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Why does motivation fade? And what can you do about it? The question is answered in the section, Cultivating Fire: How to Keep Your Motivation High. Read the first post in the series here.

Tags: cultivating fire by Adam Khan
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The most effective way to renew your motivation is to seriously consider giving up on your goal — not as a trick, but sincerely. Oddly enough, this can be extremely motivating. Why? Because it brings you back to reality. After all, this is your goal. This is not something you have to do; it’s something you want to do.

But too often a goal you are initially very enthusiastic about and want very badly becomes a drudging chore you feel you have to do. Why does this happen?

When you first create a goal, you see the big picture — you see the result, you see what you want — and you feel motivated.

Then comes the work. You make your list of things to be done to accomplish the goal. You realize it could take many years. You get to work on it, and of course, you hit setbacks. You get bogged down in details. You get bored with tedius parts. And you might even forget why you wanted the goal in the first place.

Your motivation wanes because your attention is no longer on the goal, no longer on what you want. Your attention is on the problems and on what you feel you have to do.

So you need to refresh your goals once in awhile. Do a kind of mental reboot. Start by seriously considering the possibility of giving up on your goal. Ask yourself, “Do I still want to achieve this goal?”

Every once in awhile, when you ask this question, you will find that in fact, you no longer want it — not because of demoralization, but because your values have changed, or maybe you’ve thought of something better, or whatever.

But most of the time, once you think about it and give yourself the freedom to give it up and start something new, you will find you still want your goal.

That realization, all by itself, can make you feel more motivated because now you don’t feel you have to accomplish your goal. Now you are freshly and vividly aware you sincerely desire it, and that’s a totally different feeling.

ONLY A PREFERENCE

One of the first principles of Albert Ellis’s work is to “upgrade your musts to preferences.” That is essentially what you do when you allow yourself the freedom to give up on your goal. Ellis uses the principle in therapy because it brings people back to reality. In reality, most of the things you feel you have to do are things you actually simply prefer to do (given the consequences one way or the other). But the feeling of wanting to do something is positive and pleasant, while feeling you must do something feels like drudgery.

So when Ellis does his therapy, he helps his clients realize some of the musts and shoulds that run their lives are merely preferences they themselves have chosen. This, all by itself, removes a lot of craziness from their lives. It gets rid of unnecessary negative emotions.

To give up your goal, to even consider giving it up, and then choosing it anew reminds you that your goal is a preference. It really isn’t something you have to do.

Someone might say, “No, I really have to, because if I don’t, I can’t make the mortgage.” But this is not entirely accurate. He does, in fact, have the option of selling his house and living in a small apartment.

“I can’t do that!” he says, “I have my wife and kids to think about.” But the truth is, he really could. And oddly enough, if there was something he wanted badly enough, his wife and kids would probably be willing to sacrifice luxuries for him.

But the point is, you often have many choices you are unaware of. You have choices you haven’t thought of. Why? Because you haven’t thought about it! You set your goal a long time ago, and now you’ve got your nose to the grindstone. You need to rise above your project once in awhile and look at the whole picture.

If you think about it, if you look at the whole picture, you may go back to the grindstone, but you’ll feel good about it now. You’ll realize you have chosen it. You will have the alternatives to compare it to fresh in your mind. And you will feel motivated. You’ll feel better and get more done.

SAME GOAL, DIFFERENT APPROACH

Sometimes you may feel like giving up because what you’re doing isn’t working. One alternative to giving up on the goal entirely is to keep the goal but change your approach. For example, remember I tried to lose weight but was unsuccessful? I thought, “I can’t seem to do it.”

But now I understand that the way I was trying didn’t work. The goal was possible after all, but the method I was using was doomed to failure, like trying to criticize someone into a good mood or trying to cure anemia by bloodletting. The philosophy of low-fat, high-carb dieting doesn’t work without a lot of self-discipline or social support.

In another example of this principle, a group of Norweigans were able to stop Hitler’s quest for nuclear weapons by continually changing their approach.

