Paul Myers on Motivation. (seriously good stuff)

Posted: December 1st, 2008 | Author: George-Lane | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Before you read this post I want you to do something for me…

No, seriously. Go over to http://www.talkbiznews.com/ and subscribe to the newsletter.

It’s the best internet marketing/business list you’ll ever join (I’m not affiliated in any way). Done it? Good. Let’s go…

OK, this is a verbatim copy of one of Paul Myers’ Talkbiz email newsletters. Paul does have a blog, but unfortunately this article didn’t make it on there, which is a shame.

Now, I wouldn’t usually re-post a newsletter to my blog (it just doesn’t feel right), but in this case I’m making exception.

The article below is nothing short of genius.

In my opinion Paul captures everything you need to know about motivation (and “success” however you define it) in a few hundred words that most self help gurus struggle to do in a stack of books.

Just be careful not to underestimate the power of what Mr Myers discusses below. This info could easily be “repurposed” into an ebook, home study course or seminar. So a big THANK YOU to Paul for giving this great info away.

As you can tell I’m a Paul Myers fan. Been reading his emails for years. I suggest you do the same.

You’ll get more value from Pauls Talkbiz newsletter than the sum of the leading internet marketing names — and refreshingly Paul doesn’t jump on the product launch illuminati’s bandwagon either.

A gentleman, genius, scholar and all round good egg.

Ladies and Gentlemen… The one and only… Mr Paul Myers…….!

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“Becoming Unstoppable”
====================

Okay. I screwed up. Fortunately, it’s an easy mistake to fix.

The first draft of “Need to Know” only addressed the
informational aspect of what makes someone succeed or fail in
an online business.

I didn’t really cover what you need to do to generate the kind
of action that’s needed for success. To develop unstoppable
motivation.

This addition to the book will correct that.

Fear not. I guarantee you, when you’re done, you will not feel
like you just read a bunch of pop-psychology silliness or “New
Age” claptrap.

Trust me on this one.

….

I wrote something in this newsletter years ago that got me a
bit of flack from a few of the traditional “positive thinking”
folks. I figure it’s time I reprise and compound my heresy.

By the time I’m done, I hope to also show you how to eliminate
the biggest non-informational hurdle to success that most
people face.

What the heck. It’s Thanksgiving, right?

….

The good news and the bad news are the same: Whatever you’re
doing right now, whether it makes you happy or not, is exactly
what you want most to be doing right now.

You are exactly where you’ve wanted to be all along.

Yes, you might have a really strong desire to be in some other
place. I don’t doubt for a minute that you could, in some
respect or other. You might even be moving toward that new
place.

The problem is, human beings are complex critters. We don’t
just have one desire or one aspiration. We have a lot of them.
And where you are at the moment is the sum of all your desires,
not just that big one that you know you should be working on
and never seem to get around to.

Have you ever been there? You want something so bad you can
taste it, but you either put off doing anything about it, or
you go after it half-heartedly, or in ways that seem guaranteed
to fail?

Maybe you wanted to ask that cute girl or guy out, or go for
that promotion, or start a business, or start an exercise
routine, or spend more time with your wife or kids, or take a
vacation to the one place you’ve always wanted to see.

Maybe you wanted to lose weight, or quit a lousy job, or end a
bad relationship, or drop a habit that made you feel small.

Has there ever been something you wanted to do that you just
didn’t do anything about?

Some folks will say that it’s because you didn’t really want
it, or that you didn’t want it badly enough. And they’re almost
right.

The trick is, there were things you wanted to avoid even more.

Good news: You can change that.

And it’s easy.

….

I hear a few of you saying, “Sure. All it takes is a little
willpower.”

My original heresy: Willpower is the least efficient, and most
difficult, way to accomplish anything. It is very rarely
anything but a waste of time.

Why?

If you’re relying on willpower, you’re fighting what you
really want to do with what you think you should do. Even if
you win that battle you lose, because you didn’t get what you
really wanted.

A hollow victory, unless you manage, somewhere along the way,
to tap into what you’re about to read.

