Science of Determination is a series of articles about a method researchers have discovered for recovering from a demoralizing setback (and regaining motivation and determination). The first article in the series, and the introduction to the subject is: Antivirus For Your Mind.
If you want to feel better and get more done, first you need at least one goal. You need something to aim at. Human beings are goal-achieving at their best. This is one of the most basic principles of success, sanity, and mental health.
Once you have something to aim for, you have two things to concern yourself with: Motivation and demoralization. You already know what to do about demoralization: Use the antivirus for the mind. That will prevent setbacks from taking away your motivation. But can anything be done to increase your motivation? Is there anything else besides setbacks that can take away your motivation?
When you first create a goal, you are already motivated. The moment you choose it, you’re highly motivated. You chose the goal in the first place because you’re motivated to accomplish it.
But what happens? Your motivation tends to fade, doesn’t it?
Why?
The question has bothered people for centuries. Why does motivation fade? The reason the question is perplexing is that motivation fades for many different reasons. You already know the way you explain setbacks can deflate your motivation, rather quickly. But there are more causes of demotivation than that.
For example, one very significant reason motivation fades is that you think of new goals, and they seem better somehow. You haven’t gotten bogged down in the details of your new goal yet. The new goal seems clean and pristine and more appealing than the goal you are slogging toward at the moment, full of problems and difficulties (or, if you prefer, challenges and opportunities).
Interruptions and distractions are major forces that can dampen that once-hot-burning fire of desire.
But a more practical way of thinking about the causes of demotivation is that it happens simply because you haven’t tried to keep yourself motivated. Motivation will naturally fade. Motivation doesn’t last. But it can can be renewed and needs to be renewed and refreshed regularly.
When you bathe, your state of cleanliness doesn’t last forever either. You have to bathe again and again if you want to stay clean. And when you exercise, it doesn’t make you permanently fit. You have to exercise again and again to get and stay fit. So what? That’s what it takes, so that’s you do.
You may never have put motivation in the same category, but now that you think about it, I’m sure you can see that it must be in the same category.
The question is, of course, “How can motivation be refreshed?” How can you enhance your own motivation? How can you boost it when it’s sagging?
MOTIVATION IS IMPORTANT
A feeling of motivation isn’t just nice, it is very powerful and important. The difference between someone motivated and someone unmotivated is like night and day. A motivated person can do far more and is far more capable.
I once worked as a waiter in a new restaurant and the bussers were all high school students from the local area — an upscale, wealthy area. These kids didn’t need the money. In fact, more than one of them only worked because his parents thought it would be “good for him” to have a job.
These kids were not very motivated. They had the potential to do a good job, but without motivation, they didn’t com close to fulfilling that potential.
The waiters tipped the bussers. That’s how the bussers made most of their money. The waiters, of course, tried to motivate them by letting them know we’d tip more if they worked harder, but they didn’t really care. They were more interested in just going through the motions of their job, and talking to the opposite sex.
Then the restaurant began to hire illegal immigrants from Mexico for the busser positions. The contrast was astonishing. These Mexicans did about three times the work of the high school students. Why? They weren’t physically healthier or smarter than the high school students. They definitely weren’t more well-rested — most of the Mexicans worked two full-time jobs.
But they were motivated.
When they worked hard, we tipped them more. And the money we gave them was worth a lot more back in Mexico than it was in the U.S. Many of them had a wife and kids, and were often supporting their parents and sisters back home, and they were saving up their money to start a business or buy a house back in Mexico.
They were very motivated and the contrast between them and the well-fed, young, well-rested high school students was sharp and dramatic.
Motivation makes a huge difference. Imagine what a difference it could make to you and your goals.
Whether or not you achieve your goals depends almost entirely on your motivation. Think about that. Let it sink in. It is entirely possible that you will never achieve your goals. But if you do, it was because you were motivated. If you don’t, it was because you weren’t motivated enough.
And it doesn’t really matter if you are motivated right now. Motivation changes constantly, like all feelings. And your feelings of motivation can be cultivated and grow, or they can be neglected and wither. It’s largely up to you.
Tremendous things are possible to someone who is motivated and can stay motivated. And there are people all over the world who accomplish extraordinary things, many of them merely ordinary people with ordinary talents — but with extraordinary motivation. And it’s not something they were born with.
Listen to me very carefully. This is important. They weren’t born with motivation. The reason they now have extraordinary motivation is that they’re doing certain kinds of things that cultivate their motivation. And they do certain kinds of things that prevent their motivation from withering.
