Things you must do everyday | Abraham Hicks

Abraham recommends that we do these things every day... 
"The better you feel, the more you allow."
Why not give them a go, and let me know how you get on below?
Source

Fear of Success: What Will Happen if You Succeed? | Steve Pavlina

Sometimes you find yourself with a goal you think you should want to achieve, but you just don’t seem to be taking enough action to reach it. You aren’t really afraid of failure or rejection, the path to the goal seems clear enough and might even be an interesting challenge, and occasionally you’ll make some progress. But most of the time you can’t seem to get into that flow state, and you’re not sure why. This often happens with long-term goals that require intermittent action, like losing weight or transitioning to start a new business and eventually quit your job.

One question I’ve found helpful to ask in these situations is this: What will happen if you succeed? Forget about what you hope will happen or what you fear might happen, but realistically consider what probably will happen. So you achieve your goal. Then what? What else will change?

I’m not talking about giving a 5-second cursory answer, like “If I lose the weight, then I’ll be thin.” Set aside at least 15-30 minutes just to think about how your life will really change once you achieve your goal (with no TV, radio, or other distractions). There are often unexpected side effects that you may not be aware of consciously, but subconsciously they can be enough to prevent you from taking committed action. For example, if you lose a lot of weight, here are some possible side effects: people will notice and will comment about it, other people will ask you for diet advice, you may feel you need to continue with a permanent lifestyle change to maintain your new weight, you may need to buy new clothes, you may become more attractive to others and thereby attract more social encounters (wanted or unwanted), overweight friends might become jealous, your family may resist your changes, you may feel stressed about whether you can keep the weight off, you may worry about the loss of certain favorite foods from your diet, and so on.

It’s rare that a goal is all roses. Success requires change, and change has both positive and negative consequences. Often while people claim to want to succeed at something, the reality is that the negatives outweigh the positives for them. But one way to overcome this problem is to consciously think about what those negatives are, and then uproot them one by one. Uprooting a negative side effect could mean figuring out how to eliminate it completely, or it could mean just accepting it and learning to live with it.

It’s certainly helpful to focus on the positive side of a goal. But don’t forget to take an occasional survey of the dark side and accept that you’re going to have to deal with that too.
Unlike fear of failure and fear of rejection, fear of success can be far more insidious because it’s almost always unconscious. But it’s not fear of success itself that is the problem but rather fear of the side effects of success, many of which may be genuinely unwanted. Fears that are never evaluated consciously have a tendency to grow stronger. The reason is simple behavioral conditioning — when you avoid something you fear (either consciously or subconsciously), you automatically reinforce the avoidance behavior. So when you (even unknowingly) avoid working on your goal because of a hidden fear of success, you actually reinforce the habit of procrastination, so as time goes by, it becomes harder and harder to get yourself to take action. Insidious!

Asking, “What will happen if I succeed?” can solve this problem because it focuses your conscious attention on those fears. Fear has a tendency to shrink under direct examination, making it easier for you to take action. When I say that fear shrinks, another way of stating this is that subconscious behavioral conditioning weakens under conscious scrutiny. I know some people dislike the word “fear” with respect to their own behavior — don’t get hung up on the exact wording; call it “avoidance behavior” if that’s more to your liking.

But an additional benefit is that you can also devise intelligent work-arounds for those fears-made-conscious, some of which may indeed be valid signals of unsolved problems. For example, going back to the weight loss example, if you lose a lot of weight, you probably will need new clothes. And if you don’t have the money to buy new clothes, then that is a real problem you’ll need to address (unless you don’t mind wearing oversized outfits). Left unacknowledged, even a simple problem like this can be enough to subconsciously sabotage you from achieving your goal. But once you examine the situation consciously and figure out a way to deal with it in advance, you’re sending a message to your subconscious that you needn’t fear this problem because you have a practical way to solve it.

Now let’s consider the opposite side. Suppose you ask, “What will happen if I succeed?” and upon considering all the side effects, you realize that you don’t actually want to achieve the goal at all. The negatives outweigh the positives. I encountered this when I made a plan to grow my games business but didn’t seem to make as much progress as I wanted. When I asked this magic question, I realized that I didn’t really want to achieve the goal with all its side effects — what I really wanted was to transition to writing and speaking full time, and further building my games business would actually take me farther from that more important goal. Growing my games business seemed like a goal I should want, but when I really thought about where I’d be if I achieved that goal, I realized it wouldn’t be the success I truly wanted. That was a difficult realization for me… to recognize that my original ladder of success was now leaning against the wrong building. So I actually had to “unset” that goal once I really understood the likely consequences of achieving it.

