I’ve happy to present this guest post by Matt Maresca.  He contacted me to offer this perspective on motivation so I hope you enjoy the article.  You can find out more about Matt and his contact details at the end of the article.

There comes many times in life when we lose that fire to do the things we need to do in order to get what we want most.  We lose that passion to work toward our goals.  For a moment, we even lose our sense of purpose.  Something happens and sometimes we really don’t even know the cause, but we begin to think “what’s the use?” as we contemplate our goals.  We lose our spirit, our will to achieve.  The wind gets taken out of our sails and we have no idea how to get it back. The answer may be closer than you think.

A Discrepancy in Desires

Here is your dilemma: You know you want to be happy, but you are acting as if you want to be sad. The human mind is a crazy thing.  There are so many wires and bonds in there that sometimes things get a bit crossed up.  And this is why people often behave irrationally. Happiness is a choice, not something that is thrust upon you by a situation or a circumstance.  You choose how you react to your circumstances.  You choose your mood and your demeanor.  Everything about your attitude is a choice.

Unfortunately, there are acts of nature that are fighting this choice.  These acts are your habits.  Over the years, you have likely conditioned yourself to react negatively to certain things and positively to others.  This triggers your mental reflex to respond to situations accordingly.

Once your mental reflex kicks in, it gets the ball rolling in one direction or another.  To stop the momentum requires serious, conscious focus and effort.  You must will the ball to stop when it begins rolling you downhill.  You must clear your head of your negative reactions, and turn your thoughts into positive alternatives.  The problem is that, when you are feeling down, you really don’t want to focus any effort on anything.  You’ve lost your spirit and your will to fight for what you want.  This is why it is very easy to be negative and remain that way for extended periods of time.

The Turn-Around

To turn things around when you are down, you must remind yourself of how much you love being happy and enjoying life.  Remind yourself of why you do the things you do.  Remind yourself of your passions and your purpose.  Simply remembering the good things in life–the things that make you happy–is enough to stop the ball rolling you downhill.

You know you aren’t going to give up.  You know you have the opportunity and ability to do great things with your life.  Your plans got momentarily derailed.  Big deal.  You know you have the power to get right back on track.  You have this power because you have control of the most important things in the world: your mind and your spirit.  You control your attitude and the way you view the world around you.  Utilize this power to its fullest potential, for it is one of the greatest gifts you will ever receive.  Not many people realize their power to change their attitude.  This can put you at a major advantage in life.

The Self Motivation Kit

Whether or not you feel down right now, you can benefit from doing this exercise today.  Start by making a list of things you do not like about your life and the world around you.  What do you not want to experience?  What are your fears?  What gets you down?  What do you wish were different?

Once you have this list, make the opposite list.  Write down the things you want most in life.  Draw a picture of your ideal future.  List the things you have now that you are grateful for.  Write down your strengths and everything you like about yourself, as well as everything you want for your future.  Now look back at the negative list.  Begin working on the items by turning them into a positive.  Find the good in each situation.  Find ways in which you can take something away from the negative situation and better prepare yourself to create the life you desire for yourself.

For example, let’s say you recently lost your job.  What is the good in that situation?  Maybe now you can make a push to do something you were always afraid to do.  Maybe now you can start your own business.  Perhaps you can find a better job.  Or if you can’t find a better job and don’t have the capital to start your business, maybe this is a jumping-off point for you to learn a new skill or improve your current skills.  Maybe this is just a big learning experience for you and a kick in the pants to improve something about yourself.

When you have the will to achieve, there is nothing that can hold you down forever.  The quicker you turn the negative into a positive, the sooner you will get back to the things in life that you want and the more time you can live in happiness.  Practice the turn-around exercise whenever you catch yourself with a negative thought.  Find the positive in the things you complain about.  Find the good in your adversity.

The Test of Will

Overcoming adversity is one of the greatest ways to strengthen your will to achieve and build your personal power.  So whenever you find yourself struggling to find the good in a bad situation, simply say to yourself:

“This adversity is merely a test of my will.  I will not let this test get the best of me; and I will rise back up and be stronger for having done so.”

About the Author

Matt Maresca is a motivational entertainer and writer with a passion in helping people make their lives special by focusing on “Personal Power”.  You can read more from Matt on his website, My Life Motivation, where you will find advice ranging from how to be more productive to building self confidence.