Hitler wanted nuclear weapons. But first he needed “heavy water” (deuterium oxide, D2O). Heavy water is like H2O but the hydrogen is replaced by deuterium atoms (which has has two extra neutrons so it is heavier than ordinary water).

After Germany invaded and occupied Norway, Hitler used a facility there to begin the work. Making heavy water required an enormous amount of equipment, and it took a long time to get a sufficient amount, as the heavy water dripped slowly to fill up the tanks.

The Allies found out about this project, and of course, wanted to stop it. The British proposed bombing the heavy-water plant, but it was so close to a town (Vemork), the Norweigian resistance fighters talked them out of it. It would create too many civilian casualties.

They still had the goal (stop Hitler from developing nuclear weapons) but their approach needed to change. Giving up the goal wasn’t an option anyone seriously considered. Hitler with nuclear weapons? It was unthinkable. So they came up with a different approach.

The British launched a commando raid, using silent gliders. But both gliders crashed, leaving 23 men alive. The Nazis captured the survivors and executed them.

That approach didn’t work. The Allies needed another plan. This was one of England’s top military priorities because they had good evidence Germany was close to building an A-bomb. With only one such bomb, Hitler could easily wipe out half of London.

Six Norwegian resistance fighters escaped Norway and volunteered for training in England for the mission. To avoid the fate of the last volunteers, they were all issued a rubber capsule of cyanide to pop in their mouths if they were captured. A soldier only had to bite on the capsule, and it would burst. Within three seconds, he would be dead.

The six volunteers learned how to handle explosives, worked out their plan, their timing, learned to make detonators, studied diagrams of the buildings and the nearby German military station, etc. This time they would leave nothing to chance. Hitler’s project had to be stopped.

The Norwegians parachuted in — and missed their landing spot by 20 miles. They tried to get to the rendezvous point, but were caught in a blizzard. They were supposed to meet four of their fellow sabateurs already in Norway.

When they eventually successfully got inside the building, they were able to set explosive charges that destroyed the heavy water cells. Success at last!

But the Germans rebuilt it within months. It was obviously high on their priority list also.

This was tremendously discouraging and alarming. That several-month delay, however, might have been enough. Nobody was sure. The United States was pressing for bombing the plant — this was too important to be left to luck. And finally it was done. British and American planes — 388 bombers in all — dropped 828 bombs. They devastated the plant, but unfortunately one of the places that was not destroyed was where the heavy water cells were stored!

The Germans decided the heavy water they had made so far was too vulnerable, so they planned to move it to Germany. For the Allies, this was their last chance. They couldn’t let the heavy water make it into Germany.

To get the heavy water out of Norway, first it had to be transported by ferry. Norwegian resistance fighters successfully planted explosives on that ferry, sending it (and all the heavy water) to the bottom of the lake. This was finally the end of Germany’s “nuclear dream.”

How many different approaches did they try on this single goal? Four times they created a plan, trained for it, mobilized the equipment and men, and executed their plan before they finally succeeded in achieving the goal.

If you find yourself in a similar situation — still wanting the goal but having failed using the approach you first came up with — you have another option besides giving up: You can come up with another way. You can use what you learned in your first failed attempt to wipe the slate clean and begin again, knowing what you now know, to create a new plan using a different approach. This is another way to refresh your goal.

WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO

Sometimes when you seriously consider giving up on a goal, you can’t decide whether you really want to or not. There are so many good reasons and feelings on both sides, you’re on the fence. You don’t know what you want to do. At times like that, the best answer is finish what you started. When in doubt, finish the job.

It is more efficient. You already have something invested in the project, and you have no better alternative. You may merely be in a temporary funk, and it would be foolish to give up on your goal.

I used to occasionally have what I called a doubt funk. It usually happened when I was in the middle of a big project and I started thinking there was a better use of my time; maybe I should be doing something different; maybe the project would fail; maybe my destiny lay somewhere else and I was wasting my time.

