DAY TWENTY: MOTIVATION

How do you motivate yourself? Some people are very good at this and can not only motivate themselves, but can motivate others. Rather than re-invent this wheel, I'm going to briefly summarize an interesting article by Eric Barker which talks about how we can improve our own motivation.

First, here's a link to the article, by Eric Barker.  Feel free to read it for the full story.

This is my summary of Barker's three strategies for improving motivation:

1. Get Positive. Being positive, or happy, increases productivity and contributes to greater success. Monitor and celebrate your progress.

2. Get Rewarded. What is responsible for the majority (three quarters) of why we do things? Rewards. Wow! This is how we train dogs, and people (no offense, dogs) are smarter learners. There is a great example of how this works in the article!

3. Get Peer Pressure. We often hear about peer pressure as a negative, but the article suggests that peer pressure helps people more than it hinders them. There is a great (imho) quote from Friedman and Martin's The Longevity Project:

The groups you associate with often determine the type of person you become. For people who want improved health, association with other healthy people is usually the strongest and most direct path of change.

This article suggests that it is really your vision of yourself which determines your ultimate level of happiness. If you can't see yourself as a happy person, you will not likely be able to achieve it.