انگیزه

079 - Motivation

Hello there, Kevin here, with another episode of the feel good English podcast. How are you?

Coming to the closing of 2016. I hope this was a prosperous year for you, and if it wasn’t prosperous, at least I hope that you learned something valuable.

If you are a listener to the feel good English podcast, you probably have learned at least one thing that is valuable, I hope so anyway.

So, I wanted to leave you with a few episodes at the end of this year that give you some of the most important lessons over this year. Well, when I say most important, maybe they aren’t the most important for you, but these are the lessons from specific episodes, that I kept referring back to in my life, and ones that really seemed to help me out.

I also think they can help you out in your mission to become more fluent in life and more fluent in English. So, I’m gonna go over a few of these lessons, specific lessons, chosen from some of the episodes over the year, and today specifically, will be on motivation. How to stay motivated, how to find motivation, because without motivation, even the biggest goals, the best ideas, the best and most expensive courses, will fall flat, meaning they will die, they won’t be successful. If something falls flat, it means it wasn’t a success.

Motivation

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So motivation is key, how do we stay motivated, where do we find motivation in our lives, so we can wake up in the morning energized, excited and focused on our goals that we set for ourselves. I have four lessons from four different episodes.

Let me remind you, if you want transcripts to this and other feel good English podcast episodes, go to feelgoodenglish.com and learn how you can get transcripts. You can get transcripts to every episode or you can just get twenty transcripts, or you can even get some free transcripts. So if you don’t have any transcripts you want to learn from these lessons more deeply go to feelgoodenglish.com after the episode.

And now, without further delay, let’s get into this episode on the best ways to stay motivated.

So the beginning of the year is coming, 2017. For many of you, including myself, I will come up with some new goals, come up with events, create some new goals for the year. I’ll probably decide on some goals that I will want to accomplish by the end of the year, and ones that I’ll want to accomplish six months from then even goals I want to accomplish in the short term, like in a month.

And these will all be based on what my long term vision is. Often when we set goals, after a month or two, we lose all motivation and desire to keep working on what we need to achieve those goals.

We get lost in what we’re supposed to do, we get stuck, we don’t feel like doing anything else, we’re stuck in the same place, and in general we get unmotivated.

Going back to the beginning of the Feel Good English podcast, I talked about the seven habits of highly effective people by Steven Covey. One of the best books I’ve ever read, one of the best selfdevelopment books that you can probably read.

One of the habits of the seven, is about the beginning of the end in mind. Begin with the end in mind means that when you set a goal, or you set off on a journey to do something, you should have your end result as your target. You should know why you’re doing, what you’re doing. You need purpose behind your goals.

Always ask yourself, why am I doing this. Why am I studying English, why am I practising English, why am I listening to the feel good English podcast, why am I learning these lessons about life, and business.

Well hopefully, you have a goal in the end, it could simply be to be a fluent English speaker. So in a year or two from now, you want to be a confident English speaker. And why are you doing that? Well, because you want to get a better job, you want to travel, you want to make more money for your family. These are all the end goals, you’re working towards something that will take time, but in the end the result is there. So all of this effort and money and time that you’re putting in, is leading you to the big end goal that you’re striving to achieve, striving is a verb, striving means to put a lot of effort in, you put a lot of energy and effort to work hard toward something. So you’re striving towards a big goal.

So if you find yourself losing motivation, losing desire to make things happen, you are just sitting around, wasting time more than you were than when you originally established your goal. Ask yourself again, why do I need to be doing, what I know I should be doing.

Why do I need to be practising English more, why do I need to be online speaking with native speakers, practising this, listening to English every day. Why do I need to be doing this, what is my long term goal, where do I want to be in six months from now? Or in one year from now, or in five years from now.

So make sure you are focused on the end result. What if you don’t know exactly what you want in the future. Maybe you don’t have a big dream, maybe you’re doing this for fun, as a hobby, well that’s fine too. But you can also look at with a specific activity.