I never went into a doubt funk between projects. I’ve never had a problem thinking up new goals and feeling enthusiastic about them.

But I suppose it was “the grass is always greener” because no matter what I was working on, I could think of other projects that might be a better use of my time. I aborted a lot of perfectly good projects because of it. I still have several half-finished books sitting in my filing cabinets. Lots of projects of different kinds down through the years never saw the light of day because a doubt funk came along and deflated my motivation.

I eventually learned the way to handle doubt funks: Finish the project. That policy will get the most done with the greatest fun over a lifetime.

Half-finished projects are a waste of time. To spend all that time getting something halfway done and then stopping means all the hours spent on the project were wasted. And wasting time is demoralizing.

I got the answer to doubt funks when I read a true story about Dr. Archibald Cronin. When Cronin was 33, he was a doctor in London. Once in awhile, he had a doubt funk, thinking maybe he should specialize in a different kind of medical practice. He worried that what he was doing wasn’t good enough.

Cronin eventually developed an ulcer and his doctor prescribed the standard treatment of the time — six months “complete rest in the country on a milk diet.”

He went to a small farm outside a village in the Scottish Highlands. After about a week, this very energetic, high-strung man was climbing the walls. His mind was thrashing around for something to do. Then he realized he’d always wanted to write a novel if he ever found the time. He suddenly realized he had the time! So he began.

After three months of being engrossed in the project, he sent his handwritten pages to his secretary to type up for him. When he received his first chapter and read it, he was devastated. It was terrible.

He understood with clarity and certainty that he had no business trying to be a writer. He was defeated, demoralized, and embarrassed.

In his anguish and shame, he threw the whole manuscript into the trash.

Feeling glad and relieved that he had “come to his senses,” he went for a walk, where he ran into Angus, the farmer, and stopped to chat, as he often did. When Cronin told Angus what he had just done, Angus was silent for a long time.

Then Angus spoke. “My father ditched this bog all his days and never made a pasture.”

He stopped digging and looked at Cronin. “I’ve dug it all my days and never made a pasture. But pasture or no pasture,” said Angus as he pushed the shovel back into the bog, “I canna help but dig. For my father knew and I know that if you only dig enough a pasture can be made here.”

Angus kept digging. Doggedly. Relentlessly. Unmercifully.

Cronin stood there watching him, and while he watched he experienced an intense personal crisis and then a revelation.

Cronin saw his situation as the pattern he’d followed all his life: He would start off in a particular direction and never get anywhere because doubt would overtake him halfway through it.

And then he saw it as a pattern and revelation not just for himself, but for all of humanity. He wrote later, “In this present chaos, with no shining vision to sustain us, the door is wide open to darkness and despair. The way to close that door is to stick to the job that we are doing, no matter how insignificant that job may be, to go on doing it, and to finish it.”

Cronin stomped back to his room and pulled his manuscript out of the trash. He was angry and fiercely determined. He got back to work on the manuscript and would not stop, no matter what kind of doubt or frustration he encountered. He kept working until he finally finished the thing.

He randomly chose a publisher out of a catalog and mailed off the manuscript. Then he relaxed and recovered from his ulcer.

Just as he was preparing to head back to London, he received a telegram from the publisher: they were interested. Unbelievably, the manuscript he had once thrown away was published as a novel in 1931 (Hatter’s Castle) and sold three million copies. It was even made into a movie.

When you don’t know whether to give up a goal or finish it, the answer is the same for you and me as it was for Cronin: Go to work on the current project, determined and resolute, and finish it.

MANAGING THE PROJECT

After you finish your project, then think about what you want to do next. On your way to a goal, you will think of other goals. Write down those ideas and file them. Then get back to your current project. When you are finished and you’re ready to decide on the next goal, look to your file for ideas.

And make sure you take the time to choose your goal. Carefully weigh the possibilities. Make your decision a project. You may be spending a lot of time on your next goal. It is a very important decision. Don’t choose carelessly or on a whim. Take your time.

