STAY MOTIVATED - CLARIFY YOUR MOTIVES

When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.

-Scott

We hardly do anything without a Motive. That’s what drives us and defines who we are. Mimi’s story shows that our motives have the power or energy to drive us to achieve our goals. Motive Power is the driving force behind an action or activity. The force pushes you. It puts pressure on you. It keeps you aflame and committed, even in the face of challenges.

This is why it is crucial for us to consciously identify the reasons for our goals and pursuits.

I mentioned in the last article that my Writing Group decided that for us to record more writing successes this year, one of the things we have to do is purify our motives.

CLARIFY YOUR MOTIVES

We need to make the reasons we want to write very clear by being specific and explaining it in detail. Mimi’s initial reason to become a successful author was imprecise and general. Everyone wants to be a successful ‘something.’ You must have a reason more personal and relevant to your need.

Personalizing your motive means, you are not doing it because someone you know succeeded at it. That’s a warped reason to pursue a goal. That your friend won the annual writing competition and got a huge prize for it does not mean you can. You have to discover what God created you for and the gifts he deposited in you before you can rightfully chart a path to your future.

The weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which worthily used, will be a gift to his race forever.

-Ruskin

PURPOSE DRIVEN MOTIVES

There is no road to success but through a clear, strong purpose.

 -Munger

Your motive must leave the realm of want to a realm of need. It must leave the realm of indifference to a realm of passion and obsession. It must be a do or die matter.

Until Mimi got to that point, she didn’t take her dream serious. At the slightest distraction, she abandoned her goals, because she had not understood the purpose. This brings to mind, Myles Munroe’s saying that when purpose is not known, abuse is inevitable.

More men fail because of lack of purpose than lack of talent. Don’t you think that if Mimi had realized early enough that pursuing her desire to write would be her saving grace in future, she would have been more assiduous?

VALUE ADDING MOTIVES

No one is happy or free who lives only for himself. Joy in living comes from immersion in something one recognizes to be bigger, better, worthier, more enduring than he himself is.

-McGeehon

Your reasons for writing must be beneficial, not only to you, but firstly to others. Until you have a tangible, valuable motive for doing something, you may not succeed at it. Our goal must be people oriented and selfless. It is in investing in others that our profiting appears.

Mimi eventually decided that her book will help her increasing patients and others gain necessary knowledge on healthy diet. This is a clear value-adding motive than being a successful author

God has given us two hands - one to receive with and the other to give with. We are not cisterns made for hoarding; we are channels made for sharing.

-Graham

In coming up with motives that are value adding, you must also have very clear self-ideals. What do you believe in and stand for? Until you define this and stand by it, you will continue to compromise your aspirations.

I have personally found out that when your purpose is for yourself, you can easily give up, but when it is people focused, you are motivated to continue, because of the many lives that depend on it.

Do you need to re-assess your goals and aspirations?

Do you need to clarify your motives for better productivity?

Let’s do it together. Drop a comment please.

Enjoy God’s Exceeding Grace

STAY MOTIVATED - MIMI’S STORY

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles/ freedigitalphotos

Still talking about staying motivated, you need more than Willpower, you need a strong motivation.

What is motivating you to do what you do?

If you want to write a book; why?

If you want to go to school; why?

If you want to get married; why?

You should not decide to do something because others are doing it, you need a stronger motive than that or you will quit before you finish.

 Mimi is a dietician. About seven years ago, she told me of her desire to write a book on Healthy Eating. I asked her why and she said she wanted to be a successful author.

 Do you think her motive was vague and weak?
She started with so much zeal, and wrote the drafts for five chapters in a week. Then she met Paul and this hot romance started. She soon put the desire to be a successful author on the back burner. For two years, her job at a high profile hospital and her love life with Paul were enough to make her forget her goal.

What happened to her aspiration to become a successful author? 
The affair broke up and she was devastated especially by the fact that Paul left her for a well-known former beauty queen. That dealt a fatal blow on her self-esteem. When she recovered, the desire to be that successful author came back with full force.

Why did the desire return with a vengeance?

How long can the steam last? 
At an amazing speed, she finished the first draft of the book and sent it to me for editing. Her goal was to get the book published in a month. I was so busy then I didn’t have time to see her manuscripts and she harassed me so well I had no choice but to leave every other thing to look at her job. I made some corrections and observations, sent it to her, expecting to get it back in a few days. But it didn’t come. Two weeks later, I called her and was surprised at her response.

She and Paul had reconciled and she had been too busy to see the manuscripts.

Why and how did her desire evaporate so fast? 
Four years and two kids later, a sack letter and divorce papers from Paul, Mimi became a shadow of her former self.

Faced with raising her two kids alone, no paid employment and not only a broken heart but a shattered self-image, Mimi had a strong need to pursue her abandoned dream of writing a book.