Even now as I set goals in the direction of writing and speaking as my new career, I recognize that there are big side effects. I simply don’t have the mental bandwidth for two full-time careers. One of the hardest side effects for me was letting go of the goals and dreams I had for my games business. All those creative ideas for new games that will never be… and the would-be players who will never experience them…. But this is outweighed by what will happen as I succeed in my new career. To create a new game that challenges, entertains, and uplifts people is wonderful; however, being able to help people grow fulfills me even more. I found it a very enlightening process to review all these side effects and one by one to acknowledge that I accept them.

What will happen if you succeed? If you lose the weight… get the date… earn the promotion… start the business… get pregnant… quit smoking… become a millionaire… stretch yourself?

Source 

Best Advice Ever | Jim Rohn

(Starts at 15 seconds)

Jim Rohn (September 17, 1930 - December 5, 2009) was an American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker. His rags to riches story played a large part in his work, which influenced others in the personal development industry.

"Always do more than you get paid for, to make an investment in your future."
"If it's raining you can't fix the roof.  If it isn't raining, it doesn't need to be fixed."
"Review your performance."
"Face all your fears: that's how you can conquer them."
"Exercise your willpower to change your direction."
"Pick a new destination and start going that way."
"Use your willpower to start the process."
"Admit your mistakes!" 
"Refine your goals."
"Believe in yourself. There isn't a skill you can't learn..."
"Ask for wisdom ... that creates answers."
"Don't wish it was easier: wish you were better."
"Invest your profits."
"Protect your family.  These are troublesome times."
"Conserve your time."
"Live with intensity.  Invest more of you in whatever you do."
"Put everything you've got into everything you do, and then ask for more vitality, more strength and more vigour."
"Find your place... if you've got a lousy job, do the best you can: that is your best way out."
"If you work on your gifts they will make room for you, they will make a place for you."
"Demand integrity from yourself."
"Welcome the disciplines... Disciplines create the reality."
"Fight for what's right!" 
"I fought a good fight... and I kept the faith!"

Source

Courage is the Answer | Seve Pavlina

In the book Power vs. Force , Dr. David Hawkins describes a hierarchy of human emotional states beginning with shame and guilt on the low end and leading to peace and enlightenment on the high end.

Hawkins claims the lower emotional states weaken us, while the higher ones make us stronger. And the dividing line between strong and weak is the state of courage, which is the first positive state. Courage separates the lower energies of force, where we feel we are fighting life, from the higher energies of power, where we feel we are cooperating with life. 

As Hawkins writes:

[Courage] is the zone of exploration, accomplishment, fortitude, and determination. At the lower levels, the world is seen as hopeless, sad, frightening, or frustrating; but at the level of Courage, life is seen to be exciting, challenging, and stimulating. … Obstacles that defeat people whose consciousness is [lower] … act as stimulants to those who have evolved into the first level of true power. … This is where productivity begins.

Courage is the dividing line between weakness and strength of character. If you want to get past the situation where fear and anxiety run your life, you must eventually embrace the energy of courage. While it’s certainly not the highest evolutionary level available to you, it is the first positive rung as you work towards higher persistent states like reason, love, joy, and peace. At this level you see danger and risk, acknowledge it, and still take action in spite of it. This has the effect of shrinking the presence of fear in your life, such that you can grow into higher states where your needs are more easily met and fear simply becomes unnecessary. 

You realize that nothing out there is scary except to the degree that you make it so in your mind, and you learn to stop creating fear within yourself. Courage is the gateway in the sense that you must first learn to face down your fears, even as they still appear real to you. As long as you avoid them, you continue to weaken yourself. But face them and they dissolve.

Source 

High Earners Dilemma | Steve Pavlina

Many of my readers have skills they can apply to earn incomes that are far above average — if they desire to apply those skills for that purpose. A lot of them are programmers or engineers. Some know how to invest or trade stocks. Some are just really good poker players. These people can earn six-figure incomes (sometimes more) without much difficulty.

Many of these people aren’t earning anywhere near their potential. They know this. And for the most part they aren’t particularly concerned about that. Many have found that earning lots of money isn’t fulfilling.

Some of these people made plenty of money in the past. They explored what it was like to have most of their material desires satisfied and then some. They went through that phase of material abundance, and it was fun for a while, but it no longer means anything to them now.

