Welcome back!

Last time you learned an important lesson. Namely, that you shouldn’t put off your happiness until you achieve your goals. Instead, you should choose to be happy today, as doing so will make you motivated to achieve your goals. Let’s continue…

Forgive Others

You probably feel that others have hurt you, been mean to you, or in other ways “wronged” you over the years. And you may still be carrying around a lot of anger and resentment at these people.

But here’s the thing…

Anger is a huge energy vampire. When you’re angry, your motivation bottoms out. Your productivity flattens. Every moment you spend thinking about the other person or the situation is one less moment that you could have used to step closer to your goals.

That’s not all. When you’re angry at another person, it does absolutely nothing to rectify the situation. It doesn’t lessen your anger to think about the person – indeed, you probably just get more angry whenever you think about it. As the old saying goes, “Being angry is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” In other words, your anger is toxic to you.

So here’s what you need to do: Forgive the other person. Admit that the person is imperfect (like everyone else). Don’t judge them for their actions. Instead, focus on forgiveness.

If you feel you’ve been hurt deeply, you may need to do daily affirmations or even meditations. For example, focus on radiating a loving feeling towards the other person while doing a mantra such as, “I forgive you [name].”

TIP: If you’re religious or you believe in a higher power, then pray to that higher power for the strength to offer true forgiveness.

Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you have to let them back in your life (although you certainly can). Mainly, it just means you let go of the anger in your heart so that you can move on with your life… and start working towards your dreams!

Focusing On What’s Important

Another way to get happier, get more motivated and boost your productivity is to focus on what’s important. In other words, don’t spend a lot of time focusing on the trivial matters. Don’t let energy vampires suck you into their dramas. Don’t let other people’s problems become your problems.

All of this is easier said than done, of course. But if you ever find yourself sidetracked or derailed when you should be working towards your goal, you need to ask yourself if whatever sidetracked you is more important than your goal. If the answer is no, then you need to focus on what’s important.

Now, in order to do this with confidence, you need to rank those things in your life that are truly important. Go ahead and do that right now by listing out all the things that matter to you, including:

• Your family members.
• Your friends.
• Your goals.
• Your home.
• Your financial security.
• Your health.
• Your free time (hobbies).
• Your independence.

And so on. Then rank these items in order of importance. That way, the next time you get sidetracked you’ll know instantly if you’re focusing on something important – something that adds to your happiness – or if you’re just procrastinating.

That’s it for this time. Stay tuned for the next lesson where you’ll discover my best tip for getting happy to get motivated!

Did you notice the name of this lesson? It’s “get happy to get motivated.” And that idea runs contrary to what a lot of people believe.

You see, many people put off their happiness until some vague point in the future. Those who are seeking to achieve particular goals say things like, “I’ll be happy when I achieve my dream of [insert the favorite dream here].” And so these folks have decided they will not be happy until the future.

That’s a mistake for two reasons:

• First, because your overall happiness directly affects your motivation. When you feel good, you’ll feel motivated and be productive. When you’re unhappy, your energy levels drop like a lead ball in a swimming pool. Thus being happy today – right now – actually helps you achieve your goals much more quickly!
• Secondly, you don’t want to hook your happiness to any specific event. Why put off being happy into the future when you can be happy today? And why hook it to a single event? If the learning curve is steeper than you thought, you’re putting off your happiness for an even longer time. Or if a major catastrophic event would derail your plans, you may put off your happiness for an indefinite period of time. Either way, that’s not good.

So here’s the bottom line…

Your happiness doesn’t depend on you achieving a goal or acquiring some type of honor, a possession or anything else. Instead, your happiness is a choice. It’s a choice to be happy today (right now) on your life journey. It’s a choice to be happy even if you don’t achieve your goals (though achieving them will certainly be a high point in your life).

Which brings us to the question…

If you’re not exactly where you want to be in life, then how can you be happy? How you can just choose happiness? Isn’t happiness something you feel rather than something you choose?

It’s true that you might not be able to turn your happiness on and off like a light switch. However, you can learn to choose happiness over time. Indeed, that’s exactly what you’ll learn how to do in the upcoming lessons. If you apply all of the advice that you’re about to discover, you’ll feel happier almost immediately… and your happiness will grow with time.