She had converted the ground floor of her duplex to a Clinic and started a private practice as a Nutrition Specialist.

As her clientele increased, she found it necessary to finish her book to help her patients and others gain necessary knowledge on healthy living. 

How would you compare this motive with to the first one? 
So, she updated the book and within a few months published it. It was an instant success. She started a blog on Healthy Living that soon began to thrive. This increased her clientele. She wrote two other books within a year and became a co-host for a television health show.

What motivated Mimi to eventually realize her desire to be a successful author? 

What motivates you to do something is what keeps your Willpower on. The stronger your motive and desire, the stronger your Willpower.

The first assignment we have this year in my Writing Group is to purify our motives by making it clear, personal, purpose-driven and value-adding.

I will talk more about this next.

In the meantime, why don't you work on purifying your motives for some of your goals.

Enjoy God’s Exceeding Grace

STAY MOTIVATED

When we set goals, we are excited. We start to pursue with zeal and make good progress for a few weeks. Then gradually, other things come up to distract us. After several failed attempts to continue, we get discouraged, abandon the project and don’t even bother setting goals anymore.

But goal setting is important in the school of success. It is God’s principle. Before He does anything, He says it. Check the bible; from the beginning, His goals were set, before He started to create the Heavens and the earth. All through the bible, God would always lay His plans out before He executes them.

We cannot achieve the kind of success we desire if we don’t make our purpose and goals clear before pursuing them.

The Truth About Willpower

Willpower is determination + self-discipline.

These two factors powers you to do something despite the difficulties involved.

Every day, we set goals and try to achieve them using Willpower. This is great, but Willpower, though very important in the school of success, is not just enough.

I read about the more than two hundred studies into human psychology and neuroscience, which revealed the limitations of willpower.

Cookies & Radishes

Here is one out of the many experiments carried out at the University of Albany. 

They presented two bowls to a group of students. One contained warm, freshly baked cookies and the other, cold radishes. The first group is to eat the cookies and ignore the radishes. This did not require any willpower because it was very easy to do.

The second group was instructed to eat the radishes and ignore the warm cookies. Now you and I know this will require a lot of willpower.

Afterwards, they gave a difficult puzzle to the students to complete. The result was that the students, who had already used up their willpower trying to resist the cookies, gave up on the puzzle much more quickly.

The researchers concluded that the students resisting the cookies had already used up their willpower and didn't have any left to work on the puzzle.

Limited Human Effort

Willpower is a very limited resource and it quickly runs out.

I’m not surprised at this conclusion because anything generated by human effort is limited.

This is why many of us (studies say over 88% of people) give up on our goals. When you have used up your Willpower in one area, you are likely to give up on the rest of your goals. For example, if you have a hard day at work or a tiff with a loved one, you may likely break your fast, your diet or abandon your plan to write that one chapter.

So if willpower is not enough, what is?

We discussed this recently in my writing group. Here are some proven ways we arrived at that will help us stay motivated this year and achieve all our writing goals.

The God Factor

We all agreed that these scriptures would be our greatest motivation.

“… A man can receive nothing (he can claim nothing, he can take unto himself nothing) except as it has been granted to him from heaven. John 3:27 AMP

“I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me (I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency) Philippians 4:13 AMP

“…apart from Me (cut off from vital union with Me) you can do nothing. John 15:5 AMP

Paul said in Acts 26:22, “Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day…”

No matter how strong your will, we all need the help of God. Every other thing will work, when we are in God’s Will and Plan. We must daily commit ourselves and our goals into His hands. Only then can we receive the grace that we need to achieve them.

Next article, I will share with you the other ways my Writing Group will stay motivated this year.

Enjoy God’s Exceeding Grace

ONE SENTENCE AT A TIME

It was like a blink of the eye and I’m not exaggerating. Before I knew it, 2013 had bowed out.

And most of my writing goals were still on the first page of my journal, neatly written and unachieved.

@ I will post an article everyday on my blog

@ I will write an article a day for the two Christian blogs I subscribed to

@ I will finish the two books I started years back and publish them… and many other lofty goals.

I started well actually, like we all do in January. I finished one book and sent it to my editor. I wrote a couple of articles and then…Welcome 2014!

One of the many keys to success is assessment of past efforts. I had to review how well I did with meeting these goals. Did I achieve them all or fall by the wayside? What was responsible for the setbacks or failures I experienced? What lessons have 1 learnt from them?

I know that honest answers to these questions will help me set new realistic goals for 2014

I assessed myself and fell below average.

I failed at many writing tasks I had set for myself, like writing an article each day for the websites.

I could not go beyond the writing and editing of one of the two books.

And I completely abandoned my blog since January 2013! I miss this blog and the interaction it provides.