Others in this group never bothered to make much money in the first place, even though they had the skills to do so. They aren’t motivated to bother. The financial gains don’t excite them.

I remember talking to a programmer who was only doing the minimum amount of work necessary to cover his basic expenses, not because he couldn’t earn more but because he didn’t care to make the extra effort. He told me that he used to earn $40K per month programming device drivers, and then he shrugged and said, “So what though… it’s just money.”

Sometimes these people go through a period of mild depression, feeling down on themselves for not doing more with their skills. Some feel they should be earning more. Others feel they should stretch themselves or contribute more, regardless of the money.

Occasionally these people find temporary pleasure in interesting projects. They may still like getting paid now and then. But they don’t feel much ambition to go any further.

There may be still be some growth on this path, but it’s modest. Even learning new sub-skills feels too familiar after a while.

When considering more ambitious goals, financial or otherwise, the question that keeps coming up is: Why bother?

You explored more, and now more is boring.
You explored better, and now better seems pointless.
You explored different, and now different feels the same.
What do you do when more, better, and different are no longer satisfying?
Well… that’s when you get to have an existential crisis. 🙂

Finding the growth again

Many people find themselves with the skills to do more, but the motivation is lacking. They don’t care about earning more. They don’t care about contributing more. They barely care about covering their expenses.

Some are able to travel through this tunnel and find new fulfillment on the other side. Some seem to remain adrift indefinitely. What’s the difference between those who pull out of this funk and those who don’t?

I’d say that the main difference, if I may generalize it, is that the people who find fulfillment again perform a different kind of upgrade than those who don’t.

The ones who continue to struggle seem to circle around the same area looking for solutions. They look at their skills. They look at their habits and routine. They look at their projects. They look at their lifestyle. They may make some shifts, but they largely maintain their original philosophy of life throughout these shifts, and that philosophy keeps them trapped.

The ones who move beyond this struggle make deeper changes. They reassess their overall relationship with life, and other changes stem from there. But these people who upgrade their philosophy of life don’t all shift it in the same way. One person’s upgrade is another person’s downgrade.

These people reassess their relationship with reality, and they change that relationship. It’s almost like going through the breakup of a human relationship. The old relationship is finally done, and a new way of relating is envisioned and created.

Since your relationship with reality exists in your mind — as a collection of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs — you can change it. You can reinterpret old events to mean something different. Just as people reinterpret their human relationships before a breakup, they can reinterpret their relationship with life itself.

These people realize that little by little, a breakup has already been underway. They’ve been checked out from this relationship for some time. The effort and investment have been drying up. The rewards have weakened. Life seems dull and pointless. There’s no point in 
staying. It’s time to move on.

When someone redefines his/her relationship to reality, lifestyle changes often follow. I’ve seen people quit their jobs, go travel, do charity work, explore open relationships, and more. But these changes may have been on the person’s someday/maybe list for many years prior. What seems to flip the switch is the underlying reconfiguration of the person’s philosophy of life.

Profound shifts

These profound shifts don’t seem to have a pattern in terms of their direction, at least not one that I can discern. People go in wildly different directions. It’s much like a human relationship breakup. What happens after the breakup is different for everyone.

There’s usually a period of fear, excitement, and resolution all mixed together as the person gets moving. The word relief is frequently used to describe it.

Life is rarely perfect on the other side, but I can’t recall an instance where someone wanted to go back. They know the shift had to happen, but the shift by itself didn’t magically solve all their problems. There’s still more work to be done.

Although I can’t identify core commonalities in the new directions that people take, I have seen some patterns in how they create these shifts. These are essentially the same patterns that people go through when they transition out of a human relationship.

Usually these people begin to pay attention to the resistance and resentment they’ve been feeling. They see that they’re resisting their current situation and wanting it to be different. They resent their apparent lack of motivation. Many feel disappointed that their peers seem to have surpassed them. They begin to notice this resistance.

Next, they begin taking responsibility for creating this resistance. They see that it isn’t helping and is only keeping them stuck. They decide to stop resisting and to surrender themselves to the present situation. They gradually become less stubborn. They conclude that being stubborn hasn’t worked, so they loosen up and decide to be more flexible and observant for a while. They relax more.

In the past, these people saw the road to change as requiring a change in conditions. They needed a better lifestyle. Or better projects. Or a better workspace and tools. They needed more self-discipline. More focus. More control. This is like the person who tries to work on their partner to salvage the relationship. I need you to help me solve problems X, Y, and Z, and then our relationship will be better. How well does that usually work?