Posted by Mike King under Success | 10 Comments »

Life purpose is not something you can automatically know until you truly understand yourself and your talents.  Many people go through life and never discover their purpose and others go through many years of their life thinking they are living on purpose only to find out in their later years they were chasing something that had to lasting meaning to them.  Can your purpose really be something that has no lasting meaning?  I certainly don’t think so.

The Importance of Life Purpose

So, why is life purpose important anyway?  To me, life purpose is incredibly important as it is the driving force that motivates us, satisfies us, brings us joy and lasting happiness and demonstrates to ties directly to the meaning of success!  Most people want to be successful but they really don’t even know what success means to them!  Success is not something you go and achieve, chase down or earn at some point in your life.  I think most of you would agree that success is more about the journey in life than the destination of some ideal outcome.  Success to me is defined specifically by purpose.

Success is living consistently on purpose.

So, I don’t believe you can ever be successful if you don’t understand your purpose, and then life it to the best of your ability.

Seeking Life Purpose

As I mentioned, finding your life purpose takes time and a deep exploration of oneself.  You must ask yourself many questions to determine your purpose.  Life purpose is not unlike any other time in life where you have written or defined the purpose.  Perhaps, you can think back to school science experiments, or important meetings or projects in your work.  You face some challenge or problem and then you create something to solve that problem.  What you have created to solve that problem and how you will go about it is the purpose of experiment, or meeting, it is to solve the problem you face.  So, what about your own life?  What were you created for?  Are you here to solve a problem and fulfill that purpose?  What is the problem?  What are you hoping to solve?

Where Purpose Comes From

Obviously, I cannot tell you what your purpose is, I can, however, plant the seed for you to seek it and discover it but telling someone their purpose without knowing and understanding that person is rather judgmental and I don’t think has any useful impact.  I can tell you that I discovered my purpose through God, my Creator and that my purpose is to bring the Kingdom of God into all facets of my life by setting an example and living a life like Jesus Christ. I believe that we are each guided by our Creator and will ultimately find purpose through Him but I also believe that we each serve a purpose for a much larger problem and that not all of us will discover spiritual relationships as part of our life purpose. Some will find purpose in creating, some in building relationships, serving others, some in leaving a legacy, some in teaching, serving others, all without knowing where their life purpose comes from.  And luckily that is OK, because many people will follow a purpose in life and be completely fulfilled.

And by my definitely, if you are living consistently on purpose, you are successful.

Interested in the topic of purpose?  I hope so as I plan to write more and please go back and explore this article I wrote on the search for life purpose.

Posted by Mike King under Purpose/Passion | 15 Comments »

This article is part of a series called, "Maximum Productivity " in which I’ll explore the topic of attitude.

See the rest of the series here:
Intro: Maximum Productivity: Series Introduction
Part 1: Maximum Productivity: Perspective
Part 2: Maximum Productivity: Attitude
Part 3: Maximum Productivity: Focus
Part 4: Maximum Productivity: Persistence
Part 5: Maximum Productivity: Adventure
Part 6: Maximum Productivity: Connections

Every avenue of life has one variable that allows you to have a unique experience from it.  That is your attitude.  You can experience the exact set of events as 100 other people, but you will have your own unique experience, as will each of the other people.  The way you experience something and how you think and feel through that is what makes you, YOU!  The attitude you have and demonstrate completely shapes not only your actions at that specific moment, but your entire personality and character.  Similarly, it shapes the way you look at productivity and that’s what we’ll look at here.

Self Confidence

The biggest area I see suffering when people do not have a healthy attitude is self confidence.  I don’t want to label an attitude as good or bad as that seems to superficial to me but what I do want to do is lean those terms to what I would call a healthy or unhealthy attitude.  A healthy attitude when it comes to maximizing your productivity is one that further enables a person to accomplish the things they put their mind to.  An unhealthy attitude is one that diminishes that.  The things that affect that are really a collection of the thoughts, words, expression and body posture.  All these things make up your physiology and it leaves in your mind, your own interpretation of what you think of yourself.  Looking at that over a variety of actions and time is what really shapes your self confidence.  If you look to build that confidence by choosing and steering your mind and make visible the actions you want, you have direct control of what becomes your attitude.  There are many ways to choose and control your attitude and instead of getting into many details, I’ll simply reference a few articles I’ve written before that should help to control and set the attitude that is healthy for maximum productivity!

