Self Motivational Means Mind your Language

Posted on March 30th, 2010 by admin in self motivational

Self motivational people know that the language they use can have a very big impact on their moods and behaviour. When others around them are continually using negative talk they conciously block it out to avoid it impacting on their day. How often when something goes wrong you hear others or yourself saying “what a disaster!” In most cases the disaster is no more than laddered tights just before going out for the evening or the video recorder failed to record the football match you wanted to see. So what, but the issue is that your subconcious is listening and if it hears a stream of very negative expressions it reacts accordingly. So you become more and more miserable and in extreme cases depressed and anything but self motivational. When you look at it they are only minor set backs which often can be readily overcome. But if you keep up such negative inner talk or surround yourself with people who exaggerate negativity it will begin to take its toll on your mindset.
Ask yourself this ” Does over emphasising the negative nature of a situation put you in the right frame of mind to overcome it?” Hopefully you answered “No!”. But for some people it has become a way of life to look at the world in as negative frame of mind as possible and worse still express it in extremely negative terms. What happened in Haiti recently was a disaster, missing your favourite football team is no more than an inconvenience to which you should be no more than peeved. There’s a great word to have in your vocabulary which will send the signal to your brain that it is anything but a disaster and you can overcome it or at least cope with it. If you realise that stress is not caused by external factors but by how you react to them you can see that your mental health depends a lot on the language you use and listen to regularly.
So what can you do if you want to be self motivational? First you must look to the language you use yourself. When you find yourself reacting to a negative situation, stop and think and say to yourself in the scale of things how does this compare to a real disaste (Haiti or whichever one you want to use as your yardstick) and say how bad do I feel this situation really is? In most cases it is a minor mishap not a catastrophe. So curb your desire to use hyperbole to describe a negative situation. Secondly listen for others using extreme language to make matters worse and ask them “do you really think the situation is that bad?”. You will help them to become more self motivational by challenging their thinking this way. If you find that some people do not respond positively to this challenging then perhaps its best not to spend too much time in their company. If you would like some further help in being more self motivational take a look at my favourite book list.

Technorati Tags: , ,

admin

Post Comment

Self Motivational and Self Image

Posted on January 30th, 2010 by admin in self motivational


The great thing about self motivational people is that they are not burdened by what other people think of them. That’s not because they are arrogant or conceited they just don’t let it make them feel less of themselves or on the flipside inflate their ego. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling; self motivational people can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same. It’s about staying on the level regardless of what people say or think about you. Especially what we think others think about us as very often we don’t have a very accurate view of this.

The main reason we often worry about what others think of us is that we crave their approval. Why might we be so dependent on others approval to make us feel good about ourselves? For many of us this behaviour pattern is instilled at a very early age. When children misbehave their parents often chastise them and tell them they are a bad boy/girl. If this is done relentlessly then the child begins to believe they are inherently bad or there is something wrong with them and that their parents don’t love them. If you are a parent of young children make sure that you highlight their bad behaviour not that they are bad. In this way you can direct their behaviour but leave their self esteem intact. Research has found that up to the age of 6 or 7 years a child will accept the opinion of any authority figure as being fact and will begin to form their character as a result. As William Wordsworth said “the child is father of the man”. The problem is further confounded when a child does something well and is given high praise and told they are a good boy/girl. Often they don’t understand why they are now inherently good but it makes them feel good about themselves. From then on they know they feel good when others think well of them and they become almost addicted to the situation. Thus they crave approval even if they are not sure how they go about getting that approval. As we grow up we begin to work out what get approval and what doesn’t though we are not always completely accurate in our analysis. It becomes even more complicated when others have different expectations of us and give approval for different behaviours. This then becomes a barrier to us being self motivational.

As a result we develop a belief that what makes us ‘good enough’ is what others think about us. We then become a puppet on a string to be led one way then another by what we think people will think of us. So how can we alter that belief? The first thing to realise that it is not based on reality it is just our map of the world and that we can change that map. One of the ways of changing belief patterns and becoming more self motivational is to use positive affirmations. These can be used by writing them down a number of times or saying them out loud especially while looking into a mirror. My favourite affirmation to use in this context is “What I think of myself is much more important than what others think of me”. If used often enough you hard wire this new belief pattern into your brain which in turn cuts those strings allowing you to be self motivational. For more ideas take a look at my self motivational booklist.

Technorati Tags: , ,

admin

Post Comment

How to Motivate Yourself

Posted on October 20th, 2009 by admin in Self Techniques

The simple answer to how to motivate yourself is to decide what you want, decide what is the price you have to pay to achieve it, then accept that you have to pay that price. A simple answer but not an easy solution. However in essence that is what you need to do if you are going to motivate your self and be the success you want to be. However when I say this to my coaching clients it usually strikes fear into their hearts. I often say that is not a problem. If you want to know how to motivate yourself fear can be a useful ally. Fear can often drive us to use our inner resources more effectively and achieve more than if we sit cosily in our comfort zone.

How can you use fear to motivate yourself rather than create a state of paralysis? If you are scared of heights then the worse thing you can do is to look down. To motivate yourself you look straight ahead, appreciate the view and focus on where you want to go not on where you don’t want to go. Many people have a fear of failure which is nothing to do with falling and ultimately dying. It is often just a fear of being embarrassed when they don’t succeed at something. Therefore if they want to try and achieve something, they keep it to themselves and don’t tell anyone. Thus if they don’t succeed it doesn’t matter nobody ne they were trying. Two points here. One is if they were only “trying” it was unlikely they would succeed. The second point is by not being accountable to anyone they didn’t need worry about trying very hard. So make this fear work for you, declare to others what you intend to achieve and that will drive you make sure you take the appropriate actions. However make sure you declare your intentions only to those who are likely to support and not those who would seek to undermine you.

Very often when we are not sure how to motivate ourselves it is because we see only the barriers in our way to achiving what we desire. In this situation we must go back to the goal we want to achieve and ensure that we are clearly focused on its meaning and what the achievement of it will look like. Remember obstacles are what you see when you take your eye off your goal. If you want any more ideas on how to motivate yourself take a look at my self motivational booklist.

Technorati Tags:

admin

Post Comment