Sometimes the other person in a relationship doesn’t identify X, Y, and Z as problems. Sometimes reality doesn’t seem to agree that your problems are problems either. When you try to solve those problems, it may feel like reality is deliberately working against you. Or you may sense that you keep sabotaging yourself. You resolve to make changes, and your efforts have fizzled within a few days.

Eventually the person reaches the point of surrendering to the obvious: This whole relationship is broken. In this case, I’m referring to the person’s relationship with life, the universe, and everything. That relationship has become nonfunctional. You and reality seem to be at odds with each other. You’re not in agreement.

Many people enter into a period of stuckness here. They know the relationship is broken, so they try to fix it. That usually doesn’t work, partly because they’re still running the old patterns that perpetuate this stuckness, even as they consciously try to change it.

Those who succeed tend to do so by abandoning the goal of trying to change their partner. They surrender to another obvious notion: My partner wants something different from what I want. They finally decide to allow their partner to be someone else. And with that 
comes the realization that it’s time to transition out of this relationship.

How does this play out with your relationship with reality? It’s a similar dynamic. The person stops trying to change reality and finally allows reality to be what it is. There’s no point in fighting, resisting, or trying to solve problems since reality is only going to resist.
How does such a person break up with the old reality? They do this by envisioning a new way of living and a new way of relating to the world, to other people, and to life in general. 
They envision a new way of experiencing reality. To some it really feels like stepping into a whole new reality — a whole new life.

Surrender is the key. When you stop resisting and surrender to what is, you stop feeding what you don’t want, and the undesirable relationships tend to drop away. But as long as you keep fighting for change, you’ll experience a counter-force pushing back against you, keeping you stuck.

One man decides to no longer relate to life on the basis of fear avoidance. From now on he’s going to face, accept, and welcome what he fears. He’s tired of seeing his reality shrink as he sidesteps his fears. He adopts a new rule for himself: Whatever I fear, I must face. He stops resisting life’s challenges. And lo and behold, he finds that the fear was just an illusion anyway. He was the one feeding it all along.

One woman decides she’s tired of business as usual. Her life is filled with people who look up to her for accomplishments that no longer mean anything to her. She’s done fighting her lack of motivation, so she surrenders to it and lets her business decline, regardless of what people may think of her. Eventually she wraps up her business affairs and starts her own nonprofit foundation. Henceforth her relationship with life will be based on contribution and service, which she loves but could never give herself permission to do before. She had to surrender to the fact that her business was no longer the right vehicle for her future growth and self-expression.

From tolerance to completion

These people all have their Jerry Maguire moments. For many of them, the most powerful part of the shift is when they experience profound feelings of doneness with the old way of living. They’re tired of the fear, the inauthenticity, the disconnection, the shallowness, the indifference, or some other misalignment. They decide it’s time to throw out the old way of living and move on.

One friend described life after the shift with these words: Steve, I feel aligned now.
Another guy said, while going through the shift: I am so fucking outta here.

As people shift, it’s common to experience inconsistent progress for a while. Taking two steps forward and one step backwards happens to almost everyone. That’s okay. The seed has been planted. It may take time for that seed to mature, but it will continue to grow. The more we take an occasional step backwards, the clearer it becomes that the old territory can no longer be called home.

Those who remain stuck don’t seem to reach this point of doneness. The most common reason is that people get stuck in a state of tolerance. They continue to tolerate their relationship with life as-is, even though it doesn’t serve them.

Tolerance isn’t surrender. Tolerance is still resistance. When you tolerate a situation, you permit it to exist but you refuse to surrender to it, so you can’t extract the lessons from it. 
You can’t graduate.

Tolerance is like not wanting to go to school but going anyway. You show up, but you refuse to be a student. Consequently, you learn very little. What’s the point of showing up if you’re going to resist?

When that resistance finally drops, and the person surrenders to reality and decides to stop fighting, the remaining lessons can finally come through, and the person can progress. Graduation is within reach.

There are lessons to be learned from being broke. There are lessons in a difficult relationship. There are lessons in illness. There are lessons in periods of drifting. If we resist these experiences, we resist the lessons within them.

If an unwanted experience seems to be sticking to you like glue, try practicing non-resistance for a while. Try surrendering to that experience. Give reality the benefit of the doubt, and assume that there are valuable lessons to be learned right where you are. Let yourself complete the experience. Allow yourself to have the experience you’re having without stubbornly resisting it. Let yourself reach the point of doneness. Then you can progress.