I could go on and on with my writing failures. Not that I idled away the year, I was just so busy doing other important things, and the irony was, I was mostly writing, but for other purposes - church commitments, editing other people’s jobs, teaching, and other important and not so important things.

I did not do well achieving my personal writing goals, period.

But I’m not giving up. 2014 is a new year, a new beginning with new opportunities. Should I be discouraged and not set new goals?

No.

If I fail to set new goals, then I’m setting myself up for more failures. So, I will go right ahead and set my goals. I will make them realistic. I will pursue them with vigor. I will pick up from where I left off in 2013, which is what I’m doing by writing this article. I will take it one day at a time; one sentence at a time. Every day, I will write a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a page, but I will not stop writing.

So help me God.

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens…” Philippians 4:13

Enjoy God’s Exceeding Grace

What are your Writing and Reading Goals for 2014? 

HOW TO DEVELOP THE HABIT OF WRITING DAILY 3

Have you ever wondered why you don’t achieve your plans? You make a good decision and make plans to achieve them. You even take some steps and record a level of victory, but along the line; you abandon the whole project for untenable reasons.

One of the major factors responsible for this is lack of a clear, strong purpose.

You cannot succeed at anything in life without a clear, strong purpose. That is what drives dreams and talents. As a writer, you need a clear purpose to succeed at developing a habit of writing every day.

When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone. -Scott

Purpose sustains your determination and propels you to the fulfillment of your goals.

This article is the third in the series: How To Develop The Habit of Writing Daily and it focuses on having a good purpose and using it to drive your desire to write every day. It involves careful planning with diligence to work the plan.

Why do you want to write every day?  

Get a journal and a pen and take time to plan on how you want to develop a healthy writing habit that will make you an accomplished writer.

1.      WRITE OUT YOUR GOAL.

Here is an example you can work with. Write the questions and your own answers in the journal. 

• What kind of habit do you want to develop? 

“I want to develop the habit of writing every day.”  

• Why do you want to develop the habit?

“To live up to my status as a writer”

“To improve my writing skills”

“To become an accomplished writer”

2.     DECIDE YOUR TACTIC

Keep your goal in mind, then decide the plan of action or strategy to achieve the goals. Answering these questions will help you formulate a good plan.

• How much time will you devote to writing daily?

“I want to write two hours a day.”

This will give you an average of sixty hours a month. That’s a whole lot if you will stick to it.

• What time of the day will be most convenient for you with less distraction?

“4am to 6am”

• What will be your focus of writing? (What will you be writing?) 

“I want to write a book titled The Benefits of Drinking Water.”

Someone once said, more men fail through lack of purpose than through lack of talent. Now you have a purpose that will drive you to fulfill your goals. Always remember that without a well-defined purpose, you cannot attain your goals, no matter how lofty they are. 

• The next thing to write down is why you are writing the book.

“I want to let people know how they can live longer and healthier by drinking sufficient clean water.

This is a clear objective for writing your book.

• What is the size of the book?

 “It’s going to be a small book of about 60- 70 pages.”

• How long should it take you to write a 70-page book if you write two hours a day?

Set a time determined by your level of skill, speed and experience.

If you are a beginner, you can write it in a month, if you stick to your 2 hours per day writing. That means you write two or three pages a day. 

 “It will take me a month (30-31 days) to write the book.” 

When you add the time for research, editing and proofreading, you can have your book ready in two months.

• When is your deadline?

It is easy to give a specific date if you have determined the time it will take you to write. Check your calendar and mark the specific day you will have your manuscripts ready for editing. If you are starting on the 5th of a month, your manuscript must be ready on the 3rd of the next month.

“My deadline is 3rd of August 2012.”

Make yourself accountable. Tell a friend, a family member, your mentor, or some members of your Writers’ group about your plan. Ask them to remind you and hold you accountable. It helps when you have to report to someone.

Developing good habits is a long-term commitment, but one that is worth every ounce of effort required to develop them.

 3. DON’T BE TOO HARD ON YOURSELF

For some reasons, there may be days when you may not write for two hours. It may be due to an emergency or some unforeseen commitments that demands your time and energy. Don’t beat yourself on the head. Writing is hard work and failing to write for one or two days because something else came up is not a complete failure.

Sometimes you have to review your plan if they unachievable. Don’t be too rigid. If you discover that two hours is too hard for you to keep up with, reduce it to one or less. The goal is to write every day, no matter how small. You are free to adjust your plan and inform the people you are accountable to.

Be honest with yourself. It’s your goal and plan and no one can really make you achieve it, if you are not committed.

The level of success you will achieve as writer in a few years from now will be determined by how devoted you are to your dreams and how conscientious you carry out your writing assignments.

Grace Olumayowa Aideloje

©2012 PenParables

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