Cultivate is the key word. You don’t cultivate an apple tree once and for all. It’s an ongoing task. If you pull weeds and add water and fertilizer and prune it, the tree can grow robust and healthy.
Let it fend for itself, however, and it will probably become weak. It’ll be choked by weeds. It’ll dry out. It’ll be infestested with pests. The leaves will have holes in it, the branches will grow too close together or sprawl so it will produce fewer and smaller apples. It might even wither and die.
Here you are now, with a goal and somewhat motivated. Let’s see what we can do to cultivate your motivation. Let’s see what we can do to make your motivation healthy and robust. What is motivation’s water and fertilizer?
Here are seven of the most potent ways of growing and maintaining a lasting, energizing feeling motivation.
1. Prune your goals.
2. Make a list, put it in order.
3. Keep the level of challenge just right.
4. Measure your progress.
5. Read and listen to motivational material.
6. Take the time to think.
7. Refresh your goals.
I once heard a phrase that has stuck with me ever since. When you make a list or chart your progress or put a motivational slogan on your bathroom mirror, you are creating “a structure of fulfillment.” You’re making your progress easier. You’re making it easier for your goals to be accomplished. You’re making the fulfillment of your desires more likely.
Think of it like a trellis. Many bean plants are vines, and if you just let them grow naturally, they’ll grow along the ground, making them more vulnerable to pests and rot, and they won’t get as much sun if there are other plants around. But give them a trellis to climb on, and they will produce more beans. It is literally a structure for it to fulfill its potential yield. It won’t yield as much without that structure. It won’t do as well.
The same is true of you. If you make structures to help you, you can fulfill more of your potential. A good part of cultivating a feeling of motivation is creating structures of fulfillment that make success easier or faster. Success is motivating. Focus is motivating.
The seven principles above give you structures of fulfillment. They will help you keep your motivation high. And your high motivation will help you accomplish your most heartfelt goals.
The principle:
Cultivate your feeling of motivation (using those seven tools).
Read about the first principle: Prune Your Goals.
The following clip is about four minutes long. It is a man named Paul, trying out for a contest. What gave him the courage to do this? He actually tells you. Before the tryout, he says, “My dream is to spend my life doing what I feel I was born to do. ” That’s what he’s thinking: What he was about to do is something he feels he was “born to do.” That’s a powerful thought. Obviously he’s had that thought many times.
Imagine your biggest goal. Imagine the main activity of that goal. Now imagine saying to yourself, “I was born to do this!” Imagine you felt that way (if you don’t already). Would that thought and those feelings change the quality of your determination?
Success is almost never an accident. It is the result of what a person thinks. Paul is there doing what he feels he was born to do because he thinks he was born to do it. There are others in the world who have similar talents who never express them because they think they can’t. They’ve accidentally practiced thinking they can’t.
I want you to notice something else in this short film. Paul is not filled with confidence or enthusiasm or cheerfulness, or anything that is normally labeled “positive attitudes.” But he is filled with determination. And that’s enough.
Now, watch what happens:
Determination is a powerful force in the world. And determination can be cultivated. It’s not a matter of luck. You have the tools. If you feel defeated or demoralized, use the antivirus for your mind. If you’d like more clarity or motivation or determination, use slotrology.
Update: Since this first tryout, Paul has won the “Britain’s Got Talent” competition, appeared on the Oprah show, and come out with an album entitled, One Chance.
Amazon had this to say of him:
Britain’s Got Talent winner Paul Potts has spent most of his life feeling “insignificant.” Bullied at school for being “different,” he realized growing up that he had one true friend and that was his voice. Singing was his escape. He was able to lose himself in his own little world — the vicious words of his tormentors replaced by hauntingly beautiful lyrics and melodies that lifted his heart and spirit. It was a love, a passion, a lifeline that would follow Paul into adulthood and help him through many more periods of adversity.
Though it’s fair to say that when Paul strolled awkwardly — almost apologetically — onto the Cardiff stage for his first Britain’s Got Talent audition a week before that final, in his now infamous £35 Tesco suit, and announced to Simon and fellow judges Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan that he was going to sing opera, they never thought for one minute they were looking at their winner. Until he opened his mouth and started to sing.
Relentless resolve can accomplish what seems impossible. In India people called fakirs (which doesn’t mean they fake anything) do something amazing that takes years to master, and they do it as a spiritual discipline. What they choose to do varies.
For example, some hold a particular pose, like a certain religiously appropriate position, and they just keep holding it. This takes intense resolve, because of course, it becomes uncomfortable after only twenty minutes. So they go as long as they can, and then they rest. And then they go as long as they can again, and they keep this up, doing it longer and longer until they are permanently frozen in that posture!
