All Successful People are Self Motivated

All Successful People are Self Motivated

In emotional intelligence, the progression is this: Self Awareness leads to Self Management leads to Self Motivation.

So, it's not only what you don't do with your self awareness, it's also what you do do with it. It's all about being a student of self and knowing how to make you the very best you - regardless of the moments in life.

A couple questions to consider: 

How do you motivate yourself?

What Motivates you? What Motivates you to do the difficult things in life? What DEMOTIVATES You? When are you are your best and when are you at your worst?

What’s it saying about you if your emotions are consistently up/down…negative/on edge…moody?

Motivation is about motion that comes from within. Add the word self to it and it's all about you finding energy from within to do/go/be. It's about managing yourself internally and motivating yourself accordingly.

The goal is to increasingly become a stronger person in all capacities of your life.

Facets of motivation include:

Being able to motivate yourself and persist in the face of frustrations.

Controlling impulses & delaying gratification.

Regulating your moods.

Keeping distress from swamping your ability to think.

Empathizing & remaining hopeful in difficult times.

Self Motivation 

All effective leaders are self-motivated! They are able to mobilize positive emotions and negate negative emotions consistently and this practice allows them to move consistently toward their goals.

You can't be lazy, or emotionally controlled AND be very a great leader, much less successful. 

Great leaders have minimal down days.

Here are a few clues to look for within to see how motivated you are:

Passionate — Motivated people seek out creative challenges, love to learn, and take great pride in a job well done

Motivated internally to achieve beyond expectations. Plenty of people are motivated by external factors, yet, great leaders are motivated by a deeply embedded desire found within.

Your ability to resist impulses is the root of all emotional self-control, since all emotions, by their very nature, lead to one or another impulse to act.

An unwavering energy to do things better.

Restless with the status quo.

Forever raising the performance bar.

So, let’s talk about creating, or finding, motivation

The 3 elements of true motivation are: Autonomy, mastery & purpose.

Autonomy: The urge to direct your own lives (to not have to do what others tell/need you to do).

Mastery: The desire to get increasingly better at something that matters (beawesome).

Purpose: To do something larger than ourselves. (to matter)

Of these 3, which motivates you the most?

Either love your life or believe you will one day AND fight for it all the time. It’s called resilience. 

Resilience is the ability to overcome obstacles in our path.

How long you grind it out? How easily you get frustrated, or lose hope? How long until your language goes negative? Your answers are directly tied to your hope and your resilience. Without both, you cannot remain motivated when life is tough.

We can’t live free of obstacles…challenges…difficulties in life. However, we can INCREASE Resilience: 

How to handle DIFFICULT moments. How to increase resilience:

• Hold onto Your "Inner calm". Consistently access your inner calm in the mind. This is the foundation of all optimism and resilience. 

What are you saying in tough times? Where do you find your peace? 

Habits that help - Being mindful. Meditation. Prayer. Quietness. 

• Emotional resilience: Success and failure are emotional experiences and working to control emotions at this level increases our capacity for both success and failure.
• Cognitive resilience: How we explain our setbacks to ourselves has a HUGE impact on our life and vision. Learning to see them as temporary allows us to hold onto vision, optimism and resilience. 

A example of failure AND RESILIENCE  

“I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. . . .” And he continued, “. . . and that is why I succeed.” 

Michael Jordan - the greatest basketball player of all time. 

Failure is the building block of success.

Are you an optimistic person?

Optimistic people see a failure as something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for failure, ascribing it to some lasting characteristic they are helpless to change. These differing explanations have profound implications for how people respond to life.

Good news -- your inner dialog can be changed. 

You build resilience by developing optimism. You develop optimism from the stories you attach to your life.

Be a student of yourself and learn to identify your motivators and your demotivators. Identify your inner critic and change your script.

(Note this is part 3 of emotional intelligence I teach.) If you missed the 1st 2 parts, email me and I'll send them to you.)