Here’s your first step…

Forgive Yourself

Do you ever replay your mistakes, embarrassing moments and other stumbles over and over in your mind? Sometimes you wish you could go back in time and get a “re-do.” And the more you think about it, the unhappier you become.

Listen, no one is perfect. Beating yourself up over the past only wastes your energy – and that’s energy you could be using to achieve your goals.

So here’s what you need to do:

• Acknowledge the mistake. Don’t dwell on it, but do figure out what happened.
• Learn from it. Now find the message, the lesson in this mistake. What did you learn? What can you do better next time?
• Forgive yourself. If it was your best friend who made this mistake, you wouldn’t be that hard on him or her. So why be so hard on yourself? Forgive yourself, perhaps even by using affirmations: “I forgive myself.”
• Let it go. Once you’ve learned your lesson from a mistake, thinking further about the mistake doesn’t do you any good. You can’t go back in time and change it. You can only move forward and do better next time.

That’s it for now – next time you’ll learn even more steps you need to take to get happy so that you can get motivated!

Welcome back!

Last time you discovered that you need to take credit for your successes as well as full responsibility for your mistakes. That’s because doing so puts you in full control of your fate. Plus, when you take responsibility for your mistakes you’re able to learn from them so that next time you can do a little better.

However, when you’re taking responsibility for your mistakes you shouldn’t make excuses. For example:

• I made this mistake because I’m too old to learn this technology.
• I made this mistake because I’m not smart enough to do this.
• I made this mistake because I’m too young.
• I can’t do this because I don’t have enough money.
• I can’t do this because I’m too busy.

Do you see the difference between these excuses and the examples we talked about in the last lesson? In both cases, it looks like the person is taking responsibility. However, in the above examples the person is giving excuses as to why he or she can’t succeed. In other words, these aren’t lessons to learn from. Instead, they’re road blocks that the person is putting in front of himself.

As discussed in a previous lesson, you may have some of these negative thoughts yourself. The next time you make a mistake, listen to yourself. Do you take responsibility and give yourself an opportunity to learn from your mistake? Or do you offer an excuse that makes it harder to achieve your goal (e.g., “I’m too old”)?

If you offer excuses, then it’s time for you to really think about those excuses. You need to prove to yourself that these are just excuses, not actual blocks to your success. And that once you set aside these excuses, you can do anything you set out to achieve. For example:

• “I’m too old.” Just look at people who started achieving their dreams late in life, such as the artist Grandma Moses. Better yet, look for role models in your own field who’re older but doing what you want to do.

TIP: Same goes for the excuse “I’m too young.” There are plenty of people who achieved great things at a very young age – why not you?

• “I don’t have enough money.” Again, this is just an excuse. Look around your field and you’ll soon find people who started with nothing and went on to achieve great things. You can do the same.

And the list goes on. For every excuse you have, you can find several examples of people with the same “handicap” who overcame it and went on to be very successful.

One last tip: If you find that a particular excuse keeps popping up again and again in your mind, then you’ll need to do positive affirmations in order to “de-program” this sort of negative thinking. For example, let’s suppose your excuse is, “I’m too old.” You’ll need to make up a positive affirmation that counters that negative thinking, such as, “My life experience will give me and edge and help me succeed.”

That’s it for this time. Next time you’ll discover how your overall happiness affects your motivation, so stay tuned!

Welcome back!

Successful people have one thing in common: They take responsibility for their mistakes. And if you want to be successful, you’re going to have to learn how to do the same thing.

Let me explain…

Most people happily take credit for all the good things in their lives. For example, the person who loses weight says, “I exercised hard and watched my diet.” The person who has a successful product launch says, “I researched my market and created a really good product.” Even the student who gets an “A” on a test says, “I studied really hard.”

But the thing is, people aren’t so quick to take the responsibility for their mistakes, disappointments and perceived failures. Suddenly you hear excuses that place the blame on someone or something else. For example:

• The person who can’t lose weight says, “I can’t lose weight because my spouse always has chocolate donuts in the house.”
• The marketer with the poor product launch says, “My product launch flopped because my copywriter did a poor job with the sales copy.”
• The student who fails a test says, “I failed because the teacher put a lot of trick questions on the test.”

