In this article I write about how we need to chill out, relax and to live a stress-free life. I was somebody who used to stress and worry about seemingly everything and was commonly known amongst friends as a stress-head.
I lived life like this for quite a long time and was basically being a fool as I was often depressed. This was due to the fact that I had a stutter and despite attending stammering treatments on a regular basis I was unable to find a solution. Years later I did manage to stop stammering, after a lot of hard work and with the help of a seventy minute self-help DVD.
In my quest to improve my life I started to read literature about stress management, how to eradicate depression as well as how to gain in confidence. I was now twenty-two years of age and had achieved very little in life up to this point. In one of the newspapers I read, there was an article in the letters page which had been sent in by a woman who was in her seventies. It was quite a funny letter and she wrote about how she loved being old. She continued by stating that she now gets out of bed at a time which suits her and even stays in bed for the whole day on occasions. She really does not worry about what any one thinks of her anymore. She no longer attends any type of function or get together unless she really wants to and can quite happily turn down social invites without the slightest feeling of guilt. She wrote that for the first time in her life she does not care at all what people think of her and lives life doing exactly what she wants to do.
Motivation is defined as that set of principles or things that determine one to perform something and achieve success in what he or she has undertaken. They say that without it we would all be but a bunch of passive, lazy people that seem to have no goal in life. And indeed, once we understood how the universe works, supposedly at a very young age, we have been involved in experiences filled with many motivating factors. It all starts with the child being rewarded with a candy for listening to his/her mum. Therefore, without even becoming aware of what we undergo, we are taught the very basics of responding to motivation.
Motivation seems to appear when, after performing a certain action, there is some kind of reward that creates pleasure or satisfaction to the individual who receives it. The reward as such can be of an intrinsic nature, meaning that the feeling of achievement or satisfaction is sufficient to cause a repetition of the action later. It can also be extrinsic, according to studies; and that means that money or praise coming from others is the key to making you repeat the performance. Consequently, motivation is also of two kinds intrinsic, or inner, and extrinsic, or outer. As it may be obvious to you already, intrinsic motivation has to do with your own person and what you want whereas the extrinsic type has to do with external factors or people. Other subcategories follow from intrinsic motivation. One is the intrinsic motivation that relies on enjoyment (let us take a hobby for example) while the other is the one that is based on obligation (like performing a task at work that we want to carry out very well only for our own sake and not for anyone else’s).
How do you motivate yourself? What can you do when you need to get busy doing something and you just don’t feel like doing it? Of course there are dozens of motivation techniques. Some, like certain NLP techniques, can get fairly complicated. The following, however, is a simple, yet powerful technique that you can use today to generate energy and motivation.
Motivate Yourself By Talking
All of us have felt the surge of energy that comes from a conversation we are really interested in. You may have even stayed up talking all night at some points in your life, with little tiredness. It is partly the company of course, but the bigger part of that energy is from the topic itself. When you talk about something that is important or interesting to you, it wakes up your brain.
Not only does it wake up your brain, but it wakes up your body as well. You can easily demonstrate this to yourself. Write down a few things that you love to talk about. the more passionate you are about the topic, the better. Then, the next time you are feeling a little sluggish, break out the list and pick a topic. Find a willing listener and start talking. You’ll see how quickly it affects your mind and body.
Where do you stand on the motivation scale? 1 on the scale is a ‘snoozer’ – the type of person who can’t get out of bed on a morning, who is continuously jumping from one project to another without finishing anything. 10 on the scale is someone who is a ‘get up and go’ type person who puts a lot of energy and focus into their projects and really works hard to get things finished before moving on.
Where do you fit in?
Anywhere from 1 to 5 is a definite snoozer and you could benefit from giving your psyche a good talking to with subliminal motivational messages on a CD or MP3
Be aware of three things if you are a snoozer:
Firstly, the further you move away from any problem, challenge or source of discomfort the less serious or compelling your motivation becomes until the problem draws near again. So snoozers run hot and cold, from high motivation to no motivation and back again.
Secondly because snoozers are always looking over their shoulder they pay less attention to where they are going. Their attention is on the things they want to avoid rather than what they do want to achieve. Often these types of people jump from the frying pan, straight into the fire – thinking about what they don’t want in fact brings more of the same into their lives.
