If you want to be as successful as possible, then you need to be able to have the drive, determination and focus to get there.
Take a look at any of the world’s most successful people and you will find they have almost superhuman levels of motivation. Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about visualizing his goals from a young age and even breaking into the gym to train on days when it wasn’t open. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson frequently posts on Instagram his alarm going off at 4am in the morning when he gets up to train. Neither of these guys ever seems to have a day when they’re too tired or not enthusiastic. Will Smith says the secret to his success is just being willing to run further and longer than everyone else on the treadmill of life.
If you have the determination and the energy, then you will put in more hours and more work at every stage of the game. And as you do so, you’ll be more enthusiastic doing it and happier doing it. Imagine coming home from a hard day at work and having all the energy you need to pack away your clothes, to wash the dishes, to do a workout and then to work on your side project before playing with the kids and romancing the wife.
Many of us say we don’t have ‘time’ to get into shape or achieve the things we want to achieve but this isn’t really accurate. More likely, it’s actually that you don’t have the energy – and this is why you may find yourself just crashing in front of the TV rather than doing anything productive.
So the question is, how can you change that about yourself? How can you get the drive that produces the energy you need to go after the things you want?
Setting the Right Goals
One thing to do is to learn to set your goals correctly. The mistake that many of us make is to have goals that are too out of our control, too long term and too vague. For instance, saying you want to lose 3 stone in a year makes it hard to know how much you should train or how you should eat. You can take it easy for a week and just make up for it next week… right?
Instead then, make your goals much more immediate and much more within your control. In this case, the goal might be to work out 4 times a week and to eat less than 2,000 calories a day. Those are precise goals that you can try and accomplish every single day – there’s nothing left to chance or the long term.
Visualization
At the same time, it’s also important to make sure you always remember why you are doing those things and that you have a clear vision for what it is you’re trying to achieve. If, for example, you want to be a famous fitness vlogger on YouTube, then you should visualise that whenever you’re trying to convince yourself to workout. Think about what it’s like and really immerse yourself in the emotion of it.