Saying these sorts of things makes us feel better. We can remove some or all of the responsibility and point to someone else as the reason for our mistakes. Doing so relieves some of the disappointment and guilt.

But the problem is that if you blame someone or something else for your mistakes, you’re saying that you cannot control what happens to you. Thus any success you have is just a fluke…and any mistakes are someone else’s fault. And you don’t control any of it.

Of course that’s not true. All of your success and all of your mistakes rest squarely on your shoulders. And while it may be uncomfortable to take responsibility for your disappointments, you must learn to do it. Because once you do that, you realize you control your own fate – and that your success is solely up to you.

For example:

• The person who blames her spouse (and the chocolate donuts) for her being unable to lose weight must admit, “I didn’t lose weight because I didn’t watch my diet closely enough. I need to work on my willpower.”
• The marketer who blames the copywriter needs to admit, “I didn’t do my market research first to see if this was even a product that people wanted.”
• The student who fails needs to take responsibility and say, “I failed because I didn’t study hard enough.”

Just look at those examples. Once the person takes responsibility, he knows what he needs to do next time in order to succeed.

You need to do the same thing. The next time you’re disappointed or you stumble, listen to the excuse you offer. If you point to someone or something else, you then need to point it back at you, 100%, and take full responsibility. Then you need to figure out what you can do next time differently in order to enjoy success.

That’s it for this time. Next time you’ll learn about what types of excuses you should ignore!

Welcome back!

As you strive to achieve your goals, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll be met with perceived failures along the way. For example, the person who’s looking for a publisher might get several rejections. Or the aspiring online marketer may have a disappointing product launch. And whatever your goal is, it’s likely that you too will stumble along the path to your goal.

It’s easy to feel like these sorts of stumbles are failures. And once you start feeling like you’ve failed, it’s easy to lose your motivation. You might start telling yourself that you’re not good enough or smart enough to meet your goal. You may tell yourself that your goal is impossible, and that you’d save yourself a lot of time, money and frustration if you just quit now.

But don’t do it.

You see, these stumbles are actually quite natural. It would be odd if you didn’t have them. That’s because they’re all part of the learning curve. You’re bound to make a few mistakes when you’re doing something you’ve never done.

Let me ask you something: Do you know how to ride a bike? If so, do you have a 100% accident-free record? In other words, were you the rare child who never fell off your bike, never ran into something, never went a little too fast?

Of course not. I’m sure you took a tumble or two in your day. And each time you did, you learned something about how to ride a bike better. You learned how to balance better. You learned how to slow down before you ran into something. Maybe you learned that showing off and doing tricks aren’t good ideas.

Point is, you viewed these stumbles as accidents, not failures. It’s not like you fell off your bike and decided you would never ride again, that you had used up your one shot to learn how to successfully ride a bike. No, you just dusted yourself off, learned from your mistakes and kept on riding.

The same thing goes for your dreams. There really are no failures, unless you decide to quit for good. And anything you perceive as a failure is really just a lesson. You can view it as a lesson in “what not to do.” If you learn from the lesson, then you’ll reach your goal more quickly.

For example, the aspiring marketer with the poor product launch may learn the value of market research. The aspiring writer who can’t capture the attention of an agent will learn how to write a better query letter. And whatever stumbles you have will teach you what not to do… and next time you’ll do better.

Successful people have a saying: “Fail fast.” That means that the faster you “fail,” the more quickly you’ll learn the lessons you need to success. In other words, don’t be scared of failures. Instead, view them as lessons… and embrace them.

That’s it for this time. Next time we’ll talk about how a simple change in attitude can propel you to success!

Welcome back!

You already know that you should have a clear goal and a clear path to your goal (i.e., a plan). However, in order to keep your motivation high, you also need to choose smaller (measurable) goals or milestones.

