Motivation is a fickle beast.
Some days I beat the sun out of bed and meditate my way to the coffee machine while doing Pilates. Then I sit down at the keyboard and words drop from my fingertips while my mind cycles through a monk-like-zen that doesn’t snap until a handful of hours have passed and my conscious mind has to paddle back to the surface for air.
These days are pure magic. I am motivation incarnate.
These days are also about as rare as the days where I get to ride a Unicorn to work.
More often than not, I drag my sleep-addled carcass from bed, stumble to the coffee maker, and proceed to bash my forehead against the keyboard until something resembling coherent thoughts start to form.
These days are like pulling teeth.
These days are… well, they’re pretty much every single day.
Chances are high these days are the status quo for you as well. Which raises the all-important question:
How do we ever find the motivation to get stuff done?
If you’ve been flying near my orbit for any amount of time, you probably know I’m a big fan of visualization. (If this is your first time ever experiencing me, well, let me just get you up to speed: I’m a big fan of visualization.)
Visualization is a winning tactic employed by peak performers the world over, regardless of industry, career, sport, whatever… and there’s a reason for that.
It’s because visualization works.
Most of you have heard of the 10,000 hour rule, but for those just stumblingacross this concept, it boils down to this:
Studies show mastering an activity requires roughly 10,000 hours of deep practice.
Deep practice is a huge concept in-and-of itself that we won’t touch on here, but what we will talk about is the fact that research consistently shows visualization to be an effective technique for building neuronal pathways even when you aren’t performing the task you are mentally rehearsing.’
Simply said, if you want to perfect your tennis serve, you need to spend hours on the court swinging a racket. BUT, you can also fast-track your learning practice by intentionally rehearsing and visualizing the act.
That’s right, you can get better at tennis without swinging a racket.
Okay, that’s great for the wannabe Roger Federer’s and Serena Williams’ out there, but what’s any of this have to do with motivating yourself on days when you just want to crumple up into a ball under your bed and hide from the world.
Well, in past articles I’ve championed the idea that a big part of motivation lies in firmly understanding where you want to go in life. Most people suffer from a malaise because they’re drifting listlessly through life. They’re on a treadmill leading nowhere and it’s slowly killing their soul.
As a general rule, humans need to experience a sense of progress.
In progress lies happiness.
Take away progress and we quickly regress to a base form of animal life simply struggling to meet our basic survival requirements.
So here’s step one in motivating yourself:
Figure out what best case scenario looks like.
Create a detailed vision of the life you’d like to have in 5, 10, or 20 years from now. Be specific and answer these questions:
– Where are you living? In a house? Apartment? On the beach? In the mountains?
– Who do you spend your time with? Loved ones? Friends? Enemies?
– Where are you working? Why are you working there?
– What’s your financial situation?
– What’s your health situation?
There’s a hundred thousand questions you could nail down when exploring your future-state, and I’m not going to bother typing them out here, but the first step in motivating yourself lies in clearly articulating your goal.
Once you have that, you can keep it at the forefront of your mind as a prize to be obtained by the efforts of your daily dedication.
Once you’ve created a vision of where you want to go, it’s time for step two, and I need you to buckle up for this one because chances are you’ve never gone to this dark place.
Figure out what worst case scenario looks like.
We’re doing some negative visualization here. It’s a step you won’t see in a lot of self-development books because as an industry, the self-help gurus want you visualizing good, happy outcomes. (Actually, negative visualization is a fairly common exercise within the clinical psychology field, so I won’t pretend as though I am completely running rogue on this one.)
So what’s the benefit to imaging worst case scenario?
Because psychological studies time and time again show that we as humans are significantly more motivated by the fear of loss than we are by the promise of reward.
To put that in context, you will go to greater lengths to avoid losing $100 than you will to gain $100.
The outcome is the same: $100. And yet, depending on how it’s coached (either as a loss or gain) you will expend significantly different amounts of energy to obtain one result over the other.
This is why in the world of marketing, Limited time only offers are drastically more effective than Buy 1 get 1 free promotions. (Though, in fairness, both methods are pretty effective.)
The fear of losing out is one of the most powerful of all human motivators.
So if you truly want to achieve maximum motivation, you need to create a life road map to hell.
Think about all the things within your control that if you consistently neglect, would lead you to rock-bottom.
As an aside: it’s important to focus primarily on the things within your control. Horrible things happen in life that are entirely outside of your control, but by and large, your time is best spent trying to avoid the negative consequences of your own stupidity.
As they say, You are your own worst enemy.
Okay, so I know this isn’t pleasant, but go ahead and visualize your life in five years from the perspective of rock bottom.
– What’s your health situation? Are you overweight? Diabetic? Why? Is it because you’ve been eating garbage for the past five years and not working out?
– What’s your financial situation? Are you living paycheck-to-paycheck because your buried under a mountain of credit card debt you accumulated buying things you don’t need?
– What’s your work situation? Are you stuck in a dead-end job that’s slowly sucking your life? Do you even have a job? Why or why not?
– Who do you spend all your time with? Loved ones? Friends? Enemies?
Your worst case scenario is going to look different than mine, so I won’t project on you what I feel would be worst case scenario. This is something that each of us needs to decide for themselves.
Once you’ve envisioned this horrible end state, I want you to start asking yourself some hard questions about what sorts of actions, patterns, and behaviors you currently utilize that would lead you to that place.
If you’re terrified of being alone, isolated from friends and family, in the next five years, then look at your current pattern of behavior and ask yourself:
“Is what I’m doing right now leading me to, or away, from that place?”
This exercise is extremely powerful, because through it, you develop a new lens through which to see the world and your place therewithin.
Now, on those days when you’re too tired to get into the gym, or too hungry to cook a healthy dinner, you can ask yourself: “Is this decision leading me to a place I don’t want to go?”
The answer to that question can be profound when you have a clear picture in your mind of the place you don’t want to go.
Of course, it’s important to find balance. It wouldn’t be healthy to spend all your time dwelling on the negative. There has to be a give and take.
For the majority of days I encourage you to find positive motivation by envisioning the life you do want to create for yourself.
But on those days where thinking about future-you frolicking through rainbows just isn’t cutting it, let your mind drift to the alternative.
Let your mind drift to worst case scenario. And just for a time…let the fear of loss be your motivation.
