Sales Slump

Do You Think Motivational Thoughts?

What do motivational thoughts do? They help you take action. This isn't about positive thinking or motivating quotes. Those have their place in shaping your attitude and thinking. However, what motivates each of us is unique, so you need to have your own thoughts - those which are most effective at getting you going.

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity" - Albert Einstein

This is a decent quote, and it may help you look at the positive side of a situation, but what if it just doesn't get you excited? Then you need to apply a little brainpower to make the idea your own. You have to make it a truly motivational thought for YOU.

Motivational Thoughts Of Your Own

"Making it your own" means experimenting with a good thought until you find a way to use it in your own recipe for motivation. Suppose, for example, you're in a difficult situation and don't feel like dealing with it. As you sit there, you play around with the idea of opportunity coming from difficulty. Fortunately, you discover that it pulls you out of your slump to think about yourself in the future, explaining to a friend how you turned the difficult situation to your advantage.

This is how you create your own motivational thoughts. Now, it might be more motivating if you imagine yourself being interviewed someday about how you overcame this difficult time. The thoughts that work for you are the thoughts you need to be thinking.

Learn Your Motivations

Experiment and get to know how your mind works. I find that beyond just thinking a thought, if I explain it to someone, I get excited. That is my own self-motivation recipe. When I feel unmotivated about writing, for example, all I explain an idea I have for some article to my wife. By the time I am done, I'm very motivated to work.

You can get creative in your motivational experiments. Maybe thinking about being poor makes you get up and get to work. If so, that is a great motivational thought. If visual thoughts are more motivating than mental conversations, then use those. See pictures in your head that get you going. Perhaps when people say you can't do something, you do whatever it takes to prove them wrong. Then it might be motivational to think about them saying you can't.

When there is a truly uninspiring task you have to do, try promising yourself a reward for completion - make it one that really means something to you. Keep that thought in your mind to keep yourself motivated. A trip to the beach and even a simple bowl of ice cream may be some of your more powerful motivational thoughts.

About the Author - Steve Gillman has been studying brainpower and related topics for years. For more on Motivational Thoughts, and to get the Brain Power Newsletter and other free gifts, visit IncreaseBrainPower.com

Self Motivation Secrets

We all have a lack of self motivation at times. We can learn a hundred ways to improve our lives, but then hesitate to act. Something less important catches our attention, or we just don't feel like doing what we need to do. Even a person who is normally highly motivated can sometimes have a hard time getting started on an important task.

Is there a solution? There are probably dozens of them. Below are six of the best self motivation techniques that consistently work when used. Try them all, but if you find even one or two here that work for you, you'll be on your way.

Self Motivation Techniques That Work

1. Talk to get motivated. One of my favorite ways to create energy and motivation is to talk. Once I tell my wife about the article I'm going to write, I'm out of my slump and back at the keyboard. For less inspiring tasks, talk about the larger goals it will help you achieve.

2. Stimulate your desire. Seeing their potential future motivates many to sign up for get-rich-quick plans. The really good salesmen can put you in your imagined dream home in minutes, and make you feel motivated to do anything to make it real. Learn to be your own salesman.

3. Stimulate your pain. One Neuro-Linguistic Programming technique is to mentally link pain with not acting. It is like when finally stop hitting that snooze button on the alarm, and get up because you think you might lose your job. Just imagine any bad consequences that may occur if you don't do what you need to do.

4. Find a true interest. If you have no interest in what you are doing, it might mean you need to do something else. If it's just a task you dislike, but it needs to be done, relate it clearly in your mind to the greater goal. I don't like to drive, but I don't have a motivation problem when I'm driving to the mountains for a vacation.

5. Boost your energy. You need energy for self motivation. Coffee may help for a while, if caffeine doesn't create other problems for you. Exercising and sleeping well help too. Yo should also watch out for sugary foods. The "sugar blues"kill motivation. Once you find energy boosters that work for you, make a list and keep it handy for future use.

6. Take any small step. I've found if I commit to raking up one bag of leaves, I soon want to finish all the yard work. Taking any small step towards your goals is a great self motivation technique. To make this even easier, break larger goals down into small steps.