• Beliefs: They’re Entirely Yours to Control
• Goal Setting: Setting and Identifying
• Passion: Find your passion in life
• You Choose Every Response
• Stop Complaining To Instantly Improve Your Life
• A Guide to Mastering Your State of Mind

Motivation

A big part of productivity is about understanding motivation and to see where your attitude ties in with that.  I recently wrote an article about How to Find and Develop your Own Internal Motivation and this is a major step in shaping a productive attitude.  The things that motivate you in a positive way with regards to attitude is anything that leads you closer to your productive actions and results.  If it steers you away from or deters you from those then it’s not a productive motivator.  If you are to stop and list all the things that motivate and demotivate you towards being more productive, you can then begin to choose to engage in the helpful things and stay away from the ones that hinder you.  The more you experience the things that help motivate you, the more you will see progress and improvements in your productivity and this continues to cascade.

Creativity

Another aspect of a healthy attitude for maximum productivity is with your creativity.  Creativity is something that enables people to get unstuck in difficult circumstances, see solutions to problems that might otherwise hold someone back and it gives you an opportunity to try new things.  It is an important trait of any highly productive person and so exercising your creative mind strengthens it and continues to build an attitude of working towards an end.  Carrying through with that and learning from creative work is what enables you to make quicker judgments and decisions on similar circumstances in the future, which continues to increase your productivity.

Health

I included health as an important aspect of building a productive attitude because I constantly see how health affects people.  It is certainly related to self-confidence but I believe it is a strong enough component on its own, it’s worth including.  Health is more than just your physical health, it also includes your mental health, spiritual health and relational health.  These areas all highly impact people’s attitudes and any one of them can quickly shift a person from a great day and mood to a terrible one, or vise versa.

If you want to examine ways to improve your attitude, then these 4 areas are great starting areas.  Identify the things you love in each and do more of it.  The things you don’t like, stop.  It’s fairly simple.  For example, if you find that your mental health is affected because you like to learn, then spend more time learning.  This will improve your mental health and can help your attitude.  Not only that, but it’s a powerful way to see that you can steer your actions which applies to other productivity areas as well.

Happiness

Last and certainly not least, I feel that happiness plays an important role in attitude which further shapes a person’s ability to be productive.  Everything that happens to us influences us, but how we react and how we let that affect us is a direct reflection on our choices and IF we let it change our mood.  You have a choice whether you want some sad news to make you sad as well or if you can continue to see positive things and be happy even amongst sad circumstances or events.  A person with a happy attitude can generally deal with bad circumstances more effectively because they are able to keep a positive mind and look for ways to improve and get back to a happy state.  If you let yourself become what you experience, you will likely find yourself having a lot of difficult days with regular poor moods.  That inhibits the mind from seeing positive solutions and getting attentive to do productive things.

When people who are very happy encounter unhappy circumstances, they take responsibility to change that and make things better.  This applies with productivity as well and is a superb training grounds to not only look for ways to improve and get better, but for overcoming situations that would otherwise get in the way of you reaching your maximum productivity!

Posted by Mike King under Life | 14 Comments »

I’ve got one more guest post to everyone to and that is my latest article called, How to Find and Develop your Own Internal Motivation at PickYourBrain.com/blog.

The only reason people ever really do anything is due to motivation.  It may be our work, our hobbies, our relationships or even our chores, but one way or another, there is motivation that drives us to do the things we do.  This article is about finding out where this motivation comes from and how to develop it internally.

Again, I’d love to see people’s comments on that article and would appreciate any help to promote it as PickYourBrain.com is also a great resource for motivation articles among other topics.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 1 Comment »

I love being known for someone who is always happy and I constantly look for ways to further enhance the joy and happiness I experience in my life. I have 2 specific things that really help with this, one is a great way to start a day and the other, a great way to end it.

Start Your Day Out Right

I read an article by Marshal Goldsmith suggesting an easy way to improve each day is to say hello and smile to the first five people you see no matter when or who they are. You can be in your car, walking to work, at work, at home looking out your window or your family, it doesn’t matter. If you smile and say hello to those first people you see every single day, you definitely start the day off better feeling happier and more positive. Its physically impossible to smile without affecting your mindset since the brain releases chemicals and fires neurons automatically when you smile, whether you want to or not. The brain and these chemicals are what directly affect your physiology, so that simple smile really does make you feel better and doing this everyday can easily turn it into a habit and I can tell you you’ll love doing it once you start practicing it. I’ve made a habit of it now over the past 6 months or so and I can definitely tell you its made a big difference in how I feel each day. And better than that, a couple other people have told me how they’ve noticed my smiles everyday and it also makes them feel better! WOW! So simple, yet so effective.

