Running Motivation

You're likely already aware that action is the key to achieving your goals. However, there is a more rarely considered - and much more important aspect of action, and that is training yourself to sustain this action-oriented mindset in order to direct your energy to sustain long-term action.

So how do we achieve long term action? Two qualities rank high on the list, consistency and persistence. Not everyone is born with these traits but you do have the ability to learn them. A key tip that can help you learn persistence is to set aside your emotion. We are all very emotional creatures at our core. We experience our ups and downs, sometimes more downs than ups, and it is important to try to set the negative emotions aside to learn persistence. Some other key tips that are worth including are becoming accustomed to succeeding which can be done by setting small goals and meeting them, make small changes which means changing one bad habit at a time, and remember to reward yourself for every accomplishment.

Each of us is familiar with those random bursts of energy that can find us achieving some of our greatest moments in life. Similarly, we all have the tendency to begin a project, goal, or idea with a wealth of energy, which can dwindle halfway through and find us giving up, or simply becoming taken with a new project without completing the first. This energy comes and goes when life interferes with setbacks, depressing events, or other things that can affect our emotional state, which, in turn, impacts our professional and personal results.

If we're feeling fit and healthy, we're not overly stressed out, we have a good social and family life, and we've gotten enough sleep, our physiological state will generally be pretty good! And when you can see the fruits of your labor, like getting grades in school, then you'll be even more primed to keep up the good work.

If however the opposite occurs and you're feeling stressed, hungry, tired, unhealthy and socially outcast then you're likely to feel pretty low. Worse still, if you start getting poor grades or negative feedback, it's likely that your emotional state will depress and you'll feel like giving up. That's only natural isn't it? It's pretty hard to feel good about these things!

One of the most important keys to success in life and in your schooling is to learn how to turn short term action into sustained long term repeated actions. We all know that to achieve big things you need to drill things down into the steps necessary to get there. When you know your big picture and you have a road map, the formula to reach your destination is just one step per day. How do you get from one side of the country to the other side? Simple - one mile at a time. Don't you? You have a big picture goal and lots of little achievements are necessary to get there. You don't take one step and all of a sudden you've made it! Sustained action executing the right techniques, which follow the right strategy, leads you to achieving your vision. The only remaining roadblock to your success is you.

Inspiration is what you'll need to harness in order to get to the top of that mountain. Inspiration is more powerful, and a more deeply spiritual practice than motivation, because it comes from deep within your heart. When you wield your own inspiration, you are able to see past any temporary setback; because it will be clear to you that there is something bigger than you at work - something that exists outside of our daily trials and tribulations. Inspiration is a prolonged, consistent desire to change, to reach that goal whether it is large or small. Of course, motivation can still be useful to us - but it exists mainly within a singular situation, a constrained time frame or one temporary set of circumstances. It deals mainly with the present, and has little to do with the big picture.

An easy way to separate the two is thinking about going to school. Do you go to school every day because you want to graduate and get your diploma? Or do you go to school every day because you possess an unyielding desire to get into the college of your dreams? And then graduate and have the job of your dreams or start an organization that could change the world? While both of these scenarios are driven by ambition and motivation, the inspiration comes from the latter; that feeling, the internal drive to want to do something, be something, and achieve more. This is where inspiration gives you the desire that will push you through, carry you through the ups and downs, and create sustained long term action.

Now is the time to really consider everything; to see yourself as a powerful piece in an even more powerful game. It's time to think about things like higher education, never needing a job that you despise, even the possibility of becoming a billionaire via the creation of something new that impacts people - even the entire world in a positive way! All of these outcomes can be possible for you; however, they require an ability to prolong your motivation long enough for it to transform into inspiration. Outcomes like these require that you can keep your eye on the big picture, while stepping evenly toward your goals every single day. Regardless of our circumstances, we can all direct our inspiration into unlimited potential - it is what you truly believe is possible that matters in the end. So, what is it that you are capable of - and how will you begin energizing your capacity to achieve it today?