I love what I do

This one is a little different. Recently things have been hard. I am the type of person who believes winning is of the uth most importance, I hate losing. But over the past few months things haven’t been going my way and I have lost more than my fair share of battles. I recently began comparing myself to others, my friends are all beginning their professional careers and are getting well paid for it. They have wonderful lifestyles and live in exuberant locations. Me, I’m a 26 year old, underpaid assistant psychologist. I live in the middle of nowhere, far away from friends and family…. I constantly say to myself that I need to change career, that I would receive a much higher reward for my efforts elsewhere. Considering the amount of work I put in, I would certainly already be successful in another field….

But then little things happen. When I go to work, money leaves my thoughts. I can honestly, hand on heart say, I have never looked at the clock and said “hurry up 5 o clock”. People’s lives are in my hands, people self-harm in front of me every day. People who have a mother, a daughter, a brother and who have been successful in their own lives……

 I have been spending time with a person with dementia (a progressive illness where a person’s memory, language and other cognitive abilities slowly deteriorate, and there is very little you can do to halt this progression; there is no cure). This guy (let’s call him George, he’s 60 years of age) struggles to communicate with anyone, has no idea where he is, sometimes he thinks he is at work. But at some level (in my subjective opinion) George knows he is deteriorating and knows he is in a mental health hospital. Because of this he can spend days with his head in his hands slouched over in the corner of a room, highly depressed. His family want nothing to do with him. George has no friends outside of hospital. He is in hospital until he dies. George can say two words, “yes” and “no”…. So six months ago I began to find out about this man, George likes art and David Hockney. I started to spend time with him. All I did was sit with George and talk about art. I used to bring in pictures of his favourite artist's work and blabber on about what I liked about the picture, what it meant for me…. I began to notice that over time, George’s reaction to me when I arrived to see him became more emotional. He now cries when I enter his room. But for others, the big improvement is George’s communication. He can now say full sentences, he can ask for a drink when he’s thirsty (before this he used to beat the shit out of people because he was dehydrated and didn’t have the ability to communicate he wanted some water. It used to take up to 5 people to restrain him). He now spends time painting. But for me the biggest improvement is that George doesn’t spend his days hunched over in the corner of a room with his head in his hands, and depressed. Instead he sits up proud… George wasn’t a patient referred to me, just someone I took an interest in. All I did was stimulate his brain by helping him to reminisce over art work and probably connected past times. This all stimulated his long term memory, George’s cognition, and is probably why he is now able to talk…. This all links to why he is now proud again, he was a successful human being, a successful artist, and like me, a winner that hates losing... Apparently dementia is a progressive illness..... It's the big things. I love what I do.

Components of Motivation Intensity

This is the second and last article on the components of motivation and concerns the final and most important concept regarding motivation..... “intensity”

As I mentioned in my last post, you will certainly never become successful in your chosen goal (whether that might be financial, sporting or relational) if you firstly don’t initiate a behaviour to achieve it (talk to that girl or enrol in that business management MBA). Secondly, when those initial feelings of motivation in achieving a goal dilute and become stale/boring, a person will the majority of the time give up or quit. However, separating the majority from the minority are those who can be persistent. These are the people that continue to go to the gym 4 days a week next month, the month after that, throughout the year and next year. They get results and usually achieve their goal.

However, if you want to be a highly successful person, and to further distance yourself from those who initiate a behaviour to achieve their goal; but more importantly reach a higher level than those who are persistent, you must have “intensity”. Another word for this final component of motivation is “productivity”.

A lot of people in the world search endlessly for some complex magical formula for why some people are successful and others are not. They look at themselves and think that their purposeful actions must be beneficial and they get frustrated when they don't see the results they want- and that successful people are getting. They always go to work, they work long hours and are persistent in achieving their goal when things get tough or boring. However a lot of the time they miss the most important ingredient of motivation- “intensity/productivity”. Here the idea is that, if you can consistently apply the most amount of effort to the best of your ability in the allocated time you have, your almost certain to be highly successful.

I guarantee that all of the most successful people in the world will tell you that time is the most precious and valuable commodity that exists. Time is a resource. But it is a resource like no other. You can't buy it, sell it, rent it or multiply it. All you can do is spend it.

And unlike other resources e.g. money, we all have the exact same amount of time. It's the only aspect of our lives where we are all truly equal. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes in a day.


And, the highly successful people of our world realize that they have an allotted time to perform a given task. Simply, they give it their absolute all in doing that task, no matter how small or large it is. They understand that going through the motions is the most disadvantageous thing, that you can do. It's not what you do, It's how you do it!


This is something that made sense to me during my Psychology MSc. Around half way into the year I was around 10^th out of 60 in my class regards academic achievement. But I couldn't understand how the students ahead of me were achieving higher marks than me in essays and exams. I was studying every hour god gave me. The students top of the class, while they put a solid amount of hours, were not making the same sacrifices I was making..... So one time whilst in the library, I spent 1 hour observing the guy who was top of the class. I quickly realised why he was top of the class. He was a fucking “machine”. He never took his eyes of his books. The concentration in his face was so intense it looked like he was in pain. He did everything so quickly yet effectively. He was so focused, that when a guy tripped over and fell flat about 10 meters away from him and the whole library burst into laughter, he never budged. I reckon he didn't even register it. He never checked Facebook, nor his phone, nor his email.... Within myself I then and there gracefully accepted his position in the class and internally thanked him for the lesson (he didn't know I was observing him).


