MOTIVATION AND YOUR NEW YEAR

Here we go again! A new year. And has someone already asked you that question? You know the question: “What are your New Year Resolutions?” Well, it’s that time of the year when tradition requires that we think about our goals and about what will be different this year, and about what New Year Resolutions you will make and set ... and probably break ... this year. We do this every year. So here we go again.

As you now consider this, how motivated are you this year to set your goals for this new year so it will not just be the next year and just more of the same? Motivated? Now really. Yes, I know that this will irritate a lot of people. It will annoy others. And it will also invite many others to roll their eyes. If that includes you, well, welcome to the club!

So what’s the problem? Truth be told, I don’t think it is motivation or that it has anything to do with motivation. Instead, here’s how I think about the problem:

1) Either people do not know how to set goals in a way that’s well-designed and therefore actually achievable goals.

2) Or once people set goals they do not know how to actualize those goals and translate them from mind to neurology. They lack the mind-to-muscle process for closing the knowing—doing gap.

3) Or, once actualized, they do not know how to sustain their long-term goals and so, turning their attention elsewhere, let them go.

In Neuro-Semantics we use an advanced form of the Well-Formed Outcome pattern. It is a Precision Funnel with 18 Well-Formed Outcome Questions along with four-sets of Refining questions. This handles the first problem. If you need a Meta-Coach to facilitate that, there are now 1900 Meta-Coaches in 42 countries who can do that. Call on one of them.

For the second problem, this is solved by the Mind-to-Muscle pattern— a pattern specifically designed to take what you know and translate it into what you feel. And by doing that, you can actualize your well-designed goals. The book, Achieving Peak Performance (2009) is a whole book on that subject.

The third problem is solved by the “Genius” or Flow state that we train in APG as part of the way we teach the Meta-States Model and how to create highly focused states of absolute engagement. For that you might need your initial state that corresponds to your immediate goal, and then a genius state of persistence, one of resilience, one of patience, and one of perseverance.

Yet in all of this, none of it is actually the lack of motivation. Yes, I know that people world- wide complain about this all the time. “I have a motivation problem,” they say. They think

about a goal or a New Years resolution and they confuse that with a feeling, or rather the lack of a feeling. Then they designate it as “lack of motivation.” We all hear that complaint and you may have been given to making it yourself. The problem is that you might then actually believe it. You might actually think that your problem is the lack of motivation.

“I just do not feel motivated ...” “I want to be motivated to exercise or lose weight or study or go for that job, but I just don’t have the motivation.”

Not only does this misdirect a person’s attention and seemingly gives one a “legitimate” excuse, but it also sets up a false premise about human nature. The truth is that you are motivated. Everyone is. You and I were born motivated and are, by nature, motivated beings. That’s because our life is dependent. It is conditional. The very nature of our life is such that we have driving needs and they are forever operational, even when you may not be aware of them. If you are a human being, motivation is included.

The question is not whether you are or are not motivated. The question goes to how you are handling your driving needs that are influencing and affecting your innate motivational nature. As an inherently motivated being, both your lower needs (survival, safety, social love and affection, self) and your higher needs (meaning, knowledge, justice, beauty, order, excellence, contribution, legacy, etc.) drive you. The lower needs drive you by deficiency. The higher needs drive you by abundance. The lower needs drive when there is lack and emptiness and go away when you satisfy them. The higher needs driven when there is desire, vision, and hope and the more you satisfy them, the more you are driven.

Further, all of these driving needs that create your sense of motivation is powerfully influenced by your frames of mind. And because of that— you and I have the power to strongly influence our motivational life. We can dampen it; we can amplify it. We can distort our needs so that they devastate us and become addictions and compulsions. Similarly we can also frame our needs so that they give us a lasting motivation that brings out our highest and best.

All of this is possible because “The meaning you give (to your driving needs) is the ‘instinct’ that you live.” Obviously, that’s why your neuro-semantic skills are so critical. These are your inherent human skills of meaning-making and these are the skills that we focus on in every Neuro-Semantic training to enable people to discover and develop. After all, you are a meaning- maker. It’s what you do. It’s what you have done since you were born and what you will do until the day of your death. You cannot do otherwise. That is not optional.

What is optional is the quality and character of the meanings that you make. That depends on your skills. That depends on your ability to learn how to make great meanings, to eliminate toxic meanings, and take control of all of your meaning-making processes. Do that and the future is yours! The New Year is yours.