People who work with me tend to talk about my relentless ability to implement ideas. They tell me theyāre fascinated with my absence of procrastination. In other words, they see me as someone who doesnāt need motivation. Quite the opposite is true. I require a lot of motivation. This drove me to tap into my āmotivation fountainā years ago. Since then I (almost) never procrastinate.
[00:00] In this episode, Igor dives deep into the concept of motivation and why motivational videos almost never work.
[03:48] The Most Powerful Form of Motivation:
- If you live in the real world, the environment you’re in will always be more powerful than the advice that’s coming into your ears from the headphones.
- And the more you know yourself, the more you will not operate yourself. And the more control you have over your thoughts, words, and actions.
[09:34] The Importance of Setting Goals:
- I would try and set goals. What’s my goal or where am I heading?
- If you want Google Maps to get you places, you first have to enter a destination, then it will find where you’re located right now. And then it will calculate the shortest route taking you to your destination.
- Well, if you don’t have a destination or if your destination is fuzzy, then you’re screwed because you’re not going to get there. The GPS simply won’t be able to tell you how to get there.
- So anything from three to six months, I would probably be able to set a goal, because I always had a problem to lean on.
[10:50] How To Set Goals?
- In order for me to set a goal, I needed to have a problem.
- I can only think in terms of lions that are chasing me. And so in order for me to find out what’s the next goal, I have to ask myself, “What’s that lion?”
- There are two types of lions. One is an obvious lion that’s chasing me right now. It’s the kind of lion that’s in my face. Those lions tend to be things like fear of poverty, fear of dying, fear of losing relationships, or fear of loneliness.
- The lion that’s chasing me is making good decisions.
- But there are also lions that aren’t really obvious, but they’re necessary. So I set the right goals.
- Anytime I find myself having to set a long-term goal or have to make a decision of any kind long-term before I can do it, I learned to create lions. To imagine lions in my mind and to future based me into scenarios where lions are waiting for me in the future.
[14:11] The Issue With Motivational Videos:
- The problem is the moment you’re out of that seminar or the moment you turn off or you take off the headphones, the moment you turn off the YouTube video.
- The moment you’re looking away and the moment you get back into your day-to-day grind, dealing with your problems, and being that marinating in that same environment you’ve been in for years, that motivation melts.
- It melts away and it’s like it never even existed. So for me, that wasn’t an effective way. I tried it for a few years, but it wasn’t an effective way for me to stay driven.
[16:05] Listen To Other Episodes:
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