They eventually can’t move, even if they wanted to. Their disciples have to force feed them and carry them to the river like a statue to wash them off.
This shows the amazing power of unremitting resolution. Personally, I think this particular application of will power is stupid. There are so many worthwhile things to accomplish in this world, and these guys have developed their powers of resolve to an unbelievable degree and all they have accomplished is to turn themselves into a statue! I’m sure you can use the power of focused resolve for something better.
Robert B. McCall, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh and his colleagues have kept track of 6,700 people for 13 years. Specifically, they were tracking people who were underachievers in school — people who, according to aptitude tests, had a lot of potential to get good grades, but who, in reality, had low grade-point averages. After 13 years, only about 15% of them had achieved a career success equal to their abilities.
What did they lack? Two things, according to McCall: “persistence in the face of challenge,” and they were too self-critical. The lack of persistence can be changed. It is simply a missing thought-habit.
You are persistent in the face of challenge if you are in the habit of being persistent in the face of challenge, and you are in the habit of persisting if you are in the habit of thinking in ways that make you persistent.
Get in the habit of telling yourself at key moments, “stay on track.” Other good things to tell yourself are “focus creates power” and “do what needs doing.”
Persistence is an extremely important habit. You can’t really develop competence at anything unless you persist through the rough parts, whether it’s playing the piano or doing your job. Any task you undertake, if it’s worth your trouble, will have some challenge in it. Some parts of it will be tough. No new abilities can be created without having to persist in the face of challenges, even if the main challenge is suffering through the boring repetition of playing scales on the piano.
For some goals, it will take everything you’ve got to accomplish it. As a matter of fact, it will take more than you’ve got — you’ll have to become more than you are now in order to accomplish it. You’ll need to learn more than you now know. You’ll need to gain skills you don’t have yet.
Practice staying on purpose no matter what distracts you. You will be taken off track again and again until you learn to stick with your purpose. With practice, you can get to the level of Einstein’s concentration. And when you can focus like that, you will be a laser beam, cutting through obstacles and barriers with hardly a pause, flying strait to your objective with power and speed.
SUMMARY OF SLOTROLOGY
All the stuff about the virus of the mind, and all the stuff about slotrology can be summed up as forming mental habits. The difference between someone who is feels bad and doesn’t get much done and someone who feels good and gets a lot done is simply their mental habits.
The way you think is a habit just like any other habit. When you learn to drive a car, you really have to pay attention to it. But the more you do it, the more you can do without your conscious attention. Behaviors become habits. Whole series of even complex behaviors happen on automatic pilot. When you drive, your body is on automatic pilot. You pay attention to cars around you, adjust your speed, move the steering wheel so you stay in the center of the lane, adjust your foot to keep your speed just right, and you’re doing all this on automatic pilot – by habit – while you carry on a lively conversation with your passenger.
The same is true of thought. The first few times you think a new thought, you may do it deliberately, but after you’ve thought a certain way about something over and over several times, it starts to become automatic. Thoughts influence the way you perceive the world. And thoughts alter how you feel. And for the most part, the thoughts you normally think are habit. They aren’t deliberate. They’re not what you would choose if you were choosing your thoughts deliberately.
Change your mental habits and you dramatically change your life.
How? Take a situation where you’re having trouble or where you’d like to feel or do something differently. Now figure out what you want to say to yourself in that situation. What would be helpful to think in that situation? Avoid any statements you don’t believe. Try to boil it down into a few short sentences, or even down to one.
Now practice saying that to yourself. In your head, or ideally out loud and with lots of feeling. Say it again and again. Practice thinking that thought. Make it smooth. Make it familiar with repetition. Make it come easy. Make the thought come easily to mind by repeating it.
Practice several times a day for awhile so the slotra feels grooved in. Keep practicing until that pathway through your brain seems well-worn. Write the slotra down and carry the paper with you to remind yourself to practice thinking it. Then when the right situation comes up, try to remember to say it to yourself.
It might not work out the first time. But after awhile, you’ll start to form a new mental habit. Keep practicing, and it will become automatic and you won’t have to try to remember.
To speed up the process, close your eyes and say your slotra with feeling over and over, and as you do, think about all the different situations in which you would like to think that thought. Think of the situations, one after the other, where you want that slotra to come to mind, all the while, repeating it to yourself. This is a way to future-practice, and helps the thought come to mind at the right time. It is also running back and forth on the pathway of your mind, helping to make the slotra easy to think.
To help form mental habits that can serve you for a lifetime:
Create good slotras and practice thinking them
until they come to mind automatically.