Motivation - life’s driving force.

Many people believe they can generate motivation through setting inspiring goals . This is true for some but they often fail to realise the reasons behind the inspiring image, consequently it is more difficult to generate motivation on a constant basis, a skill we could all benefit from. Motivation is about knowing why you want a goal or activity, not what you want. Sure, knowing what you want is important because it gives you something to focus upon. The point is, if you want a particular goal, setting reasons why you want it is far more powerful than just visualising the outcome. It creates far more emotion to realise your underlying driving force.

Recently a client approached me regarding a sporting goal he wanted to motivate himself to achieve. After some time discussing his life and sporting ambitions I discovered that a couple of his friends were having a wedding anniversary. This seemed to be a good target to set some sporting goals for him to achieve. I made a wall chart and got specific weight and bodily conditions that he desired to attain within that time frame, and of course the reasons why he wanted to achieve them. This concept I find to be one of the best ways to motivate oneself. It encourages you to push yourself towards a goal, towards a specific condition. Together we conjured up enough associations of ‘pain' in not achieving that goal so that he always felt like training at the times when there might be other tempting distractions that might disrupt his routine. When a distraction arose he consciously chose to think of painful consequences of not achieving his goal, this motivated him to act.

Inspiring motivation is a fantastic bedfellow to weight control, especially in the sporting arena. The majority of sports people find the motivation of sports excellence great enough to break any patterns of weakness in their diet programmes, thus their bodily functions are being manipulated by their thoughts, visions, and images, in other words their minds. It still amazes me at how difficult people say it is for them to lose weight, the fact that they are born that way, they have poor genetics, they have special slow metabolisms etc… In reality they can lose weight, no matter how hard they convince themselves that it is impossible and the odds are stacked against them, no-one is saying it will be easy but it is possible. You probably know someone who makes such excuses, sometimes they seem plausible, however in most cases it is mis-leading nutritional information or lack of motivation that is the problem. The Mind is the most powerful and influential aspect of our world, ‘there is nothing with out first the mind'. This is especially true in weight control, I get phenomenal results from weight control hypnosis. I believe weight control is almost entirely based in the mind, second only to our energy in - energy out behaviour patterns (although these are also controlled by our minds).

You may be thinking now that this all seems a bit like a vicious circle, and you'd be right. It is indeed quite difficult for some individuals to create action from their knowledge. In other words having the will power to resist that high calorific chocolate bar.

Watch this person as they are delivered a scenario in which they find an immense amount of motivation in themselves to get up and do something a little more pro-active about the situation.

Focus
One aspect of Motivation to train is the focus you put upon the gym session. If you focus on the pain of training, the inconvienance of getting up out of the arm chair and making the journey to the gym, or the poor weather out side that you'll need to contend with then training becomes less appealing.

The answer is to focus on future results. Bodybuilders for example don't 'enjoy' lifting a dumbbell in the same repetitive motion for hours on end- nobody could possibly enjoy such a mind numbing exercise however, when they focus on the muscle growing, that growing feeling and the future results that they know they will attain then that produces the motivation to push themselves beyond what a 'normal' person is willing to do.

-Steve Mycoe - Author and Sports hypnotherapist, 2001

Five ways to become an Expert!

1 - Write a book.
Although thousands of books are published every year with the vast majority selling less than 5000 copies, writing a book is very profitable. But many fail to realize that gaining an income from book sales directly is only a secondary gain.

Being an author gives you and your services CREDIBILITY. Which in turn 'sells' your product or services for you. A book should be used as a 'marketing platform' for other products.

Not only should you have a website to market your book, you should use it to sell other related product and services. An additional bonus is that once your book is published other high traffic websites will market your book for you such as Amazon. If you make sure you have your personal website address on the front cover of your book, you will gain huge amounts of traffic from these high volume sellers.

2 - Seek a single 'miracle' cure.
It doesn't have to be a miracle to get publicity! When you find yourself having done some exceptional work with one of your clients tell everyone (assuming the client agrees). Put it on your website, send out a press release, send flyers to other potential customers. Nothing sells your services as effortlessly than a proven case study! Customers will seek you out!

3 - Use Number two above to seek media publicity.
Start with the local rag. Once you get your article published, actively ask the reporter to sell the article on to the National papers.

Local reporters get a fee for passing on contact details form articles so make sure your reporter knows you are keen for this to happen. In addition local reporters love to 'get noticed' by the nationals!

4 - Brand yourself.
Narrow your branding so that you are a specialist in your area. Many business people worry that they will lose other business if they focus on a small market area. Not so. If you are a therapist who specialises in weight loss when you do a good job the word will go around and referrals from all areas with request your assistance.

5 - Use Networking sites intelligently.
Link with people who have credibility in and out of your business area. If you are 'friends' with well known successful business people that is a good enough endorsement for potential clients. You are judged by the company you keep.

Steve has added his Twitter to SportsHypnosis.co.uk

Been avoiding it for too long now added Twitter real time results to my main website. Mainly due to Googles new way of indexing real time twitter results in it's organic results.