And when you periodically refresh your goals, give it some time. Take the time to consider your goal. Find out if you really want it. Most of the time you’ll be surprised to find you really do. That is one of the best ways of all to cultivate your motivation.

This is one of seven principles of Cultivating Fire: How to Keep Your Motivation High.

Tags: cultivating fire by Adam Khan
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I felt disheartened because my back hurt from sitting so long at the computer, and since I was writing my book on the computer, it seemed I had the option of either being in pain, or not working. But I really wanted to work. That was frustrating.

But it occurred to me I also did lots of other stuff on the computer, and if I stopped doing those, my back might not hurt. I tried it and it worked.

I came up with this insight, and most of the good ones I’ve ever come up with, by thinking. Before you dismiss that as too obvious to even mention, please hear me out.

If you have a problem or difficulty, or you feel confused, or you just feel like you’ve been working-working-working without a break, take some time and do nothing.

Let yourself think about whatever comes into your mind. Don’t just give yourself ten minutes for this. Go a half hour at least, and preferably longer, because it takes the mind a little while to settle down. Go for a leisurely walk through a quiet area, or sit still in a quiet place and just sit there.

I call it this “T5” (for take the time to think). The following suggestions will make your T5 productive:

1. Take enough time. Imagine you want to tell me something and you’re not sure how to say it, and I repeatedly interrupt you to say, “Come on, come on, I don’t have all day!” Imagine what that would be like and you’ll realize it’s hard to be creative or even intelligible under circumstances like that. The mind functions better when it’s not under pressure. This is just as true with thinking as it is with talking. So give yourself time to T5. I usually set a timer and make myself sit there until the timer goes off. That way I don’t hurry myself through it. I know I have plenty of time, and I don’t try to hurry up and think so I can get up sooner.

2. Have paper and pen handy. You will get ideas. You’ll think of things you want to take care of. Write these down so you don’t have to use part of your mind trying to remember something. You’ll often spend almost all of your thinking time writing, and that’s perfectly okay. Writing is an excellent way to think. That’s why people benefit from “journaling.” Writing down your thoughts and feelings is a form of T5 and it is very therapeutic. But in this case, you’re not trying to write a lot (but you’re not preventing yourself from writing a lot). The purpose of having paper and pen handy is to keep your mind unencumbered by things you are trying to remember. So if you think, “Oh, I need to pay rent tomorrow,” write it down so you free up your mind. You don’t want to use up part of your attention trying to remember that. You’ll also probably get insights you’ll want to remember later. Write those down too.

3. T5 in an undistracting environment. Don’t try to think when you can hear or watch a television or music. If you go for a walk, walk in the least distracting place you can, preferably through the woods or across an empty desert or through a quiet neighborhood where you’re not going run into someone you know.

4. Keep it uninterrupted. You know how hard it would be to carry on a conversation with someone bursting through the door every five minutes to interrupt? You would keep losing your train of thought. Same with T5. As the minutes tick by, your mind settles down and begins to think. Every time you’re interrupted, your mind has to settle down afterward again, sometimes never again finding that train of thought.

The best way is to sit down in a quiet place alone. Set your timer for one hour, and just sit there. I’ve done this hundreds of times and it calms me every time. Stress melts away. It clarifies what I’m up to. I solve problems that have been bothering me in the back of my mind.

I’m often surprised that my mind seems to have a backlog of things to think about. Because I go from one activity to another and most of them use my mind, I don’t have any time to think about things, so the “unthought” things are somehow stashed away for thinking about later. I don’t purposely do this. It just seems to happen by itself.

As soon as I sit down, my mind goes to work, almost like the maintenance program on my computer. My computer is set so if it is inactive for 30 minutes, the computer automatically starts an antivirus scan. The computer has been waiting for an idle period to clean things up.

The mind seems to be like that too. As soon as your mind starts to settle down, as soon as it realizes you’re not involved in anything, it starts to clear things up. Little questions that have been nagging you come to the foreground and get worked out. It sounds so boring to just sit still for an hour, but it is very calming to sort things out, figure things out, think things out. You’ll feel wonderfully clearheaded when you’re done.