There is something within you that is far more powerful, far
more dependable, than willpower.

I call it wantpower.

What you want the most has the power.

….

Before I explain that, I want to compound the first heresy by
pointing out two more myths that you need to forget, if you
ever believed them in the first place.

Fear of success and fear of failure.

No such things exist.

What we fear are the emotional meanings of the consequences of
success or failure. Knowing what those imagined consequences
are takes them from the purely abstract, which we can’t
address, to the concrete, which we can deal with effectively.

Success and failure are meaningless concepts, except when
measured against the question: Have you achieved the sum of
your wants and desires?

….

You’re either moving toward the sum of your wants and desires,
or you’ve achieved it.

Now, some of you will read that and think, “Myers, you’re nuts.
That’s not how it works. Success is measured by [fill in the
blanks.]”

Okay.

Says who?

Seriously. Who defined success that way for you? If it wasn’t
you, it doesn’t mean a thing. If it was you, and you don’t have
it, why don’t you? (Hint: It’s all about wantpower.)

There is only one meaningful definition for success: Living
your life the way YOU want to live it.

Anything else is a hand-me-down that doesn’t fit.

….

Another group of you will have noticed an apparent problem with
this. The idea that, if you’ve already got the sum of your
desires, you’re trapped. That you’ve gone as far as you can go.

For many, that would be a scary thought.

The key to changing it is in the word “sum.”

As you know, that’s a math word, meaning, “What you get when
you add a bunch of things to each other.” Like most things in
life, if you manage to reduce something to math, just for
purposes of clarity, you can change it.

With a sum, you simply adjust the value of the things you’re
adding up.

This is where it gets fun.

….

If you ask someone what they want, most people will rattle off
a list of surface-level things. “I want to spend more time with
my kids, I want a raise, and I want a pony.”

And yet, they’re not spending more time with their kids,
they’re not doing what they need to do to get the raise, and
they still ain’t got no pony.

Why?

Because they don’t want those things. What they want are the
benefits they associate with them, and they haven’t piled up
enough benefits to out-pull the benefits of not getting them.

In his book, “The Motivated Mind,” Jason Gracia uses the
analogy of a set of scales, with one side holding the weight of
all the factors that count toward doing a thing, and the other
holding the factors that count toward not doing it.

While that’s a useful analogy, I think it leaves out a couple
of important concepts: Direction and speed. I believe that
likening these forces to driving a car will help make the ideas
more concrete.

(By the way: Thanks to “Wild Bill” for the pointer.
You can find the book at http://www.motivation123.com )

Like driving a car, getting motivated – taking action – is a
skill that can be learned, and you can get the basics down very
quickly.

Unlike driving, it doesn’t take very long at all to become
highly skilled.

….

So, how does this work?

If you’re unsure about a goal, or if the things you want and
don’t want about it are in balance, you’ll just sit there, with
the car in neutral.

If you say you want a thing, but the total of your desires
pulls away from that thing, you’ll put the car in reverse. You
will move away from it, despite your (possibly very strong)
desire to achieve it.

If the total of your desires relating to that thing have more
emotional force than the things that make you want to avoid it,
you’ll put the car in drive.

Once you’re moving, your speed will be determined by two
things: The degree of difference between the two sides, and the
intensity of the desires involved.

Before you can make the car go where you want it to go, you
need to know what the controls are and how to work them.

Otherwise, you could end up going in circles in reverse at 100
miles an hour.

Lots of people live like that.

….

On each side of the equation are two universal human
considerations: Pleasure gained and pain avoided. The
emotional intensity of all of the factors on each side are
added up to get the force for that direction. The side having
the most force determines whether you put the car in drive or
reverse.

Let’s look at an easy one: Spending more time with your sports
buddies.

If you don’t really enjoy spending time with them, but think
you’re supposed to, you may only have one bit of force pushing
you toward it: Avoiding the pain of disapproval by others.

If disapproval bothers you a lot, that can be a strong force.
If you don’t care what others think, it could be a very weak
force.

