Top performers stay motivated and finish what they start how to push through things. Make time to apply these techniques to all things in your life. This includes changing lifestyle habits, Learning difficult skills or completing something.
Changing lifetime habits, learning something new or completing projects or tasks involves a number of tactics that we all struggle with. Changing things in our self is often the psychology around what limits us or blocks us and this article reverts to a number of authors and self help gurus that review this.
Toxic Mindsets
A number of things may occur that impact your ability to become unmotivated or deviate these include not the actual doing or completing something but the underlying cause which is not laziness but the fear around it that we create ourselves which may be:
Fear of failure
Fear of succeeding
Fear of judgement
The self talk or toxic beliefs we hold need to change from I will never lose weight to I know its hard but I will try to lose weight. Don’t be so hard on yourself and try and start amending how you mentally self talk and address what you think in your head. We normally have these inner critics as a mechanism to deal with danger a protective action we do. Next time this happens be aware of what the motives are and change how you talk to yourself.
Why do I never finish anything?
I tend to go through a cycle which often starts with Motivated to start a new course and visualise a future of the process and I spend hours researching and buying new books. But as time progresses the task becomes harder as expected and its hard to finish the course and I question why am I doing this course or do I really want to do this. This is the point when I become demotivated and I start creating barriers to completing the course and we re treat or get stuck and I end up not completing the course and say things ‘Well I wasn’t interested’ or ‘I ll learn it later’.
Every time you start something and don’t succeed over time every time you try something and fail you almost add to your list that you give up on. You stop trusting yourself and you rewrite your identity as not able to complete. When you go through not completing things so many times it defines you.
Be selective about what you start and make sure you complete it. Having the ability to complete something is a skill and will need us to complete these tasks and these tasks become complicated. We have so many choices and distractions its harder now to complete things and everyone suffers these emotional weaknesses and we need to work on being a top performer. With systematic practice you can get good if you have more practice at anything.
There are 3 primary skills to finishing things:
1. Deliberate planning
2. Habit formation
3. Deep focus
Keep a list of things you will do later so we don’t become overwhelmed by all the things you have to do. This allows you to segregate what’s important now and tackle things later than trying to do everything now.
What’s your main goal and how can you focus on the things that are important to get there rather than everything at once. Get clear about what you want i.e (Start a business is my number one goal, Make a list of things from MARKETING, LOANS, WEBSITE)
Build a contingency plan so that if you fail what will you do alternatively don’t avoid it build a process like backup plan other ways to meet your goal instead of just giving up.
Mindset - Habits
The brain craves reward so if you need to fit reward around habits, a study in Germany took a control group to create cues for exercise when you get back give yourself small piece of chocolate so you pair that behaviour with a reward. So after each gym session treat yourself to something or after completing a book or module on course treat yourself to something you enjoy a spa treatment or something treat yourself. Eventually almost 60% group stopped eating chocolate and brain already triggered there was a reward they did not need. Look at any bad habits you have and see what reward you give yourself such as a fiend recently saved all the money for 3 months of no smoking and treated herself to a designer bag. After the three months it was a habitual not to smoke and felt good the change became self fulfilling.
Once I started exercising habitually I also changed my diet and other habits formed studies show deliberate habit changes self image and subconscious and improve parts of their life such as procrastinate changes. Find a keystone habit, diagnose reward and make change you will see chain reason other parts of your life. There is no one habit for one person or method for instance exercise for someone who is an athlete exercise is not a challenge but for average person doesn’t stay active have more negative fear patterns and self talk and fear causes us to resist. Find a habit that’s scary it has emotional challenge its keystone habit.
Creating habits and emotional content mutually linked so
Being present with kids and engage with them , be more focused at work, eating healthy, be creative
What is your reward something you enjoy and you deserve it like smoothie or dessert not kale crisps you hate – Basel ganglia associate the effort such as my run with reward of cholate or a treat so build neuron links in your so brain by day 7 and day 20 it gets easier.
The most common hang ups on habits neuropathway associated it stays there – you can change bad habit to better behaviour with your reward and changed routine.
Identity cue and reward – time of day, certain place, emotion, people, behaviour you ritualise:
1. I plan my workout same time schedule everyday
2. I always plan my workout in the same gym place
3. Envision the emotion your run before tell your self you feel good or thought on goal of finishing the run and think of reward at the end such as my chocolate tonight or long shower.
4. Go with certain people or do a class work out together to have commitment such as 6 week bootcamp online or schedule of training.
5. Make this a ritual that can become a habit ( changing routine like not staying out late drinking if you trying stop smoking or stopping my afternoon cookie with fruit )
Self experiment become n observer of yourself what is causing you not to complete a task, not go to the gym. Why do we fail at attempts and if they fail it tells you why your commit a bad habit.
For instance I continued to smoke cause It was sociable or I became stressed but these were not always triggers I quit when I changed my other habits around smoking like limiting my time in the pub and not joining others for smoking breaks. I continued to exercise instead of saying I'm lazy or tired I made sure I did my 15min hit or run for that day as part of my plan not change the plan.
