still use all kinds of strategies, tricks and hacks to make myself do the things I don’t like or want to do.

Note: 

To get where you want to be, sometimes you need to do the things you don't like or want to do

so you better learn how to get motivated to do what you need to do to succeed, otherwise you will more than likely have a very boring and painful existence.

Being motivated to do something can be hard, almost impossible at times, but without motivation nothing happens, you’re stuck.

Maybe you want to know how to motivate yourself to eat healthy and exercise or  how to motivate yourself to write a book…

or how to motivate yourself to save money or make money, because you are sick and tired of not having any…

All you need to know is this:

It's easy to motivate yourself if you know how your brain works

At all times your brain is doing everything in its power to move you away from pain and towards pleasure

So your brain will make you avoid and procrastinate on everything it perceives as painful and this can be a simple no risky activity that’s just boring…

And at the same time it will make you do some stupid stuff on a daily basis(like eating too much junk food and not exercising, or watching too much TV…etc)

just because it gives you pleasure in the moment.

But here lies the problem.

If you don’t learn to make your brain work for you and let it keep you in activities that will only give you pleasure in the moment,

you will never have what you want.

The secret to success my friend is to avoid the activities that will only give you pleasure in the moment

and to do what is seems like boring or painful in the moment

to get more pleasure and satisfaction in the future.

That’s the core trait of an investor.

And you need to think and act like an investor if you want to succeed in this life.

So how can we do that? 

How to get motivated to do the stuff our brain perceives like something painful?

Simple…

We trick our brain into submission, we force it to work for us, instead against us…

For this, you will need to take a sheet of paper…

and draw a line in the middle to split it into two columns.

Then write in one column all the benefits of doing what you want to do to hit your goals.

And in the other column all the negative stuff that will happen to you if you don’t engage in that activity.

(Or even better, write on two different sheets of paper. It’s your choice. No matter how you do it, just do it.) 

And then imagine yourself experiencing those things that you wrote down and use as much emotion as you can. Feel everything you think you will feel if what you wrote down as benefits and the negative stuff will happen.

Involve all your senses(smell, touch…etc) in this imaginative exercise and make it as real as possible.

If you do this correctly, you will find yourself being highly motivated to jump on that activity that you avoided just minutes earlier.

So, let’s say for example that…

You want to exercise daily so you can lose weight and get in shape.

Take out a sheet of paper and write everything you will experience in the next 5 -10 years if you don’t exercise and you keep gaining weight.

Imagine all those unwanted things that will happen.

Feeling like shit, not having the mobility you want, not wanting to get out often or go to parties or certain events you want to attend, because you don’t feel good in your own skin, people making fun of your appearance and so on.

Let all those images and negative feelings flow for a while.

Then after you stayed enough in those gut-wrenching feelings it’s time to shake your entire body, maybe even do a few jumping jacks and stretch your body a little

and imagine that you had let go of that awful energy and all those crappy thoughts and feelings.

Remember that none of that happen yet.

It was just a projected future.

It’s just a probability, something that will probably happen if you don’t make any changes in your behavior and/or habits. 

Ok, now that you released all that negative energy and you’re in a neutral state it’s time to go to the next phase of this exercise(the carrot phase, aka developing good feelings for taking action on your goals). 

So, just like before,

I want you to write down on the same shit of paper and again, imagine and feel everything that will happen in 5 or 10 years or even more from this moment,

if you start exercising daily and eat healthy and do everything that will make you get in amazing physical shape super fast.

Just imagine yourself being healthier and looking better than ever.

Imagine yourself being complimented on your good looks and how great it feels that now

you fit perfectly into the new pair of jeans that is one or two size smaller that the one you’re wearing now.

Just imagine all those wonderful things that will happen in your life and feel everything.

Let those positive emotions flood your entire body for 10 minutes or more.

Have you finished…? How was it?

Do you feel motivated to take action?

I bet you do…

This exercise can work wonders.

If you imagine everything that can happen(the bad and then the good stuff)with enough emotion, you will be in action in no time.

Now that you know how to motivate yourself, don’t procrastinate.

Try this exercise right after you finish reading this article and then start working. Success in anything comes from action, not from talking or dreaming or thinking about something.

Only action brings results and…

"Results is the name of the game. What other game is there?"

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