Let’s look at the other side. Maybe you think that spending
time with them will take away from more fun areas of your
social life, cost you money you’d rather spend on something
else, and regularly put you in environments that conflict with
another goal.

If your fear of disapproval is really strong, it can be the
deciding factor. So, how can you change that?

The first thing you could do is to re-assess the importance of
disapproval. You can do this by diminishing it or by putting it
into perspective in relation to other things.

Diminishing it could be done by looking at the real impact it
has on you. For example, you might realize, on thinking about
it, that your buddies will only be a little disappointed, but
will quickly adjust. Or that their disapproval comes from
expectations that you never agreed to, and is their problem,
not a commitment you’re reneging on.

Basically, “They’ll get over it, and so will I.”

….

Putting it in perspective involves comparing it to something
that’s more important to you. For example, you might think to
yourself, “Yeah, I hate to disappoint them, but I’m not going
to let other people decide how I live my life.”

Or you could say, “Their approval isn’t more important than my
own.”

Any number of things can be included here, and they’ll all add
up.

….

The other way to change the equation is to add strength to the
forces on the other side.

Most people will tend to consciously compare only the similar
forces: Your sports buddies vs other areas of your social life.
The rest of the factors will usually be weighed unconsciously.

So, start with the similar things. Maybe you would rather spend
that time with your girlfriend, or with a different group of
friends. Just saying that isn’t going to give it as much force
as it could have. You want to strengthen the positive emotional
associations of the other options.

And consider the negatives (pain) that go with continuing the
same behavior. You might find that the feeling of letting your
girlfriend down is more powerful than the disapproval of your
buddies.

Bring every factor of those things into sharp focus. Look at
all of them, being careful to be honest about what you really
enjoy and what you don’t.

Then contrast those things with the experience of time with the
old crowd.

Now, look at the things that aren’t directly related to the
social aspect. If better health is a goal, and your friends
hang out in bars, you might think about coming home smelling
like cigarettes, gaining weight from the bad food and not
sleeping as well because of the smoke and the drinking.

You might prefer to spend the money on classes to improve your
work skills and your income.

There are more possible factors involved than I could list
here. The important thing is to make the pleasures that you get
and the pain you avoid when you achieve your goal as strong as
you can. Then make the pleasure you get and the pain you avoid
by NOT getting it as weak as possible.

When the emotional attachment you make to things that move you
toward it are stronger than those of the things that keep you
from it, you will have effectively put the car in drive. You
will automatically move in the direction of those desires.

That’s wantpower, not willpower.

….

As you increase the difference between their collective
strength and the strengths of your desires that point away from
it, you increase the speed and consistency of movement toward
achieving them.

That’s the gas pedal.

There is no maximum speed on this car.

….

Let’s take a look at the way this affects your action (or lack
of it) in starting or expanding a business.

First, some of the things that might tend to keep you from
taking effective action on a consistent basis.

-> Don’t know how to create and sell products.
-> Fear that people will ridicule your goal, or resent
your success when you achieve it.
-> Fear of losing the friends and comfort of your job.
-> Fear of financial trouble if the effort doesn’t succeed
at a certain level or in a certain time.
-> Dislike of having to make decisions.
-> Fear of making wrong decisions.
-> Losing a privileged position or seniority.
-> Enjoyment of letting someone else be responsible.
-> Less time for your family and friends.
-> Looking like what you’ve done in the past was wasted.

For every person, there are a lot of other perceived “costs”
that could seem significant. Let’s look at a few of the ones on
that list, as they’re very common.

If you’ve got a boatload of money and years of your life
invested in an education that supports your career, or a lot of
seniority and a pension at stake, that’s going to make chasing
a business of your own look very risky. This type of concern is
especially strong in older folks, or people with dependent
family members.

If you have dependents, or a very low tolerance for risk, you
should probably start with something you can do alongside of
your current work. That eliminates most of these concerns, and
lets you get started.

