This is the first installment in a series titled “5 Ways to Live the Life You Were Meant To.” The series will run over the next 3 days on 5 different blogs run by some of my favorite bloggers. I’m honored to have been asked to write the first installment of this series.
- Part One: Get Motivated by Joel Runyon [You’re Reading It!]
- Part Two: Be Your Own Boss by Eric Pratum
- Part Three: Living The Dream by Mark Lawrence
- Part Four: How to Build Your Community by David Crandall
- Part Five: Find The Company That Lets You Be You by Srini Rao
How To Get Motivated
Table of Contents
If you want to live the life you were meant to you have to get motivated to make it happen. It’s not a option. Your ideal life won’t just fall into your life and nobody will just hand it over to you. If you want to live it, you’re going to have to fight for it and in order to win, you’re going to have to be motivated.
Now before we go any further, I want to say that I get a little on-edge when people talk about motivation. Motivational talks always seem to be intertwined with the idea of self-help. While I get the idea of self help niche, I don’t consider myself a self-help guy. Just the words “self-help” bring up images in my mind of people standing up at conferences, getting in circles, patting each other on the back, complete with a lot of rah rah rah’s and “you can do it” speeches.
The reason I think it makes me uneasy because a lot of motivation talk centers around just that. Talk. Everybody talks and talks and talks and it only leads to actual action a small percentage of the time. Most of the people just head home and don’t do anything different. Motivational talk is needed…sometimes, but I think motivational action is more necessary.
Motivational Action
I’m partial to action over words and in my experience, motivational action often works much better than just words. Just take a look at:
- Patrick walking across the US to raise money for childhood obesity
- Roe spending two weeks helping rebuild Haiti
- Chris raising money for clean water in Ethiopia
When you see someone doing something extraordinary, you can’t help but want to do something similar. Action creates a motivational drive that words can only attempt to capture. However, just watching motivating people has the same downfall that listening to motivational speakers does. It can just stop there. Watching inspiring people do inspiring things is a start, but if it stops there, the end result is still nothing. You still have to do something…
Do One Thing
Do one thing. Do one small thing. One teeny tiny thing. I don’t really care what it is, but sometimes the best way to get motivated is to do something. Anything. It doesn’t have to be a quit your job, sell your car, move to Antarctica and live with penguins type action. It can be any number of small life stretches, but you have to start somewhere, and you have to do something.
The Snowball Effect of Motivation
The thing about motivation is it gets easier over time. Once you make one change, no matter how small it is, it becomes easier to make the next change, and the next change and the next change, and so on…You begin to see improvements and the benefits of change and it motivates you to do more and keep going.
Once I did a sprint distance triathlon, the olympic distance race didn’t seem so hard. Once I did a 10k, the half marathon didn’t seem so daunting. When I finished the half-marathon and didn’t die, the idea of running a full marathon sometime next year doesn’t seem so impossible.
Like a snowball, the motivation builds and builds and builds until it becomes it’s own force to be reckoned with. And, like a snowball, once you get started, the momentum of your decisions begins to carry you.
For a long time, I waited for things to happen:
- Instead of creating my own job position, I sent my resume through Monster and CareerBuilder and hoped someone would pick it out of a pile of similar sized white pieces of paper.
- Instead of seeking out races and competitions, I thought back to the days of high school and college when all the games and matches were scheduled for us.
- Instead of writing my own blog and living my own amazing story, I read other people’s stories and wished I had a story as interesting as theirs.
The whole time I was waiting, I did nothing. And guess what happened? Nothing. After all, inaction breeds inaction. After getting tired of wishing and waiting, I slowly began to try things on my own, my motivational snowball began to grow and I began down my own path.
The Truth
If you want to make a change in your life, it’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. If you want to live the life you were meant to, you can. But, if you’re going to do it, you have to want it, AND you have to take action towards it. The change might not take place immediately, but it all starts with one step.
Want to live the life you were meant to?
Throw everything aside and take one step towards it today. You might just start your own snowball.
[Photo by Izzard]This was the first part of a 5 part series on living the life you were meant to live. See the rest of the series on the following blogs and be sure to check back as I’ll be updating the links as they’re posted.
- Part One: Get Motivated by Joel Runyon [You Just Read It!]
- Part Two: Be Your Own Boss by Eric Pratum
- Part Three: Living The Dream by Mark Lawrence
- Part Four: How to Build Your Community by David Crandall
- Part Five: Find The Company That Lets You Be You by Srini Rao
You can also see the entire 5 part series together here.
Great post, Joel. This is one of the main things that people do not often understand. You have to start somewhere. You might not know if that thing is actually what you want to do, but how can you know until you try it? And once you get the ball rolling, it’s much easier to keep it going, so with like you with triathlons, most people only need to get themselves over the first little bumps in the road to see that the next hill really isn’t as big as they thought.
And, like I commented on David’s blog a while back, when you’re at the bottom of the hill, you only see how big it is. When you’ve gotten to the top, you see how far you’ve come, how much easier it was than you thought it’d be, and how little all of the rest of the challenges seem from there.
Great post, man!
I like that quote a lot Eric. The hills usually are a lot smaller and a lot more fun to conquer than we realize.
That snowball effect is so powerful Joel. I have used it to build momentum with running & healthy eating. s you said, just start by doing something, however small!
It’s amazing what one small action can create. Thanks for stopping by Jen 🙂
What’s your take on telling other people about your goals? Have you ever announced a goal to your friends with the idea that they’re now going to hold you accountable?
I’m wondering if that would count as a “small step” since you’re not actually pushing the needle. It’s still just talk.