You might be thinking only the contemplative type of person would find this enjoyable. Maybe you think only introspective people can do it. But I’m not an introspective person at all. I’m normally energetic and dislike sitting still. I have to make myself sit still, but when I do, and when my mind starts to get past the boredom, good things start happening. Try it a few times before you make up your mind about it.

BESIEGING A PROBLEM

One way to T5 is just to let your mind think, without trying to think about anything in particular. You will find your mind thinking about things you need to think about, and that works great.

But another good way is to deliberately concentrate on a specific problem. Often a problem will yield to sustained and concentrated thinking. More often than not.

Think of this kind of T5 as a “Mongol siege.” When Genghis Khan (no relation) wanted to attack and defeat a walled city, he would choose a particular section of the city wall and begin the siege. One third of his army would attack that spot for eight hours, to be immediately replaced by another third of the army attacking that same spot for another eight hours, etc. The siege went on, twenty-four hours a day until the city fell.

And it always fell.

“The sheer relentlessness of the Mongol siege,” wrote Brian Tracy, “was so devastating that no city ever withstood it.”

If you have a problem or challenge, and you thought about it and concentrated on it, and you didn’t give up, can you see you would probably find a solution every time?

And in case you want to accuse me of overstating my case, let me be clear I’m not saying every person can solve every problem that ever existed. I’m not talking about cold fusion here or ending world hunger. I’m talking about specific problems you have — problems that are stumping you or demoralizing you — problems you ran into on the way to your goal.

If you concentrate your mind on your problem or challenge, and don’t either give up in despair or jump wildly onto the first idea that pops into your head, but instead give it some serious, sustained thought, either on a walk or sitting quietly for an hour or two at a time, can you see you would probably overcome every obstacle — either solving the problem outright, or finding a way to skirt around it?

Think of this kind of T5 as a Mongol siege. Be relentless. Keep thinking about it, even after you have already come up with some good ideas. See if you can think up an even better idea.

Here’s how to generate ideas to solve a problem or accomplish a purpose: Make a list on paper. Set a goal ahead of time for how many ideas you’ll come up with, and don’t stop until you hit that target. This will prevent you from stopping with the first good idea. Always try to think of something better.

Try alternatives in your head to see how they’d work. A hard-thinking session that didn’t produce a single good idea was still worthwhile. It planted the question deep in your mind. Coming up with ideas primarily consists of asking a question over and over no matter how many good answers you’ve already gotten.

This is a lot like meditation: Your mind drifts away and you keep coming back to the question. One of the most practical, universally applicable principles I’ve ever used is: accumulate quantity and then sort.

First, clarify a problem. Take time on this first step. Try to define a problem clearly and be very specific and as accurate as you can. Then generate a list of possible solutions. Strain your brain on this one. Don’t settle for the few obvious answers that come to mind easily. Dig. Then pick the best solution. Keep in mind that creativity and selection are two different functions and need to be separated.

Another directed way to T5 is thinking about a specific question. If you ever feel stumped when you’re thinking, or you feel that your thinking has become stagnant, look at the following list of questions and find one you’d like to ponder, or come up with one of your own.

THE PRINCIPLE IS SIMPLE

Take the time to think. Let your mind sort things out. If you feel upset by something, you can find your inner peace by taking the time to think. You can just keep thinking and writing and walking in all your spare time until you are no longer upset — until you either feel fine or feel so motivated you want to get up and get busy on some of these ideas you’ve thought up.

Do you think you don’t have time for this? How much time do you spend watching TV and movies? Can you take some time from that? A movie usually takes two hours. That’s a big chunk of uninterrupted time.

One of the odd facts about T5 is that it can’t be done lying down. You have to sit up or walk. When you lie down, your mind switches to a dreaming mode where keeping your attention on anything in particular becomes difficult, and you will tend to fall asleep.