You start reading an article, even if you don’t have some big English fluency goal you’re doing it for a reason, you want to gain the information from that article, so ask yourself, why am I reading this, what is the end result? In ten minutes from now, what do I want to have happened from this?

What do I want to have happened, that’s an interesting tense, right? Future present perfect. What do I want to have happened, cool huh?

If you are like me, and I’ve talked about this story before, in the past for sure, learning a language when I was growing up, I felt stupid, I felt incompetent meaning not capable of doing something, that I was a bad language learner.

I kept moving forward, I kept trying for some reason, until college, then I gave up, but I always felt like an idiot. We are raised as children in society, to think that we are either good at something, or bad. Often times, parents and teachers say, wow Johnny’s really good at this, he’s not very good at this, but he’s good at this other thing, so we should focus on that.

Or you’re not good at this so we shouldn’t even give you our attention on this activity because you’re not going to be very good at it, so let’s, let’s forget about it.

This is called a fixed mindset. We believe that we are either born with certain skills, we’re born with intelligence or we are not. This is very destructive.

And in the book, “Mindset” by Carol Dweck, an extremely important book by the way, she talks about something called a growth mindset. Through many years of research Carol Dweck has discovered that we can develop skills in any area if we put in the necessary work, and time, and effort.

She has even seen that our brains can expand and grow, their brain cells can grow by putting in deliberate focused practice on specific activity. So no, if a child isn’t good at something, it doesn’t mean that they were born bad at that, it just means they need to spend more time, bit more focus, bit more attention, and learn to enjoy the process of learning.

And learn to enjoy challenges, and learn, that if they’re struggling with something, if it’s difficult, that is the stage in which they’re improving, in which, in which they are growing.

There’s another great book, “The Art of Learning” by Josh Waitzkin, that I’ve talked about in another episode, that goes deeper into how to practise deliberately, how to learn things, in a very strategic manner.

And if you do this, you can become good at anything, your children can too. It’s very important to teach your children, that they need to feel uncomfortable, they need to struggle sometimes at a new activity, in a new subject, if they want to improve in that area.

When children, or you as an English learner, are feeling uncomfortable, are feeling stressed out of your comfort zone, know that, that is a very clear sign that you are improving. So embrace those feelings. Embrace means to accept. To hold, literally, to hug.

So embrace those feelings and uncomfortableness. Know that’s where you are, growing.

And if you find yourself trying to do this, but you’re still not working, you’re studying English, you’re putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, you have a teacher that makes you feel nervous, whatever. If it’s still not working, then change the process. Maybe you’re doing the process incorrectly, maybe you need to experiment with another way of doing things, another means of learning.

So know that, if you focus on an activity, on an area, and you practice in that activity, deliberately and consistently, you too can become great. And your children, also can learn anything. So don’t make them feel that they are inferior.

Feeling completely unmotivated at your current job, do you hate your job, do you go to work totally depressed, unmotivated, discouraged, bored?

In the book, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, by Hal Newport, it gives you a completely different approach, to dealing with these situations.

If you really don’t enjoy something that you’re doing, instead of giving up or quitting, changing your job, just leaving and trying to find that perfect job, take a different mindset. Try to get really, really good at, what you’re doing, become an expert, become the best at your job.

Focus on the skills that you need to use, get really good at interpersonal skills, communicating with other people at your company. Or maybe this is school, we’re bored. Or university, get really, really good at what you’re doing. Become an expert.

Getting better at what we do, increases our satisfaction and our motivation. Often times, people don’t like what they’re doing, so they just leave and they end up in another job they don’t like. Try to do the best you can see how that changes your mood, and changes your motivation.

If you’re connecting with us right now, I want you to take a totally different approach tomorrow at work or school and I want you to focus on every moment, every task that you’re doing, and put in one hundred percent of your effort and attention into that task. Try to do it, as good as you possibly can, and see how that changes your mood.

If it’s not possible to perform better at work, maybe you’re stuck at a job that doesn’t allow you to be better. Maybe you’re an absolute excellent expert ninja at what you’re doing, then it’s time to find something else. So make sure there’s room for growth at your work, and at your school. And I would imagine there is, unless you are a ninja. If you are a ninja, how’re you doing out there ninja?