At the same time, you’ve created an inner circle of sorts, a group of people that will theoretically keep you on course if you start slipping.
I announce a lot of goals on the site. Sometimes its the only way to actually make myself do some of them!
Announcing a goal, signing up for a race (or committing yourself to something), or giving yourself a deadline are all small steps. Depending on how well your friends keep you accountable, you might need something more actionable than just talking.
Maybe you want to run a marathon. Run 1 mile first. That’s a small step, but over time, you can increase the distance and eventually you’ll run a marathon.
Does that help?
Good word Joel. “Inaction breeds inaction.” That is so true, and what we have to overcome is the inertia of staying in the same state that we are in. I have actually found more motivation to do things AFTER I started taking action.
I find the exact same thing. After a while, stepping out of your comfort zone and doing things becomes natural.
The snowball effect will get you there if you take the first action. Each action builds on itself. When something seems insurmountable or scary impossible, taking small steps to get there is key. Right now, the project I’m working on is an incredible amount of work. Starting a company isn’t easy. Taking small actionable steps and building off each one is helping pave the way.
That first action is key. It won’t “just happen.” Those small actionable steps over time turn into something great. Good luck with the company!
I love this –> ” if you’re going to [live the life you were meant to], you have to want it, AND you have to take action towards it.”
I see too many people hoping that their current inaction will lead to some dream life, as if they thought they could steer a parked car. Taking action really is the only way to get from where you are to where you want to be.
But yes, you are right in that it IS hard. If it wasn’t, you’d already have it. I think this one reason is the one that prevents people from having fuller lives. It’s hard. And let’s face it, most people would rather be lazy and bitch about not having the ideal life instead of getting to work to create it.
Much harder to build snowballs…but so much more rewarding. And the truth is, like you said, once you start doing small little things they build upon each other and are much easier than you’d think.
Building snowballs is rewarding…and you’re right…a lot of people think they can just jump in car and it’s going to take them to paradise as long as read Tim Ferriss’ blog (which I love btw). It takes hard work and effort and won’t always be rainbows & unicorns (unfortunately), but it is so much more rewarding to build snowballs than complain.
[so many analogies in this comment :)]
Joel,
First off, I am greatly humbled to be mentioned in such a phenomenal article. Thank you for that…
This article is exactly what needs to be read by so many people out there I cannot tell you. We all hear time and again people wanting to accomplish things from the mundane to the extraordinary, but find the success dwindle with just a thought.
It’s all about just getting after it. Dream up the idea, vision, goal or whatever it is and then simply take strides forward towards making it happen. The snowball effect is so very real brother! You’re doing great things here and I love reading them all…
Peace and Love,
Patrick Hitches
Thanks for stopping by Patrick. Glad to have you in the post. You’re doing great things out there. Keep walking the walk man.
“You have to start somewhere” So true. I have way too many interests and projects going on at once for my own good, so sometimes I let myself get overwhelmed.
But, you know what? If I just commit to taking one step – to taking one action – even if it’s a small one, then I find that the sense of accomplishment spurs me on to continue.
Just last night, I had myself scheduled to run a 9 miler. I was dreading it, so I told myself that I would just get my ass out the door and that if I wasn’t “feeling” the distance, I’d quit at 3 or 4 miles. Well, after 3 or 4 miles, I suddenly felt like I COULD go the distance.
I ended up going 9.5. 🙂
That exactly how I felt with the half marathon. I didn’t think I could even run one, but once I started, there wasn’t anyway I was NOT going to finish.
I don’t know where I read it or who said it. Somewhere I read that we underestimate what we can do in a year and overestimate what we can do in a day. As a result we do nothing. To your point, momentum kicks and believe me I’m seeing the results of my efforts now, even though I started them a year ago. One of my interviewees said that what starts as a snowball will eventually turn into an avalanche.
I heard that in one of your blogcast.fm interviews and it’s been floating around in my mind since. Now I’m just waiting for that avalanche to hit :).
Nice post Joel – I’ll keep this comment short as I need to take some action on stuff now!
I guess the key is to get the balance right, between thinking/reading/taking, and taking ACTION. The optimum blend produces the best results.
A friend emailed me yesterday and said he was determined to start losing weight in the new year. I shot an email back saying – START NOW!
There’s no time like the present.
There’s a quote I’ve seen a few times:
I agree Joel….Taking a small step towards a goal usually leads to far greater success down the line to bigger and brighter things.
Once I realized that I couldn’t become the end all be all to the world, I began to actually accomplish things.
Great post!
David Damron
LifeExcursion
An empire is built one brick at a time. Thanks for stopping by David 🙂
Joel this is good-I (not so long ago) would think about doing things and talk about doing things, but never made it happen. Often times doing one thing–albeit small is the hardest part–but then you realize it was never really all that hard. And the part about making things happen instead of waiting for them to happen–well, that is just what I needed to hear these days 🙂
Thanks Samantha. Glad it helped!
This post made me think about the movie “What About Bob?” in the scenes where he is trying to overcome his phobias and is taking baby steps. He takes baby steps to get into the elevator, baby steps to get onto the bus. I think for the most part this idea of taking small steps is a great approach to taking action because it helps to reduce the stress and the pain and the fear that often accompany our goals.
haha, that’s a great (and very literal) example of taking a bunch of small steps in order to get where you want to go (in this case, the bus) 🙂
Timely for me. I have been blogging a while under a pen name and recently decided to “own my words.” Its a bit intimidating I have to admit but I am encouraged.
It’ll be interesting to see how you approach writing as yourself versus under a pen name. Let me know how it goes!