Motivation techniques really do work, but don't ask me how to get motivated to use them. In any case, you were motivated enough to read this far, so you'll be fine. Oh, and humor is number seven. A good laugh can overcome that feeling of being overwhelmed that sucks away self motivation.

About the Author: Steve Gillman has been studying brainpower and related topics for years. For more on How To Increase Brain Power, and to get the Brain Power Newsletter and other free gifts, visit IncreaseBrainPower.com

Self Improvement Slump: How To Pull Yourself Out Of The Hole

We’ve all been there. We get excited about some major new goal in our life, we get all fired up about making it happen, and then… zilch. Nothing happens. The very lives that we want to improve via our personal development and self improvement efforts get in our way, and our dreams of success on a massive scale fall by the wayside.

This is especially common when it comes to financial success or weight loss, and that is probably due to the fact that attaining financial stability or sustained weight loss are both things that take an on-going and consistent effort over the long-term.

The key to pulling yourself out of this self improvement slump is to find ways to once again become passionate about whatever it was that you wanted to accomplish in the first place.

A lot of people decide on some sort of personal development or self improvement program after a negative experience, and their goal becomes not wanting to experience that same type of situation again.

However, is NOT wanting something to happen really a strong enough motivation to keep yourself on track over the long-term so that you can attain the opposite of that thing?

For example, if you decide that you are finally going to get your finances together because you almost got kicked out of your apartment for not paying the rent, or you walked to work for 2 weeks until you could afford to get your car fixed, both of those experiences are pretty powerful motivators.

However, once you are back inside the comfort zone of having enough money to pay the bills, and your car is running fine, where is the motivation to achieve financial freedom that will keep you burning the midnight oil and working weekends in order to make that happen?

Another example is weight loss. If someone makes fun of you or if you have some other negative experience as a result of the fact that you are overweight, you’ll have your brand-new exercise and weight loss program planned out before you even get home that day!

However, after the pain of that incident fades, or you find some way to temporarily fill the emotional gap in your life that in the past has been empty as a result of your health, your motivation to workout 5 or 6 days each week and to eat healthy foods also fades away.

So, the key to keeping your motivational fires burning lies in finding ways to continually be as passionate about attaining your goals as you were when you first decided to do so.

One possible method for doing this could be to mentally relive the time in your life that caused you to decide to make changes in the first place. However, that definitely smacks of “living in the past” as well as “focusing on the negative” so a more proactive approach would probably serve you better.

Instead of thinking back on bad times that caused you to want to make positive changes in your life, why not envision future good times instead?

What would your life be like if you had more than enough money to pay your rent or your mortgage each month, you had 2 or 3 nice cars in the driveway, all of your expenses were covered, and you still had “play” money left over?

Consistent and repeated visualization of what your life will be like when money is no longer an issue will keep you motivated to do what it takes in order to achieve that financial success.

The same process can be used for weight loss or any other area of your life that you want to improve. Put powerful and emotional pictures in your mind of the life that you will lead once you have achieved your dreams, and focus intensely on those images as often as you can – preferably several times each day.

The key to this process is consistency. It has already been shown that humans have the ability – indeed, the very habit – of getting motivated about their dreams, but then not following through. If you do not consistently dream about and feel passionate about your desires, you will simply fall right back into the same trap that has already kept you from attaining success.

There is a saying that goes something along the following lines, and you would do well to put this somewhere that you will see it often. Paste it up where you will see it during the parts of your day when you have the most difficulty sticking to your success plan:

“Do today what others won’t, so you can do tomorrow what others can’t.”

Winners and successful people do whatever it takes day in and day out, month after month, and year after year in order to achieve success.

Do you want to be a winner, or do you want to just let yourself fall back into another self improvement slump?

About the Author - Aaron Potts is the founder of the Today is that Day Success Community, and the author of Energy Harmonics, which teaches about self improvement, vibratory alignment, and the Law of Attraction. Visit his site at todayisthatday.com to get his free newsletter.