“Intensity” is a highly difficult skill to acquire. I kept up the other two components of motivation (activation and persistence) throughout the year but “intensity” is something I couldn't and am still far from mastering. While I may have beat some really intelligent people in my MSc class thanks to the “machines” lesson and came 3^rd out of 60; The “machine” stayed top of the cohort. And I say well deserved.

Eric Thomas touched on this idea of “intensity”/productivity. He suggests that in order to master it, you need to make it a way of life. Intensity is something that highly successful people breath. They transfer it to all facets of life. So when your with your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend, make it special, don't just go through the motions! When relaxing or watching T.V. enjoy it, make it the best two hours of T.V. you have ever seen.

Finally, just remember, that personally mastering all three components of motivation isn't easy.....If it was easy, everyone would do it.

 

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This powerful and popular youtube video might help to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk56VxaeqEQ

Components of Motivation

This is the first of two posts on the Components of Motivation.

There are various definitions for the term motivation. But here, we are talking about the motivation to succeed. I can almost guarantee that if someone did the following three things I will discuss in the following two articles I post, he/she would be successful in whatever goal he/she wants to achieve. If I were to give any free advice in life it would be that “understanding motivation is the key to success”.

There are three major components to motivation: activation, persistence and intensity.

Here we look at Activation and Persistence

Activation involves the decision to initiate a behaviour, such as enrolling in a psychology class or driving to the gym.

Woody Allen once said “80% of success is showing up”. You might not agree with this initially, but just have a think for a minute. If you have ever been a gym goer you might get this. Sometimes thinking of that initial physical movement where you have to get off the couch and into the car can at times be more strenuous and stress provoking then the actual tough exercise you do when at the gym. You just gotta get there; everything will be fine and even enjoyable once you get into it. If that doesn’t make sense, think of going to work on a Monday. Life doesn’t seem worth living Sunday night, but come 10am Monday morning your right back in the swing of things and even joking and catching up with workmates. Just get to work in the first place and you can sort those negative feelings out later.

Following that we have persistence.

Persistence is the continued effort toward a goal even though obstacles may exist. It requires a significant investment of time, energy and resources.

In a moment when you feel really motivated (e.g. watching a YouTube video with impressive feats and awesome background music) you feel like you can take on the world. You really just want to get into things, start your blog or start your workout programme or whatever. However, this initial feeling probably won’t last more than 24hrs. That’s why the second component of motivation is so important. Persistence means that you need to keep working just as hard after those initial butterfly feelings dilute. You need to go to the gym again tomorrow and the next day, next week, next month and all year. Persistence then is about continuing down the path of success when things get stale, get boring, get uncomfortable, get hard, or there is a difficult obstacle to overcome.

Really persistence comes down to how bad you want to be successful. If you want something bad enough, then you will do anything to get it. I wanted a first in my Psychology masters. In order to do so I had to spend a year basically being a recluse. I rarely went out, rarely made phone calls and didn’t take any holidays. Almost every minute I had, I dedicated to study. I wanted a first, I was

persistent and I got it. It was really hard, but worth every single minute of work. Funnily enough when you’re on that sort of a buzz, that persistence buzz, in a sick kind of a way you start to enjoy it. Seeing the results roll in, feeling yourself becoming more intelligent and beating people in your class in exams/essays (really, really intelligent people; one girl had eidetic memory (photographic memory) and others received top academic scholarships). But my marks were always higher than theirs because I was dedicated/persistent.

But there are levels of persistence. It all comes down to how bad someone wants to be successful in their chosen goal. Eric Thompson (motivational speaker) spoke of Beyonce being on set once; three days had gone by and she didn’t realise she hadn’t eaten. She was so focused and so persistent in achieving her goal, that eating just wasn’t relevant. Eric Thompson is a guy that really got me to understand the concept of persistence. I remember watching a video on YouTube (link at the bottom) where he got a school class to try to imagine the air running out of their lungs as they struggled to surface above water. After a vivid description of what this painful feeling is like, he tells the class; “when all you want to do is be successful as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful. I’m here to tell you that no.1 most of you say you want to be successful, but you don’t want it bad, you just kinda want it. You don’t want it badder than you want to party, you don’t want it as bad as you want to be cool, most of you don’t want success as much as you want to sleep. Some of you love sleep more than you love success, and I’m here to tell you today if you’re going to be successful you gotta be willing to give up sleep. You gotta be willing to work off of three hours of sleep two hours… Some days, if you really want to be successful, you’re going to have to stay up three days in a row; because if you go to sleep you might miss the opportunity to be successful. That’s how bad you gotta want it.”

Eric Thompson acknowledges the fact that this is hard work. “Most of you won’t be successful because when you’re studying and you get tired, you quit. On all roads to success you have to go through pain. If it was easy, everybody would do it. Everyone would be a millionaire. But there is one thing I can guarantee you, if you can be persistent, if you can outlast that pain and outlast that discomfort. On the other side of it is success.

As the American Footballer Emitt Smith once said: “All men are created equal, but some work harder in preseason.”

In the next post we will talk about the final component (intensity). Intensity separates those who are good and those who are great.