Here’s why…

Let’s suppose your goal will take a year or more to complete. Naturally, you’ll start out with a lot of enthusiasm. A couple months into your goal, however, the enthusiasm will fade. By the time you’re about halfway to your goal, you may start losing sight of why you’re even doing it. You’ll feel like you’re doing a lot of work but not seeing much of a return.

That’s why you need to create mini goals and milestones that you can celebrate. Doing so gives you a reason to help moving forward. It shows that you’re making progress. And every time you achieve one of your mini goals, you’ll get a renewed burst of motivation and enthusiasm.

The key, however, is to choose the right kinds of goals. Here’s how:

• Create goals that are on the path to your larger goal. Make sure that your mini goals are actually part of your larger goals. For example, if your goal is to create a successful online business, then one of your mini goals might be to build a list of 250 subscribers.
• Select measurable goals. Both your large goals and your measurable goals should be specific and measurable. For example, your mini goal shouldn’t be something like, “I want to make money by [date] with my blog.” That’s vague. Even one penny would qualify, though making a cent probably wouldn’t make you feel like celebrating.

Instead, be specific, such as “My goal is to make $100 with my blog by [date].”

• Choose goals that you can accomplish in the near future. Ideally, you should choose goals that will take you about one month to accomplish. If you’re feeling a little low on the motivation, then choose goals that will arrive even sooner, such as within two weeks.
• Challenge yourself. Not every goal you create needs to be a grueling challenge. However, every once in a while you should create mini goals that will challenge you and force you to step outside your comfort zone. For example, if you’re thinking about creating a goal to make your first $100 with your blog, challenge yourself by aiming to make $200 instead.

When you meet these mini goals, you’ll feel more motivated than ever.

• Celebrate meeting your goals. When you choose a challenging goal, your self-satisfaction with achieving the goal will likely be enough of a reward. However, for other goals you may want to reward yourself. For example, you can promise yourself and your family a night out on the town when you meet a particular goal. Just make sure the reward is sufficiently rewarding enough to keep you motivated.

That’s it for this time. Next time you’ll discover how the way you view a perceived failure can have an impact on your motivation and productivity. Stay tuned!

Welcome back!

Last time you learned how to recognize the people in your life who can ruin your motivation and productivity, including naysayers and energy vampires. You also learned you should reduce the time you spend with these people (if not cut them out of your life entirely).

Here’s why: Because continuing to spend time with these people — especially once you’ve recognized them as energy vampires or naysayers — is a form of self sabotage. And self sabotage is nothing more than your fears talking.

Think about it…

Imagine if you’ve decided to launch a business and you choose an energy vampire as a business partner. Someplace deep down you KNOW the business will fail, because the energy vampire will create so much chaos and drama around the launch. Thus it’s your fear that has you choosing this person. And when the business inevitably fails, you can tell yourself that it’s not your fault, it’s your business partner’s fault. That’s not true of course, but it makes you feel better to say it.

While that’s one of the more powerful forms of self-sabotage (since it’s so deliberate), there are other forms that can be just as destructive to your dreams. And one of the most common ways to flatten your own motivation and productivity is by listening to your own negative thoughts.

First things first: If you’re not already a success, then I’m virtually certain that you have your own negative voice replaying harmful things in your head. This is the voice that crushes your motivation and even your ideas. It’s the voice that gets you second guessing yourself. It’s the voice of fear, and it says things like this:

• That sounds too hard.
• I’m not smart enough to do this.
• I really don’t need that much money.
• It’s silly for me to want this.
• What are the neighbors going to say?
• This is going to take too long.
• I don’t have enough time… money… (etc) to do this.

If you’re lucky, you’re already aware of your own negative voices. If not, you’re going to need to do another brain dump exercise to uncover these doubting voices. One way to do that is to answer the following questions as quickly as possible, writing down every answer that comes to mind:

• I can’t make my dream come true because______.
• Rich people are ________________.
• Successful people are __________________.
• Once I’m successful my friends will say ________________.
• When I’m rich and successful my family will say_________.
• I’m afraid of success because ________________.
• I can’t [do specific thing related to your dream] because _________.

You may want to take five minutes with each of the above “fill in the blank” questions and simply write whatever pops into your head for five minutes.

