Life lessons
Chapter 11: True motivation always comes from within
“No matter who you are or how old you are,
if you want to be successful,
the motivation for that success must necessarily come
from within you.”- Paul J. Meyer
What is motivation and where does it come from?
Motivation is a concrete concept,
but it is easily misunderstood.
Many people, when hearing this word,
often refer to sentences like
“Let’s fight and win for the colors of Gipper’s shirt”,
the words of legendary football coach Knute Rockne
when telling his students by his role;
or Vince Lombardi cheering up the Green Bay Packers players that
“The will to win comes first.”
But that’s not the motivation;
It was just a temporary stimulus.
In sports that often require intense physical energy
for a short period of time,
stimulation is essential,
but in everyday life such stimulation will go nowhere.
Unless, of course,
there’s always someone with you and cheering:
“Fighting, fighting! Win! Must win! Win!”.
Maybe I’m not the type to shout out,
“Come on! Go for it” to encourage others.
Doing so may sound exhilarating at first,
but when the words of encouragement cease to be chanted,
the motivation is no longer valid.
So instead of trying to motivate them,
I help them understand what motivation is,
where it comes from,
and how to motivate themselves.
And each person must maintain their own motivation
with the necessary encouragement.
Psychologists still disagree on why
some people find motivation in life while others do not.
In my opinion,
when looking back at what history has written about successful people,
they always create their own motivation
without relying on external factors.
Besides, we should also understand that
“motivation” is something that
comes from within each individual,
rather than from outside influences,
motivating us to act.
In other words,
all of our actions have a motive,
a reason.
They stem from deep-seated needs.
We need to think about ourselves.
The motivation lies in the thoughts themselves.
When it’s a real motivator,
it can propel us to success beyond our imagination.
Three factors for motivation
Think about an important goal you want to achieve
– a goal you want to achieve in the future,
and try to answer these three questions:
* Are you ambitious enough to reach your destination?
* Do you really believe you can achieve that goal?
* Do you have a clear picture of the goal you want to achieve?
If the answers are “Yes”,
then those are the keys to helping you motivate yourself.
1. Aspirations
“Motivation comes from true aspirations…” – Denis Waitley
Desire is the seed from which all success grows and develops.
It determines whether
you will become a normal person or succeed in life.
Desire is different from ability,
which is the difference between ordinary people
and successful people.
It is desire that creates the conditions
for ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things.
I like the phrase that
the ancients used to be “burning desire”
because it was too concise.
People with aspirations are almost unstoppable,
both in thought and action.
The stronger the flame of desire burns,
the greater the determination,
the easier it is to achieve success.
An example of this is the story of Barbara,
a woman who attended my class in college.
At the age of 45,
she returned to school after a long absence from school.
Understandably,
she was a little confused at first.
She said that she just wanted to get a bachelor’s degree,
the average one was already very happy.
But then,
she began to cherish a strong desire not only to study,
to graduate,
but to study well.
Her first tests were graded excellent.
I suggest you set your goals a little higher.
She smiles so brightly!
Barbara graduated with honors
and received a scholarship to continue her studies to the master’s level.
An important aspect of aspiration is the commitment
to fulfill the promise to yourself.
This helps us not to be discouraged
when pursuing our chosen path
despite encountering seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
2. Faith
“Your chances of success are always measured by your own beliefs.” – Robert Collier
A few years ago,
I noticed that most of my students were paralyzed
by an illness that prevented them
from functioning like normal people.
What a terrifying and contagious disease.
The strangest thing is that almost no students are aware
that they are sick.
I don’t even know what to call it,
just temporarily call it “always making excuses
for things that don’t work”.
They responded with surprised looks
and exclaimed in unison,
“Is that so?”.
I opened a pad of paper and said,
“Today, anyone who has an excuse,
or hears someone else’s excuse,
write them down on a piece of paper.
Tomorrow, when you go to school,
please copy all those excuses into this pad.”
The next morning,
my pad was full of words,
and I even had to use another pad.
It’s all about excuses for why people think
they can’t do this or that.
I asked the students if anyone could explain
why I classed the habit of “making excuses” as a disease.
The most quiet student in the class,
for the first time raised his hand,
said the right words:
“If we are always looking for excuses for what we can’t do,
we will never find a solution,
to do those things”.
In fact, we have more capacity than we think
and we rarely use this inner source of energy.
The first step to awakening those potentials is
to increase our faith in ourselves,
at least enough to try,
even to accept failure.
That initial belief will bring small achievements
and gradually build your confidence.
3. Imagine, Prize The Results
“You need to clearly visualize the results you will achieve
before you start implementing them.” – Alex Morrison
In the early 1930s,
an engineer named Joseph Strauss used
to go on business trips to a construction site in San Francisco,
where he could enjoy the view
from one side of the desolate San Francisco Bay.
In his mind,
he always pictured a picture of a bridge connecting the two sides.
The more he thought,
the clearer the picture of the bridge appeared in him.
And he began to build that dream bridge
under difficult geographical and weather conditions
and many other difficulties.
And in 2005,
Americans celebrated the 68th anniversary of the inauguration
of the famous Golden Gate bridge
– the pride of Americans.
In 1961,
President John Kennedy said that Americans should aim
to put a man on the moon
and return safely to earth before the decade was over.
Millions of people thought it was impossible,
but at NASA there was a group of employees
who envisioned that scenario
and were determined to make it happen.
When we watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon
and return to Earth in 1969,
the team at NASA had already “watched”
those footage thousands of times in their imaginations.
When Bill Gates was studying at Harvard,
the personal computer was still in its early stages of development.
Many people see a computer
as a machine for storing data and for word processing.
But Gates recognized other possibilities as well:
He often thought of them
while listening to lectures on subjects
he was not particularly interested in.
He also envisioned the software that
It would later revolutionize our lives.
That imaginary picture is transformed into paper blueprints,
and we all know the latter part of the story.
I call all of these actions mental visualization.
The clearer and more often we visualize our actions,
the more likely we are to perform them.
The image in our mind is the driving force that
motivates us to take action to achieve success.
If you cherish a burning desire, an iron faith,
and have a clear picture in your mind of the work
you are going to do,
then you have the motivation to succeed.
“Once you have a passion,
a burning desire – You will succeed.” – Noname