Motivation ABC

We all want to improve our lives. There isn’t a person alive that at some point hasn’t had dreams and aspirations of what they wanted their life to be like. I am here to tell you that no matter what those dreams and aspirations are you can achieve them. The whole point is that you have to make it happen. Life doesn’t give free handouts.

This sentiment probably has not been put more succinctly then by Dianne Houston. She has been quoted as saying that “Only some people get what they want. These are the people who show up to get it.” Do not take this quote to mean that there is a hand out, showing up means that you are putting forth the effort.

It is a basic human truth that each and every one of us is motivated. Motivation really is a human trait.  The main problem that most people face though is that they do not really know what it is they want. Think about it, in the course of your life how many times have those dreams changed? Not sure, then sit down right now and make a list.

On this same list, write down what you did to achieve those dreams. The point that I am trying to make by having you do this is to see that you are capable of getting what you want. And that at some point in your life you knew what it took to get it. Now as an adult, it is no different. If there is a promotion that you want, or a raise that you feel you deserve what are you going to do to make sure that you get them? My mom loves to live by the saying, “What are you willing to sacrifice to get what you want?” As far as I am concerned you do not need to sacrifice anything. But you do need to know what it is that you want.

Once you know what your goal is, you need to be thankful. Be gracious for where you are and what you have. That is the key to getting what you want. The next step that you take should be to make a plan. That plan now needs to go into action. Think about a football game, the team that showed up to play wins. The team that just hung out on the field expecting to win looses.

Despite what some people say, no one is born with a silver spoon in their mouth. It takes work to achieve dreams. Remember that your dreams are not necessarily those of others. So just because it seems like they have it all, they may only have what you want not what they are after.

Do not let the obstacles that life will put in the way discourage you from going after your dreams with diligence. Giving up will get you no where; learning from a failure and then improving will get you where you want to be. Make sure that you are on the team that came to play, the person that showed up to get what they want. Life is too short to sit on the sidelines or watch the grass grow in the middle of the field you and only you decide what your life will be.

George Bernard Shaw famously wrote that “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will,” and never has his thoughtfully phrased aphorism been more true.  Perhaps it almost seems like magical thinking, that what we imagine can become real, but it is nothing of the sort.  The idea that what we dream of and desire can become a solid reality is a concept that has shaped our world since the beginning of it.

In today’s world, nothing is simple but yet we are more powerful than we ever were before.  We have the tools at our disposal to attain greatness but now we must visualize where we go and what we need.  No matter what business or industry that we are in, a certain amount of visualization is necessary when attempting to move forward.  We cannot move forward without a goal in mind, even if it is a lofty one that might not be instantly attainable.

Visualization is only the start, though, as Shaw cautions us.  After we have the picture of our ideal in our minds, after that, we must put our formidable wills to to the task and we must strive to make this picture into reality.  We must shape the world to our desires and when we do that, we are imposing our will on the world we live in.  Whether we are working on a new project or getting more people interested in our businesses, we are creating the world we want to live in.

From the start of the process when we first think about what we want the world to look like, to the end when we hold the finished product in our hands, you can see that there a strong link between our imaginations and what we eventually produce.  It can be a very straightforward journey, or it can be more convoluted, but when we have imagination and we add our wills to back it up and reinforce it, we are changing the world in the way that we see fit.

To Shaw, it was obvious that nothing can be done without a combination of imagination and will.  Everything that we do, everything that we strive for hinge on these two things, and he knows, as do all successful people, that without imagination and will, there is nothing.