Finish Your Day Out Right

I’ve heard before by motivational speakers like Brian Tracy and other others tips to finish your day off positively and I was reminded of this tip by Ced on the manager-tools.com forums. Its to just take 1-2 minutes right before bed to make a point form list of 5 positive or good things you say, did, heard or experienced that day. Simple things that made you feel better or that you noticed others doing. Just jot them down and go to bed. Its a great technique to help you focus on the pleasant things you experience and helps you to realize everything to be appreciative for in life. Developing this habit by jotting them on paper is a great way to practice and you’ll soon be able to just think of many many items each day before bed. Try it out, it can definitely make a positive influence on your mood the next day. Let alone your dreams… I’ll leave that topic for other post though…

Posted by Mike King under Life | 4 Comments »

I last wrote about passion, one of mine specifically and now want to explore how to find your own passions. A few people know already what their passions are, however, many more do not. Passions are not just a single thing or a one time event, it is much deeper than that. Passion can’t be faked, it isn’t something you can turn on and off, and it never fails to survive through any criticism.

Where does Passion Come From?

Passion exists because of many combined experiences and it drives a whole person (mind, body and spirit) to express, utilize, and hold true to core values with joy and enthusiasm. Passion is energetic and lets difficulties be overlooked and ignored to help recognize the positive boundless potential in the people and events in our world.

While that may sound great, finding your passions isn’t easy. Passion is often the cause of pain in people’s life so it gets buried and ignored with an attitude to simply get by in life instead of living it to its fullest and taking the risks needed to continually follow your passions. Whether this is personal or professional, living with passion is often seen to be risky and may reveal truths about you and your true values that are not always convenient from the mind’s perspective. Living safely can seem easier, however, it is certainly not as meaningful.

Finding your Passion

So, what are some of the ways then to find your passion? Here is one method I can recommend for doing this on your own.

1. First, you need to have some serious time to reflect and its best to do it alone with no distractions. At least a couple of hours. Go somewhere you feel very relaxed, calm and comfortable. Use a pen and paper and write out all of the major events in your life that you remember to be very positive and joyful. Then do the same for all the times you have felt crushed, alone, sad, mad, and any other painful or hurting times in your life. Take some time for this, it can easily take 30 minutes or more. Pick events that relate to your career, education, childhood, family, friends, accomplishments, major events, fears, dreams, purchases, emotions, and spirituality.

2. Review the pleasurable side of your list and write out a reason why you think it gave you pleasure in your life. Keep asking yourself why you feel and think that way for each of the items on your list. This helps to explore the meaning behind each item and will drive out your beliefs on each item, instead of thinking of the item itself. Your beliefs are the key with passions and that is what you need to get to the root of.

3. The same thing applies with the pain side of your list. Ask yourself and answer why you belief it was painful or what caused the pain. Keep asking about each response until you get to a value or belief on each item, since this always is the root of any feeling or thought. You need to understand your beliefs in different areas to truly see any of your passions in your life as well.

4. Next, you need to group those beliefs, order them in how you would prioritize them, which ones are reoccurring and which ones contradict each other. Examine and determine which beliefs are most important to you. This is the hardest part, you need to be truly honest with yourself. Don’t answer for anyone else, what you’ve been conditioned to think, or play it safe here. You need to FEEL those beliefs for them to be real. Belief comes from the heart and soul, not the mind.

5. Now, for each of your beliefs, you need to find some commonalities with them. Most beliefs are related and can often just have a painful and pleasurable side. And those are the key to identifying and building your passions. The values and beliefs can be controlled by each individual and making the choices to steer towards the pleasurable and away from the pain, is exactly what a passion is based on. Living consistently and energetically for these values and beliefs while choosing and following that which re-inforces your beliefs, no matter the risk or consequences is exciting and inspiring. Its Passion!

Next I’ll be looking at how to express your passion and the power of it.

Posted by Mike King under Purpose/Passion | 5 Comments »