Source

Relationships and Love | Byron Katie

Byron Katie talks to Joginder Bola about relationships and love using The Work to question and turn around our thinking.
Byron Katie is the founder of The Work. Katie (as everyone calls her) not only shows us that all the problems in the world originate in our thinking but gives us the tool to open our minds and set ourselves free.
The Work is based on FOUR QUESTIONS which can be done on your own or with another person, ending with a process called a "Turnaround": The four questions are:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?
Source 

What’s Your Motivation Threshold? | Steve Pavlina

Over the past year and a half, I’ve seen just what a vital role purpose plays in the pursuit of personal growth. I believe that growth is an inborn human need to a certain degree, and apparently so does Tony Robbins, who includes growth on his list of the six human needs. However, I’ve found that if your only interest in personal growth comes from the level of biological need, you’ll be very limited in the amount of growth you can achieve. As an end it itself, personal growth is certainly motivating, but for some goals it just isn’t motivating enough.

Fulfilling our needs is obviously a strong driver of human behavior. If you’re hungry or thirsty, you’ll be compelled to seek food or water as your highest priority until that need is filled. There’s no motivation quite so great as that which comes from an empty stomach or a dry throat.

Are you familiar with the story about Socrates where a young man came to him near a lake and asked Socrates to teach him how to acquire wisdom? Socrates grabbed the man and plunged his head under the water. As the young man struggled for his life, Socrates continued to forcibly hold him under the water. Finally, Socrates let him up to breathe, and when the man, gasping for breath, asked why Socrates nearly drowned him, Socrates replied, “When your desire for wisdom is as great as your desire to breathe, then you will find wisdom.”

I love that story. I don’t know if it’s actually true, but it sure makes a great point. If your motivation for a goal is high enough (as compelling as the desire for air, food, and water), then you’re virtually assured of success if the goal is possible at all. However, in most cases our motivation to achieve a goal isn’t anywhere near the level of biological need. This is especially true when taking on growth-oriented goals.

Consider the example of waking up early each morning. For many years of my life, I wanted to become a consistent early riser. My goal was to condition myself to get up every morning at 5am. But during the decade I ran my computer games business, I largely failed at that goal despite making many serious attempts. I could do it for several days at a time, but I could never get the habit to stick consistently. I’d be lying in bed when the 5:00 alarm went off, and as my brain faced the choice between mustering the discipline to get up vs. sleeping in, invariably there would soon come a time when I chose to sleep in.

It’s not that I didn’t get enough rest or that I physically needed the extra sleep. It’s just that waking up early wasn’t motivating enough for me. The growth element gave me the drive to make the initial attempt at getting up early, but come day 3 or 4, that element was considerably reduced as the novelty wore off.

When I was at my best — when I made the decision to become an early riser — my motivation was at its peak, and I felt certain of success. But at those pre-dawn moments of decision when I was jolted awake by my alarm, my brain still drenched in sleep hormones, the power of my conviction couldn’t always overcome the desire to continue sleeping. So I’d sleep in.

However, months after starting my personal development business, I made the attempt to become an early riser again. And this time I succeeded right away. Yes, I had a good strategy, and certainly the previous attempts helped a little. But the main difference was that my motivation to get up early was now much higher. And that extra motivation boost was just what I needed to get past the hump and establish the habit once and for all.

Why?

My main reason for getting up early was to be more productive. I wanted those extra early morning hours while the rest of the family was still sleeping, so I could get a head start on my day. I also loved how I felt about myself when I got up early and dove straight into action. It felt wonderful when I could actually do it. The difference in motivation came from what I was producing though. What was the real value of that extra productivity? What was I going to do with it?

With my games business, those extra hours would ultimately mean producing more entertainment value for people. With my personal development business, it meant spending more time helping people grow. For me, the former seemed moderately motivating… perhaps a 7 on a scale of 1-10. Most of the time, I genuinely enjoyed running my games business. But getting up early to help people grow was far more motivating… on a scale of 1-10, it was an 11. And the motivation I needed to get up early every morning was about an 8 on that scale.

What made the difference between success and failure was purpose.

I think one of the reasons many people will initiate new goals and then fizzle out after just a few days is that the motivation to succeed just isn’t strong enough. If you’ve been struggling with a goal where you’re suffering from this pattern of repeated failure, instead of beating yourself up, get curious instead. Ask yourself what the ultimate purpose is. If you were to succeed in achieving your goal, what would it ultimately mean to yourself, to others, and to the world? What’s the actual value your goal would create?