Once you’ve completed this exercise, you’ll have a good idea of how your own negative thoughts are holding you back. Your next step is to turn these negative thoughts into positive affirmations.

For example, if one of your answers to the above is this: “Rich people are greedy and self-absorbed,” then you need to turn it into a positive. Example: “Rich people give generously of their time and money to help others.”

You should hang these affirmations up some place where you’ll see them every day. Then spend a few minutes meditating on them daily. You may need to do this for many months, because a lifetime of negative programming can’t be undone in a couple days.

That’s it for this time. Next time you’ll learn how to choose goals and rewards that keep you fired up about your goals!

Welcome back!

Last time we talked about finding inspirational stories as well as like-minded people to motivate you. This time you’re going to learn about the type of people you want to avoid. Namely, the naysayers, energy vampires and other people who doubt you, steal your time and suck your energy. Let’s get to it…

Recognizing Naysayers

The naysayers aren’t hard to spot. These are the people who tell you your dreams are too big and that you’re sure to fail. They say things like:

• Why don’t you get a real job?
• Writing/online business/[your dream] will never put food on the table.
• You should go back to school.
• You need to take care of your family.
• I just don’t see how that will work.
• You’re too old / you’re too young / you don’t have enough money / you don’t have enough time / [other excuse].

Sometimes the disapproval isn’t so obvious. Sometimes these people will outwardly support your dreams by saying things like “go for it!” and “you can do it!” But then you get a contradictory message from them at a later point, where they let you know in an indirect way that they don’t think too highly of rich and successful people. They’ll say things like:

• Jose always shows off with his new car.
• Mary really thinks she’s something now that she has a book published.
• Rich people are greedy.
• Look at those corporate fat cats, always stepping on the little guy.
• I wonder what he did to get that money? (With the implication that the person stole it, lied to get it, etc.)

If you have these sorts of people in your life, don’t tell them about your dreams. Keep the topic of conversation on other things, such as the news, local events, family news, etc. But don’t even give them the chance to step on your dreams.

Recognizing Energy Vampires

These are the drama queens (and kings). It seems like these people always have a crisis going on. If you tell them you need to work for two uninterrupted hours today, they’ll burst into your house in tears because suddenly they’re sure one of their moles is cancerous. If you tell them your project is almost ready to go, suddenly they’ll need an immense amount of your energy for something, usually to deal with some crisis.

Don’t think for a moment that these people are unlucky with all the bad things that happen to them. It’s not luck. These people actually create the drama in their lives and then thrive on it. They like the chaos. They like making everyone else around them “jump” at their command. And they like sucking on other people’s time and energy.

Again, most of these energy vampires are easy to spot, just because they always have so much drama going on in their lives. If you have friends who just make you tired to be around them, and/or if they always seem to have a problem or crisis, then you probably have an energy vampire in your list.

Your best bet is to cut these people completely out of your life. If that’s not possible, then you’ll need to draw strict boundaries and reduce the time you spend with them. It may be difficult (especially if these are your friends), but the payoff is increased motivation, productivity and the opportunity to focus on yourself for once.

That’s it for this time. Next time you’ll find out if you’re sabotaging your own success!

Welcome back!

Let’s continue with our discussion of the different ways you can get (and keep) motivated. Read on…

Finding Inspiration

If you have a short-term goal – like something that only takes a month or so – you probably don’t need to seek out inspiration. That’s because it’s pretty easy to maintain your enthusiasm and motivation for a short period of time.

But maybe you have a big goal, one that requires extra time and effort. You may find that as the weeks and months drag by, your enthusiasm fades. You start losing sight of why you’re even working on the goal. And after a while it may feel like you’ll never get there.

That’s when you need to seek out like-minded individuals and sources of inspiration. In some cases you may merely read about others to inspire your own journey. At other times you may want to meet with like-minded others to get support. Let me explain…

Seeking Inspiration

This is the easiest of the two inspirational methods. Basically, you learn as much as you can about others who’ve done what you want to do.

For example, if you’re interested in starting a successful online website, then read biographies and autobiographies about other successful internet entrepreneurs. You can find plenty of books at your library or at Amazon.com. You can also read more about them on various websites (including their own sites).

