Silent Devotion

Zig Ziglar is a motivational mastermind, and reminded us that motivation fades. This means that in order to stay motivated, we need a daily boost.

We need motivation in order to push beyond the ordinary and the mediocre. Whether it’s losing that last 10 pounds, or taking on that tough project at work, or a business venture, motivation wins out. Inertia is a huge factor in our lives.

If you’re going in a particular direction, inertia will keep you going that way unless you apply force. See if your body keeps going when you pull up to a stop sign in your car.

Inertia can work for you, because once you get going, you’ll tend to keep going. The challenging part is to get things started (and re-started), and that’s where motivation comes in.

Below are 3 ways to get your momentum going, get inspired, and out of a rut.

Select a mantra — Using a mantra can have some advantages. You can use it every day to remove negative thoughts and clear the way for positive things. A mantra is traditionally a sound or series of sounds that are repeated over and over again during meditation sessions. But a mantra can become much more than that.

Guy Kawasaki tells us that we can replace long mission statements with mantras. Short and to the point, we can rely on mantras to calm us and give us strength.

Mantras can also act as guiding principles for behavior and help with decision making. Google’s “do no harm” philosophy is a mantra for how to do business.

Mantras should be short, only a few words long at most. You can choose any mantra you like, and you can choose several of them for use in different situations. You can use them for meditation sessions as well as a sort of battle cry when you need strength and confidence. You can also use them to calm yourself when decisions need to be made.

Do something physical — When we feel a certain way, we reflect that in our bodies. As goes the mind, so goes the body. Pretend you’re depressed for a moment. What does your body do? Your shoulders slump, your eyes head toward the ground, and your head faces down. Can you feel that?

Now, try using your body to prevent a depressed feeling from overtaking you. Stand up tall showing off your best posture. Smile. Lift your arms and put them straight out at your sides to form a cross with your body. Tilt your head back and stare up at the ceiling. Lift one foot off the floor and hum out loud.

It’s hard to be depressed while smiling in that pose. Now, ask yourself what you can do physically every day to improve your state of mind. Maybe it’s standing in this pose, maybe it’s lifting weights, or maybe it’s yoga. Whatever your preference, do something physical daily to get motivated.

Time travel — This exercise will get you motivated as fast as anything I know. We all know that hindsight is 20/20. In each and every moment, we have choices to make. I hear people say that they have no choice. This is not true. You can eat the fattening dessert or not. You can do right or you can do wrong. You always have a choice.

After the fact, we sometimes regret the choices we made in the past. Worse, we delude ourselves into thinking we had no choice and still don’t.

Try this out. Imagine your future. Think about what it’s like in your future a few years from now. Now, look back at the present moment that you’re in right now. Given the opportunity, what would you have done differently?

What can you do right now to make that future that you want become a reality? Say it out loud. Write it down. Make a plan. Now, go do it.

These are just a few of the ways that you can bend your reality just a bit and get motivated. There’s no limit to the ways that you can gain control of your future if you’ll just apply a few simple principles.