I’ve read a lot about meditation. And one surprising fact is held in common by all of them — Japanese Zen meditation, Hindu Yoga meditation, American Silva Mind Control meditation, etc. — all of them spend an inordinate amount of time talking about what seems a very mundane and nit-picky topic: your posture while meditating. You’re supposed to keep your back straight, your hands just so, head at such-and-such an angle. The different kinds of meditation may have different postures, but they all tell their practitioners very clearly how to sit. And no matter how different they all seem, they all aim for an upright, stable posture.

And I’ve found that’s also best for T5. A slumping, kicking-back posture will make it almost impossible to remain alert.

TIME-PRESSURE IS UNNATURAL

Time with nothing to do is natural and necessary for good mental health. Ponder this for a moment: Do you have a lot of great childhood memories? Does it seem like you had a lot of fun back then? Have you ever wondered what you had then that you don’t have now?

Think about it. What do you think you had then that you don’t have now that would contribute to having more fun?

You know what I think it is? You had time with nothing to do. And you know what? You didn’t want it or like it, even though it contributed to your happiness.

Just as we have more carbohydrates available to us than is natural, constantly tempting us with foods we aren’t adapted to, our visual and auditory world constantly tempts us with more stimulation that we have evolved to handle.

Quiet time with nothing happening is the remedy. Whenever I have spent an hour or more doing this, I have always ended feeling profoundly calm and relaxed. My mind feels uncluttered and at peace.

It takes a little while to settle down. For fifteen minutes, sometimes twenty, your mind will be restless. You will feel bored. You’ll have a craving to do something. But then your mind will start to relax and sort things out, all by itself.

If you find that after a half hour you are simply obsessing about a worry and getting nowhere, you can switch to besieging the problem, concentrating on solving a single problem (the one that’s bothering you the most).

I’ve sometimes felt as if I’ve found what everyone is searching for — a path to peace of mind. In the aftermath of my newfound clarity and peace, I want to tell everyone about this great invention of mine. But of course, it isn’t my invention. It is probably the oldest self-help method there is.

Take the time to think. There’s nothing to it. Your mind will naturally do it. The only hard part is making yourself take the time. And you do have to make yourself. You always have some work to do, or something you feel you ought to be doing, or some TV program you want to watch, or any of a hundred other interesting, appealing things you want to do besides just sitting there.

Just as we are naturally drawn to eating sweets, we are naturally drawn to filling our attention with stimulation. But it is calming to restrain that impulse occasionally.

You know how difficult it is to get anywhere in a conversation when you are constantly interrupted. The same is true for dialog with yourself. There are some things you need to think through, but you are so continuously distracted, you’re accumulating unresolved issues in the back of your mind. I think this leads to extra stress hormones. That’s probably why T5 is so calming.

I once believed that the feeling of being grounded and unfrantic and deeply peaceful could only come from a religious experience. But T5 produces it very reliably.

Gandhi, Lincoln, Emerson — and many other (maybe all) great (and wise and accomplished) leaders spent an unusual amount of time doing nothing but thinking.

Decide ahead of time how long you will think, and stick to it. I suggest an hour. Do nothing. Don’t knit or whittle or floss your teeth. Make brief notes, and nothing more.

When should you T5? Whenever you feel unmotivated about your goal. When you don’t know what to do next. When you feel confused, anxious, depressed, frustrated, or unclear.

T5 can bring you peace of mind, but what does that have to do with motivation? When you solve a problem, you increase your motivation. The problem was an obstacle on your way to your goal, and you solved it. When things are nagging you in the back of your mind, things you need to think through, it brings you down. When you clear them up, you feel better, and that helps you feel more motivated.T5 is really a core activity, the key, the secret. Purposefulness is clarified by thinking. Optimism is attained in thought. You can have what you want in life (peace of mind, successful accomplishment, great relationships) if you take time to think often enough.

Do you want peace of mind? Clarity? A feeling of being grounded and centered? A feeling of certainty about what you’re doing? A clear sense of direction? All you have to do is take the time to think.