If you get week and fail don’t say you are a failure you need to know you experimenting and want to achieve your goal so change your routine to get the outcome you want. Teach your brain when I see my workout clothes my brain experience pleasure of the chocolate or treat – how to motivate yourself. You want to get stage you don’t have push your self to exercise eventually you crave endorphins and it feeds them with energy it becomes habit.
Will power by making it into a habit look for a breakdown point like when I feel low listen to your urges and accommodate them so don’t stifle your desires by managing them. So procrastination you can give 5min scan net not urges hours of lost time or have a plan if you cant get to gym.
Focus issues such as lost time not sticking to a task – focus increases with practice you will get faster and keep a log. Tactics set your alarm give yourself breaks not be focused you may need break and focus 50min.
Think about it: We’re so used to being hard on ourselves every time we experience even a setback (“I missed a workout. Im crap at this”) -- how often do you praise and credit yourself when you actually succeed?
Deliberate practice
As referred to before from Carl Dugg's book deliberate practice is a way to build skills and use practical strategies into your life that work for you. We are not all naturally good at anything and you cannot assume your bad at something we change our mindset. Top performers that create value in the world you need time and expertise and until your good something its hard to do something the world values. I create a tally chart of how many hours
I spent on tasks shows you are you actually studying for those hours how much time.
Distractions like social media also creates FOMO and creates more anxiety and we worry more about what others are doing than our own life. To change this is test how you can not check Facebook for 10min or longer and if nothing bad happens than we can revaluate FOMO to see if it reduces the power of fear we have. Taking control of these addictions in social media. Try it with other social media platforms.
In Zen habits(www.zenhabits.net) Leo looks at behaviour change and encourages us to go public with your goal. Think of just ONE person you personally know and deeply respect. Tell them about your goal, and request that they hold you accountable. Zen habits show how they work and how to change them So train yourself for a week, and each day be in action. Be doing stuff. Get shit done.
· Start small and achievable( I aimed for 2k before 5k in my first month this was building my habits) Take on the hard tasks, in small chunks. Check things off your list, while feeling the meaning and possibility you’re creating.
· Commit to 30 days of doing something to build that habit so it becomes your mind bonded thing after repetitions it becomes habitual as a repeated action.
· Get clear on goals - Get clear on what matters to you. Make a list. Write out why. It’s worth spending 30 minutes on this. Taking one step at a time to make changes and one goal at a time.
· Be careful on your inner critic and self talk and start shifting this
· Enjoy the process add things to look forward to , otherwise you’ll put off my daily run and dread it and try and make the process of getting to your goal fun.
The result with come and the habit will be part of your natural routine
Focus
Deep Focus is just staying focused on one task for longer than we normally might, staying in the middle of the task despite urges to switch to something else, despite our habitual patterns. Automation and technology impact most aspects of our lives making mundane tasks easier and safer but this has had a detrimental affect on attention spans. Our attention span is guided by our intuitions and we choose in most situations whether to focus on spotlight or let it be relaxed.
But when we use technology for instance to do the work we dim our brains so we don’t have full effort into confidence tasks. But when we have an urgent task to focus on our brain goes into something called cognitive tunnelling and we focus on the immediate task in front of us. Its what keeps us focused on phone or red light appear break. Reactive thinking is how we allocate our attention for instance athletes practice moves over and over so that in play they react faster. Reactive thinking helps us build habits why o do list are good way of automatically. Cognitive tunnelling is a concept when we become overly focused on our phone for instance and causes us to loose our ability to directly focus on what’s needed around us.
For us to genuinely productive we need to start paying attention and making decisions. Build mental models of expected outcomes of what may or may not happen. A good example in the book was a scenario for a Qantas flight whereby issues on the fuel system caused multiple cascading issues in the cockpit causing multiple alarm systems and failures occurring on the flight board. As a result the pilot used mental models and ignored all the automated computer indicators as instructions and shifted his mindset to on the best help him choose where to direct his attention to make the right decisions rather than rest to flashing red lights. In life instead of being overwhelmed by all the multitasking know what to focus on and what to ignore like a routine daily self prioritisation check .The important thing is to force ourselves to think more and get into the habit of stopping and think for a moment of the pressure your facing and how to deal with it.
Try the tips we learnt
- Mindset habit formation ( Create a new positive habit e.g. start a 10min exercise routine or run every morning after your coffee the same time everyday)
- Deliberate Practice (Get into a routine at choosing a skill or something you need to improve and build on it )
- Deep Focus (Remove distractions and use new strategies on how to focus in smaller chunks read Cal Newport's book)
- Reduce negative self talk and toxic beliefs and start working on changing how you say things to yourself
Try these tips with something new or an existing task such as exercise which you struggle with or want to complete. After a week, review how you did - how did it go?
What needs to be adjusted? What did you learn? How can you keep the training going?
Remember you cannot change something overnight it’s a process that takes time and needs practice and learn how to enjoy it with a more meaningful life that works for you
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