Twenty Ways to Get Mentally Tough September 20, 2011

Leadership Moments

 

Twenty Ways to Get Mentally Tough

 

From: Gordon, J. (2009).  Training camp: what the best do better than everyone else: a fable about excellence .  Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.   When you face a setback, think of it as a defining moment that will lead to a future accomplishment. When you encounter adversity, remember the best don’t just face adversity; they embrace it, knowing it’s not a dead end but a detour to something greater and better. When you face negative people, know that the key to life is to stay positive in the face of negativity, not in the absence of it. When you face naysayers, remember the people who believed in you and spoke positive words to you. When you face critics, remember to tune them out and focus only on being the best you can be. When you wake up in the morning, take a morning walk of gratitude and prayer. When you fear, trust.  Let your faith be greater than your doubt. When you fail, find the lesson in it, and then recognize a time when you have succeeded. When you head into battle, visualize success. When you are thinking about the past or worrying about the future, instead, focus on the present moment. When you want to complain, instead identify a solution. When your own self-doubt crowds your mind, weed it, and replace it with positive thoughts and positive self-talk. When you feel distracted, focus on your breathing, observe your surroundings clear your mind and get into the Zone. When you feel all is impossible, know that all things are possible. When you feel alone, think of all the people who have helped you along the way and who love and support you now. When you feel lost, pray for guidance. When you are tired and drained, remember to never, never, never give up. When you feel like you can’t do it, know that you can. When you feel like your situation is beyond your control, pray and surrender. When you’re in a high pressure situation in the game is on the line, and everyone is watching you, remember to smile, have fun and enjoy it. Training Camp is available from the OSU Leadership Center.  Click here to borrow this resource or any other resource.  then click on the Spectrum icon.    Learn how the Ohio State University Leadership Center is inspiring others to take a leadership role that empowers the world at To begin receiving Leadership Moments, or to update your information, please click on the Join Our Mailing List button.

15 Ways To Get And Keep Yourself Motivated January 12, 2010

My personal 15 favorites from a list of 33 that can be found here http://tinyurl.com/yc4nbsh

1. Read Success Stories

Like in other people success stories. Get inspired. Admire them (with caution, but do admire them). Reading about success will make it more available to you and will fuel your efforts towards its achievement. And of course, you can learn how to be successful too.

2. Look For Positive People

Sadness, whining and complaining doesn’t play well with motivation. Positive, optimistic, energetic people will always shift your vibration in the right direction. Search them, find them and become their friend. Sometimes all you need to get motivated is to be surrounded by shiny happy people

3. Avoid Energy Vampires

Naysayers, pessimists, braggers they all are sucking up your energy. Don’t get caught in such power games, avoid at all costs those energy leaks, even if that means you’ll isolate more often. It’s better to do work in your own secluded realm than to try to resist to a diminishing environment

4. Laugh More Often

Watch comedies, read comics. Throw away that ugly seriousness from your face. Laughing is a safety valve for your stress relief mechanism. It actually let it out from your body in bursts. And while you’re laughing you can still learn new stuff, like personal development lessons from Dumbo.

5. Spend Time Outside

If you can do something creative, like gardening or landscaping, even better. But it’s ok even if you don’t. Spending time outside of your box will clear the air inside. When you get back, everything will be fresher and shinier. And something fresher is always a nice motivator.

6. Exercise

This is one the easiest and simplest way to get motivated. Just walk out from the office, start doing some pushups or just go for a short run around the house. It will instantly declutter your physical body. Every time you exercise, you produce endorphins. Endorphins are good.

7. Understand What Makes You Bored

And avoid it. Boredom is a nasty place to be. But as any other state of your being can be understood and you can identify the triggers. Once you understand that, you can safely go away from the gray zone. Takes some time but it really worth the effort.

8. Switch Tasks

You will get bored if you work on the same projects for too long. Boredom kills motivation. Try having several small projects that you can land on whenever you feel you’re on the verge of a burn out. Not to mention that switching tasks will instantly create fresh perspectives, helping you solve problems faster.

9. Keep A Log Of Your Breakthroughs

Do you remember when you had the first major success of your life? I thought so. We tend to overlook this simple habit of writing down our feelings every time we have a major breakthrough in our lives. Keep a log of your successes. And get inspired by it.

10. Create A Custom Environment

You can’t be motivated if you work in an environment which does not represent you. Make changes, adjust, improve. Doesn’t matter if it’s about your job office or your home. Whatever the space you work in, make it yours somehow, that will lower your unconscious adaptation efforts and you’ll have more time dedicated to the actual tasks.

11. Don’t Aim For Perfection

It will soon drain you out. Aiming to be better is the real game. Perfection is a dead end, nothing really  happens after you reached to it. Accepting that you can be better instead of perfect leaves some room for growth. And that means you have a reason to do more. And that’s what we usually call motivation, right?

12. Keep A Source Of Inspiring Readings

You’re not always completely down, most of the time you’re just averagish, just one sentence away from your best shape. Be sure to keep around a list of inspiring readings. Quotes, blog posts, ebooks, whatever works for you.

13. Put On Some Good Music

Just let it there, floating around, don’t turn the volume knob. Just enough to recreate a pleasant atmosphere. Music speaks to areas you can’t control with logical tools, yet is so powerful that can completely shift your mood in a second. The only thing better than silence is good music.

14. Accept Failure

As part of the game. Failure, like success, is just a result of your actions, nothing more. One of the biggest motivation enemies is fear of failure. Fear that your outcome will turn bad. Accept it. It may turn bad, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop doing what you’re doing. Give your best and hope for the best.

15. Create Personal Challenges

Personal challenges are short term goals, usually from 15 to 90 days. Like starting to exercise, or creating a habit from scratch in 15 days. Using personal challenges strengthen your inner power the same way exercising is strengthening your muscles. The more you do, the more motivated you feel to do even more.

Basic Principles of Motivation January 4, 2010

From the book,  ”Leadership: the inner side of greatness: a philosophy for leaders”

1.      People can motivate only themselves.

2.      True motivation arises from a sense of pride, honor, self-esteem, and self-worth.

3.      The sense of pride can be enhanced through love.

4.      People are motivated when they are noticed and heard.

5.      Acknowledgement must truly mean something.

6.      Compensation, in the business culture, is a sign of realistic acknowledgement.

7.      A powerful motivational tool is faith in one’s subordinates.

8.      You must develop your people, give them added value, make them better human beings, and make them more marketable.

9.      You must model, in every way, the authentic leader and worker in yourself.

10. There is a hard side to motivation: limits and expectations are inflexible.

11. Greed is never an authentic source of motivation.

12. Security is not a legitimate motivator, for it diminishes life.

13. Growth is a legitimate source of motivation, for growth is the nature of life itself.

14. You must announce that you will always distinguish clearly and sharply between good work and bad, and you must not be afraid to make decisions accordingly.