In the previous articles, I talked about the most powerful state of mind. The one that guarantees success in your personal and professional life. I also mentioned that one of the key success factors is massive action.
When you think of action, you naturally imagine hard work. Work maybe, but hard? it doesn’t have to be. We perform a lot of activities on daily basis. We define some of them as hard work, and some other as fun or leisure. When you come to think of it, hard work or fun is the meaning that we assign to various activities. There’s nothing inherently hard or fun about them.
We usually consider something hard only when it’s against our will or forced upon us; something we have to do. Imagine someone from a different world who has never seen a computer. A kid playing a game and a stock trader look like people engaging in similar activities to him. Even though the kid may claim to be having fun, while the trader engaging in stressful trades. In other words, fun or hard work boil down to your frame of mind. And that’s related to your motivation.
Once you are motivated to perform a task, it won’t be hard work anymore. But the questions are: How can you get motivated? How do maintain your motivation through your journey to success?
The trick to motivation is in seeing results. Once you see some results, you would like to put more effort in. Results are the fuel for motivation. But you won’t see results unless you put in some effort and take action. So we are in a bit of a circular situation here.
Here’s how to get started
Motivation comes when you see results, but you don’t have to actually get results to see them. There are various ways that you can see results of your efforts before achieving any results. Here are some practical ways.
The Power of Visualization
Your brain is trapped in your skull. The only way that it can be influenced is through the signals it receives. If you lead your brain to believe that you have already gotten the results, you can create the same motivation. It makes no difference to your brain whether the signal came from outside or it was created by your mind. Scientific studies confirm that. The brain cannot tell the difference between external reality and the internal one – the one we call fantasy.
This can give you a great tool to generate motivation; visualization. In a state of relaxation brain’s neural network is more malleable and susceptible to change. If you imagine yourself attaining your goals in such a trance-like state, it impresses your subconscious mind as if it has already happened. Your logical mind knows that you haven’t reached your goal yet, but that’s not relevant to this process. Your subconscious mind is the one controlling your emotions and motivation.
Gradual Ramp up
Another way to see early results is to break your journey into many small milestones. Reaching each milestone counts as a win which fuels more action. This will create a positive cycle of results, motivation, actions, and so more results. This cycle grows faster as you surpass more milestones.
This is the most practical approach when undertaking any overwhelming activity. Breaking the process into small steps makes them more manageable. But also each small win fuels greater action, which in time will turn into an avalanche of massive action.
Change your environment
A great way to see results is seeing it in others’ lives. This is based on how the mirror neurons in the brain work. Mirror neurons fire when an event happens to other people, as if they are happening to you. We all have experienced empathy to others when something good or bad happens to them. This can be even in the form of stories or movies. The whole movie industry is created based on this quality of the brain. Movies are carefully scripted to create a sense of empathy in you. They make you root for the protagonist in the story.
Power of Mirroring
Mirroring and modeling is another powerful tool to create motivation. So how can you harness this to your benefit?
Choose your environment carefully and deliberately. People around you define your destiny. The lives they live and their stories are bound to become yours, no doubt about it. Follow and interact with people who have reached the goals that you strive for. Join the communities that share the same goals and enthusiasm as yours. When you see their results and success stories, you will naturally mirror those as your own. This creates a great impetus for action.
Likewise, hanging around people who are not resourceful can drag you down. Stay away from them. As mean as it may sound, distance yourself from those who do not share your goals in life. It’s easy to identify those people. Just observe what they have accomplished. Is that what you wish for yourself? That’s what you will be if you are around them.
The Tangible and Psychological Effects of The Right Environment
The right environment helps you in two ways. It helps you get access to the same resources available to the successful people. Another benefit of the supporting environment is the impact on your belief system. You can move toward a goal unless you see in practice that reaching that goal is possible to you. What better way of showing you that you can do something than seeing it done by people just like you?
In short, taking massive action is the sure path to success. In this article, I laid out few ways to trigger great action toward your goal. When done properly a massive action will not feel like hard work. It will come effortlessly and even joyfully. Remember, whether something is joyous or hard work is the creation of your mind. If you know how your brain works, you can reach an awareness to change your brain to your liking.