We’re all unique individuals, so we may each have a different motivation threshold for achieving a particular goal. Establishing the habit of getting up at 5:00 each morning required me to have a level of motivation of about an 8 on a scale of 1-10. For some people that same habit may only require a 3, while for others it may require a 10.5.

Interestingly, I not only mastered the habit of early rising, but later that same year, I blew that accomplishment out of the water by adapting to polyphasic sleep (which for me required about a 9.5 in motivation). And once again purpose was a key factor in my success. I’d love to be able to report that having all that extra time for myself was enough to succeed, but that isn’t remotely true. If that was my source of motivation, I’m certain I would have failed. But being able to share the experience with thousands of other people pushed me over the edge.

If you find yourself facing a big goal and you just aren’t making much headway with it because you keep giving up after a time, consider the motivation threshold for the task. On a scale of 1-10, what level of motivation do you feel is required to succeed? Notice that different goals have different numbers. Your motivation threshold for checking email might be a 2, whereas the motivation threshold for doing public speaking might be a 9.5. Everyone is different, so your specific numbers may vary.

We often get blindsided by failure because we compare the success threshold to our level of motivation when we’re at our best. When you’re at your best, your motivation may be a 9 or 10. But that isn’t where you make the decision to give up. When you’re at a 9 or 10 in motivation, you will get out of bed early, you will make the trek to the gym, and you will read that book that’s been sitting on your shelf for months. But we aren’t always at our best. There will be times when you aren’t at your best, and you’ll still have to make the decision between getting up vs. sleeping in, between going to the gym vs. going out to dinner, and between reading a book vs. watching TV. Where will your motivation be in all these moments of decision? Will your motivation to succeed ever dip below your goal’s motivation threshold?

An inspiring purpose is like getting an automatic +4 for all of your 2D6 attacks. That’s a role-playing analogy that loosely translates as, “Purpose provides a motivation bonus for every goal you set, making it more likely that you’ll pass your motivation threshold.” Suppose your goal’s motivation threshold is an 8. And suppose your level of motivation for this goal normally falls in the 4-9 range. When you’re at your best, you’ll succeed, but there will eventually come a time when you aren’t at your best, and then you’ll fail. But with a +4 purpose, now your whole motivation range shifts from 4-9 to 8-13, and in every situation, even when you’re at your worst, you’re still above the goal’s motivation threshold. So no matter what, you’ll succeed.

With a strong purpose, you’ll score more hits and suffer fewer misses. Just as a 2D6+4 will grant you victory in battle against fiercer opponents than a plain old 2D6, a compelling purpose will enable you to successfully achieve more goals and establish more new habits than you’ll be able to achieve without it. For my RPG-challenged readers, a 2D6 means to role two regular six-sided dice, and the total you get represents the strength of your attack (higher numbers are better). A 2D6+4 means to take your 2D6 roll and add 4 to it. So the range of possible rolls for a 2D6 is 2-12, but the range for a 2D6+4 is 6-16.

Now if as you read that description, you were thinking, “You forgot to mention fumbles and criticals,” you really need to get out more. 😉

All purposes are not equal, so you may need to experiment to see what purpose gives you the greatest motivation bonus. For me, entertaining people is perhaps a +2 bonus, but helping people grow might be a +4 or +5. The former is like a short sword, while the latter is like a two-handed magic axe. For someone else, however, such as a stand-up comedian, those numbers might be flip-flopped. What motivates you most is something you’ll have to discover for yourself, but I will suggest that it almost certainly has to do with finding a way to be of genuine service to other people.

What would get you out of bed early every morning? What work would be so compelling to you that you’d joyfully lose yourself in it? What do you find so motivating that you’d even ignore a growling stomach for hours just to stay with it?

Purpose isn’t the only thing that provides a motivational bonus. Consider that all parts of your life either add a motivational bonus or penalty. Is your job a +4 or a -2? What about your relationship, your home, your friends, your family, your diet, your income, your spiritual beliefs? Are these giving you positive bonuses or dragging you down with penalties? If you really want to learn about yourself, make a list of the various factors of your life, and assign each a bonus number, perhaps in the range of -5 to +5. Sinking into debt might be a -3, while falling in love may be a +5. This will show you where you have the greatest opportunities for growth.

If you’re mathematically inclined as I am, you may enjoy thinking of personal growth as a numbers game. Look at all the bonuses and penalties in your life, and see how they add up. Where can you add new bonuses? Where can you eliminate penalties? What can you do to take your character to the next level?

Source