There are two major forces that give us motivation to change our life: Pain and Desire.
Pain.
When I was growing up, I hated being poor. It was my pain. I despised the lack of everything. Food, a regular bed and a lack of a safe environment to live. The pain to get out of those circumstances compelled me to study, gain knowledge, learn skills, look for a job and work hard.
Pain worked because it forced me to do things I didn’t like or necessarily want to do. Pain became the motivation to change my life because I hated my present situation at the time and I was willing to do whatever it took to get out.
Pain is the side of a magnet that helps push us away from a terrible place.
But go where?
I couldn’t just run away and wander around aimlessly. I need a place to go. And that’s when I needed the other force:
Desire.
Along with pain, desire gave me the motivation to change my life because it helped identify a place to go. As a kid, I had this burning desire to be successful. To make money because I wanted to help my struggling family put food on the table. At the public library in Flushing, Queens and then in the small town in New Jersey where we moved at the time, I would read magazines and books about famous business people and world leaders and would aspire to be like them.
Desire became the motivation to change my life because it forced me to identify, visualize and move my mind and body towards a specific type of life that I badly wanted. It was something concrete providing the much needed target by which to express my energy. Desire helped identify a goal.
That burning motivation was so powerful that it pulled me out of bed in the morning to do things I once thought impossible.
Desire is the other side of the magnet that pulls us towards something great.
How to find the motivation to change your life when there’s no pain nor desire? When we’re feeling a little stuck?
As I live in these extraordinary times of profound change and uncertainty, I realize that often we may not have that severe pain nor severe desire. But we feel a need to grow in our career, our business, our health, our relationships and our life. We want to find the motivation to change our life and get unstuck. Over the last several years of my own personal transformation from someone who worried about the future all the time to someone who is less stressed, more engaged and productive and often more fulfilled, I would like to share that to find the motivation to change your life requires four things: [Read more…]