Thanks for listening to the feel good English podcast.

The last motivational tip here, is pretty straight forward, meaning it’s pretty straight to the point, direct. If you’re feeling unmotivated, tired, you don’t have a lot of energy, you find yourself on the couch, on the sofa, a lot more watching T.V.

Thinking about all the things that you need to be doing and not doing them, you should be listening to a podcast in English. You should be, you should be practicing online with somebody, speaking English, but you’re doing nothing, except watching a movie with subtitles in your own language, thinking that you’re doing something in English, which you’re not, well, you need to energise your body.

Our minds and bodies are totally, completely, connected. One cannot function very well, without the other. Even if we are motivated in the beginning by money or career success or a new job, whatever that may be. Then we just sit and work for hours and hours and years and years and get fat. Eventually we won’t have any energy left in us, to do the job we work so hard to get.

Sometimes we think we can think, and work, and act our way through all problems but we need that natural energy, bodies can give us and we get this through exercise.

Taking a walk, running around the neighbourhood, going to the gym. Obviously you know what exercise is. This is an excellent and almost necessary way to stay motivated.

And if you want to double your benefits here, then go for a walk, go for a run and listen to a podcast.

Listen to the Feel Good English podcast, listen to an audiobook.

So if you think about it, if you got a new audiobook that’s ten hours, that’s ten one hour workouts. Pretty motivating, you can get through a whole book in two weeks or three weeks, or ten workouts, check it out, audiobooks are great.

But don’t push exercise out of your life, make it a priority. Make it a priority in your life, so everything else will work better too.

Don’t have time you say, for exercise. Yes you do. Even a five minute exercise, what I often do is the seven minute workout, which you can find online, on your phone. Seven minute workout, it takes how long? Seven minutes. If you don’t have seven minutes, well then, I don’t know what to tell you. That’s rough.

I hope you enjoyed these four tips on motivation. Help you stay motivated this next year.

Going back through them real quickly. Number one, remember begin with the end in mind, make sure there’s a purpose behind what you’re doing. Why am I doing this, what do I want in the end.

It could be a daily purpose, monthly purpose.

Number two, know that any of us can become great at something if we put the time and effort into that. If we learn, how to learn, put deliberate and focused practice into something, we can become great too.Two, make sure you pass it onto your children as well. So if you’re feeling discouraged and stupid and your motivation is being robbed from you, meaning stolen from you, because you feel that you’re never gonna accomplish your goals, just know that you can do it, if you put in the right effort. Your brain will make it work for you.

Number three, if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, if you’re losing motivation at work, or at your school, or wherever that may be.

Instead of getting up, quitting, finding another job, looking for somebody else to make it great for you, take responsibility and become great at what you’re doing. Become the best at your office, become an expert, become better than your boss. Put all of your efforts and focus onto each activity, each day, each week, and see how that changes your motivation. If you like this idea, read the book, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”. I would also recommend reading books and studying a little about mindfulness, mindfulness is putting your complete attention onto what you are doing.

Very powerful.

And lastly, if you’re tired, lack of energy, which consequently is taking away your motivation, exercise, make sure you’re exercising at least a little bit every day, even if it’s five minutes. Try to get a good workout a few days a week. After you do this for a couple of weeks, you’ll notice how everything becomes easier. Your energy’s better, your mood is better, you’re happier and in the end, you’re motivated.

One of the best things you can do, listen to good quality content, positive content while exercising, so you can kill two birds with one stone. Isn’t that a great expression? Kill two birds with one stone.

Accomplish two goals by doing just one activity. Next time I will have some lessons on business, some of the best business lessons I have learned this year. So be waiting for that, but don’t wait too much, instead go back to this episode, listen to it many times. Study deeply, get the transcript at feelgoodenglish.com.

Before I leave you, here is a wonderful joke.

“Your mama is so lazy, she has stay at home job and she’s still can’t get to work on time.”

Your mama.

See you in the next episode.