This is one of seven principles of Cultivating Fire: How to Keep Your Motivation High.

Tags: cultivating fire by Adam Khan
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I heard Zig Ziglar say something once that has stuck with me: The reason motivation fades is that the world is full of demotivators. The naysaying of friends, the problems that come up, the constant distractions, the temptations to go off track, etc. And of course, the worst demotivators of all are what we do in our own heads.

Alan Bean, one of the twelve astronauts who walked on the moon, said he listened to motivational tapes in his car on the way to his NASA training while he was preparing for his space flight.

The Apollo astronauts were the most confident, competent, healthy people on the planet. They had passed severe physical and psychological tests to even qualify for the program, and then were trained intensely. It might seem surprising that Bean would listen to tapes to increase his motivation, but one of the reasons he made it into the space program is that he knew how to keep himself motivated and focused. Listening to motivational material in the car is one very effective way to do that.

Most of us are aware that working toward a big goal is where the fun is, but motivation doesn’t seem to last. People go to seminars and hear motivational speakers and get excited about their goals and their life, but the motivation and excitement fades. What we need is a way to stay motivated — not faking it, not forcing ourselves, but really feeling motivated. Listening to motivational material does the trick.

Motivational books and tapes (and CDs and MP3s) all basically say the same thing: Set goals, concentrate your effort and attention, persist, and make good use of your time. The most important thing they do is make you think about what you want. They put your attention on your goal.

Motivational material often contains stories of people overcoming obstacles to achieve their goals — obstacles much worse than the obstacles you face, and goals much bigger than yours. The result is that you feel you can do it if you apply yourself.

The most important thing you can do for long term success is keep your attention on what you want. This is difficult to do. You naturally think up other goals and you naturally fixate your attention on what is in the way of what you want. But motivational material makes it much easier to keep your attention on what you want. Really, anything you do that helps you stay motivated is good. Motivational material just happens to be specially designed for it.

Your greatest achievements — the things you’ve done in your lifetime that mean the most to you — were difficult. The only reason you did them was that you were sufficiently motivated.

That strong motivation wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t random. You don’t have to wait for that kind of motivation to descend on you at the whim of the gods. You can nurture and cultivate and enhance and heighten your motivation to an astonishing degree. And the most direct way to do it is with motivational material.

A lot of people who become successful attribute their persistence in the face of setbacks to motivational material.

Mary Kay Ash of the Mary Kay cosmetics empire told Zig Ziglar she would never get into her car without a cassette she could listen to while she was driving.

H.L. Hunt, who was worth three billion dollars by the end of his life, was a big fan of motivational tapes.

What I’m saying is as simple as it sounds. If you’ve ever thought, “I’m just not very motivated,” this message is especially for you. You can be as motivated as you want to be. You have not yet explored all the ways you can motivate yourself.

Saying, “I’m not very motivated but I would like to be,” is like saying, “I’m not very dry after a shower but I would like to be.” If somebody said that to you, your first response might be, “Have you tried toweling off?” Because of course if a person wants to towel off, it is obviously completely within their power to do so. All they have to do is try.

Same with motivation. It is completely within your power to be as motivated as you want to be. But of course you have to try.

Just for a little extra motivation to listen to audiobooks while you drive, a study by the University of Southern California found that if you live in a city and drive 12,000 miles a year, you can get the equivalent of a two-year college education every three years by listening to audiobooks while you drive.

One thing they didn’t study is that the listeners are likely to experience less stress or frustration than nonlisteners. Why? Because the listeners are doing something they want to do rather than feeling helpless and frustrated about being stuck in traffic and unable to do what they want to be doing.

It’s easier to learn something really well when you listen to books in your car because you’re more likely to listen to a book several times than you are to read a book several times, and repetition is the key to retaining information. (Even so, reading books is a good use of your time too. Read 26 reasons why this is so.)
In a study on memory, researchers found that when people listened to information they’d never heard before, two weeks later they could only remember two percent of it. But if they listened to it on six consecutive days, they remembered sixty-two percent of it two weeks later. Repeated listening is an effective way to learn.