If some of your role models aren’t exactly famous (at least not outside of their niche), then you can learn more about them by reading their blogs, following them on Twitter, befriending them on Facebook and so on. You may even get a chance to interact personally with them on forums and elsewhere.

Which brings us to our next method…

Meeting With Like-Minded Individuals

Sometimes you may be able to meet those who’re successfully doing what you want to do. For example, you might get a chance to talk to them on the phone, meet them at a niche seminar or take them out to lunch.

Indeed, this works particularly well with people who live in your neighborhood. Maybe there’s a successful business owner that you’d like to emulate. You may offer to take him or her out to lunch in exchange for getting to know the person better. You might even get the opportunity to “pick their brains” and/or interview them.

The above strategy works best if you’re approaching people who are already successful. But what about talking to people who have had some success, but they’re still striving for their own goals? The answer is yes… you should talk to these people too.

Indeed, some of the best support you’ll get in achieving your own goals is to form a “support group” with other like-minded individuals. Generally, this is referred to as a mastermind group. About once a week you can get together with your group (preferably in person, but a conference call will do). These meetings or calls will give each of you the opportunity to brainstorm with each other and support one another as you strive for your goals.

You can easily find like-minded individuals on relevant forums, Facebook groups and similar communities. For example, if you want to start an online business then you’d check out business and marketing forums. You can also find these people right in your own neighborhood by placing ads in your paper, hanging flyers, and approaching people personally to invite them into your mastermind group.

But one note: Spend some time getting to know people before you invite them. You want to be sure your group members are just as goal-oriented, ambitious and positive as you are. In other words, you don’t want any naysayers in your group!

That’s it for this time. Next time you’re going to learn how to recognize and avoid those who want to bring you down, so stay tuned!

Welcome back!

Starting with this lesson and for the next several lessons, you’re going to learn plenty of surefire ways to stay fired up about your goals. Be sure to put these lessons in a safe place, because the next time you feel unmotivated you’ll want to re-read them and apply these killer tips.

Let’s jump in…

Keeping a Journal to Boost Motivation

Keeping a journal doesn’t mean you keep a diary where you share your angst like a teenage girl. Instead, what you’re doing is keeping a journal of your path to success.

As such, here are the types of items you need to include in your journal:

• Your goals. Put your goal in the front of your journal so that you see it every time you look in your journal.
• Your affirmations. If you’ve created any affirmations or inspirational quotes, add them to the beginning of your journal to keep you motivated.
• Your “road map.” Include your plan that you’ll use to reach your goal.
• Your to-do lists. You can put all your to-do lists in your journal, which will help you keep track of how much you get done each day.
• Your starting point. If you have some sort of proof of your starting point, list it in your journal. For example, take a “before” picture if you have a weight loss goal. If it’s a monetary goal, then you might create a visual depiction of this goal, such as a “measuring stick” with $0 at the bottom and your goal at the top. Then you can color in the stick as you move towards your goal.
• Milestones and progress. You should chart your progress in your journal. You may even talk about how you feel as you reach various milestones, as focusing on the emotion will keep you fired up and moving towards the big goal.
• Lessons and mistakes. If you make mistakes, write them down. That way you can learn from these mistakes and do better next time.

In other words, your journal should include everything about your journey.

Here’s why it works:

• Helps you gain clarity. Writing your goals down helps solidify them and makes you clear about where you’re heading.
• Keeps you focused. It’s not as easy to get distracted when you have an entire journal that’s focused on one goal.
• Allows you to see your progress. Sometimes it feels like you’re not making any progress or that your goal isn’t reachable. Keeping a journal allows you to quickly see that you’ve come a long way. And once you see how far you’ve come, you’ll get an extra shot of motivation to keep moving forward.
• Holds you accountable. When you know you have to “report” to your journal every day, you feel an obligation to report good things. In other words, keeping a journal is a way to hold yourself accountable.

If you’ve never kept a journal before, you may be tempted to disregard this advice. Don’t do it. Instead, I ask that you try it for one month. Then you’ll see for yourself just how well it works!