Wallace Johnson, one of the co-founders of Holiday Inns International, even at eighty years old, still listened to motivational material every day. He was one of the first to do so. Back before they had books recorded by professional readers, he had one of his employees read nonfiction books onto tapes for him.

“The reason many people don’t succeed or are unhappy,” wrote Johnson, “is that they have sour, negative, resentful attitudes.” In his speeches, he always tried to emphasize what he believed was the most important thing in life: “the development of the proper attitude.”

One good way to develop a better attitude is to listen to motivational material in your car.

Motivation fades only if you stop motivating yourself. You can’t get motivated once and expect it to last a lifetime. That would be like being nice to your spouse once and expecting your marriage to be blissful for the rest of your life. It doesn’t work that way. It would be like trying to exercise once and being disappointed you don’t stay in shape. It would be like watering a plant once and wondering why it eventually wilted. You get the idea.

Whether or not you stay motivated is up to you, and it requires as much “work” as any other worthwhile state you’re trying to maintain — a state of harmony between you and your mate, a state of health for your body, a state of ease in your life. They all require sustained action to maintain.

The good news is that it isn’t really “work” because the benefits so far outweigh the cost in terms of effort. You get immediate rewards for your effort to stay motivated: You get to feel motivated, and that’s a wonderful way to go through the day.

The content of your mind determines whether you feel motivated or not, and listening to motivational material is an excellent form of training for what to say to yourself.

Recordings of good motivational speakers can help you learn how to stay motivated and focused on your purposes. For example, when I was going from bookstore to bookstore to convince them to carry my book, I listened to a tape on selling that said, “it doesn’t matter whether this customer buys anything. It is the process of going out and calling on people that does the trick. Any particular call is unimportant.” I used that motivational material in my self-coaching when I was visiting bookstores. Instead of getting anxious about this bookstore and whether or not they’d say yes, instead of feeling depressed if they said no, I relaxed and reminded myself it is the process of going to bookstores that works, regardless of what this bookstore did.

Listen to motivational material for an infusion of motivation, focus, and a reminder of principles. It is an aid to your slotrology, boosting and magnifying your efforts. Listen to motivational material enough and certain phrases will become memorized, coming back to you when you need to hear them. You will adopt them as useful slotras.

Motivation is nothing to take lightly. The outcome of your goals depends almost entirely on how motivated you are. Here are some motivational programs I recommend:

The Science of Personal Achievement by Napoleon Hill
The Psychology of Achievement by Brian Tracy
Lead The Field by Earl Nightingale
Goals : Setting And Achieving Them On Schedule by Zig Ziglar
The Psychology of Winning by Denis Waitley
Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and Dan Kennedy

They all basically say the same thing: Choose good goals, stay focused on them, imagine the way you want things to go, take plenty of action, and talk to yourself in a way that maintains a strong feeling of motivation and confidence. You can’t hear this enough!

Some give bonus tips. But more important than the information they give you is that while you’re listening, you’re thinking about your goal. That is the most motivating thing you can do. And they tell you stories about people who overcame setbacks. That helps prevent you from becoming demoralized by your own setbacks.

It doesn’t matter that they all say basically the same thing. After listening ten times, you might not want to hear it again. But if you want to keep motivating yourself, you can listen to a book by a different author and even though he may say roughly the same thing, it’s a different voice and he’s saying it in a different way using different illustrations, so you’ll really listen. And it will re-motivate you because it makes you think about your goal.

The fact that many of us spend a considerable amount of time driving alone can be a wonderful opportunity to increase your knowledge and keep yourself motivated. Don’t waste this valuable opportunity.

The content of your mind in the present is all-important. Listening to motivational material is a very easy and direct way to control the contents of your mind in the present.

This is one of seven principles of Cultivating Fire: How to Keep Your Motivation High.

Tags: cultivating fire by Adam Khan
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