Most people are going to have to start out part time anyway, so
this is no huge burden. Having a clear and realistic plan,
using the information in “Need to Know,” can cut the time it
takes significantly.

It also makes it easy to figure out what information you need,
and how to get it.

….

You’ll notice that the majority of the things keeping you from
doing something in business are either fears or lack of
information. Sometimes they’re both tied up in one concern,
such as the fear of making wrong decisions.

The easiest way to get over that is to realize that you’re
going to make them. Period. You cannot avoid it. You’re going
to make wrong decisions about other things in life, too.

Having a clear plan and going after it, with the best
information you can get at any given time, will reduce the
number of wrong decisions you make. Limiting your risks to
things you can afford to lose will ensure that you don’t create
the dire financial situations you fear.

Assets risked with a calculated probability of profit are
called “investments.” Even the best investors, with the best
information, lose some of those bets. It’s part of the game.

Knowing how to apply leverage effectively will help make the
potential payoffs larger, while keeping the downside risks
affordable. That means that one idea that works can quickly
cover a lot of ideas that don’t.

Putting the concern in a logical perspective like this can
often reduce it to the level of background noise.

But not always.

….

For some people, making wrong decisions isn’t the real fear.
What scares them is the belief that they’ll look stupid to
someone else in the process.

Depending on how important the people are whose negative
opinion scares you, you can deal with that a lot of ways. If
they’re casual acquaintances, you might just say, “So what?” Or
you might simply not tell them what you’re doing.

If it’s your spouse, that may not be the best way to approach
it. In that case, you can start a project, and tell them that
you’re doing it so you can get XYZ, without taking the money
out of your regular budget. Or you’re making a hobby out of
learning this stuff, to put some extra money in the retirement
fund.

It’s a different kind of investment, and one that can pay off
big in the long run, with a risk of very little money and some
time in the short term.

If you already spend a lot of time on the computer, you might
just change what you spend that time doing and not even have it
noticed.

Understand that most people will be skeptical of your efforts.
That’s normal. They have the same kinds of fears that you have,
without necessarily having your ability or information to
balance and control those thoughts.

Concern about what other people will think, especially
negative comments from family and friends, is probably the
hardest thing to deal with when you’re getting started.

When it starts working, those fears naturally go away.

….

On the plus side, what benefits do you gain from having a
successful business of your own?

The most common things people list are more money, financial
security, more free time and being their own boss.

Those are not powerful motivators.

What would you do with the money? What would it mean to you?
Maybe you’d be able to travel, and see places you’ve always
wanted to see? Maybe you’d drive a safer (or fancier) car, or
move your family to a better neighborhood, where they can enjoy
more of life’s comforts. Maybe you would be a better provider
for your children, and let them grow up believing that a higher
level of accomplishment and success is possible. Maybe you’d
give your spouse more of the things they want, or you’d have a
more active social life for yourself.

What would you be more secure from? Uncertain job markets?
Rising prices affecting your standard of living? Being locked
into a situation that could change in ways you don’t like and
can’t control?

What would you do with that free time? Spend it with your kids
or your spouse or friends? What about those things is important
to you? Would you take up a hobby you’ve always wanted, or
spend more time with one you enjoy now?

What pain would go away when you’re successful? Struggling with
bills? Sending your kids to schools that aren’t challenging or
preparing them for the kind of life they deserve? Having to say
no to things your family wants? The stress and aggravation of a
job that you hate, or that just bores you silly?

It’s impossible to visualize freedom. It’s easy to visualize
spending a Saturday afternoon on the golf course with your
buddies, or a week in a favorite vacation spot with your
family.

Abstracts don’t have emotional power. Specifics do. Get as
specific as you can, with as many things as you can.

There’s one thing that can be tricky for some folks. That is
the process of adjusting the power of pain. A lot of us spend
our whole lives avoiding even looking at pain, much less
dealing with the ones that don’t exist yet. But it’s precisely
those imagined pains that have the most power.

That’s why turning them into specifics is so helpful. You can
get a more realistic look at what they mean and what it would
take to deal with them.

Or to see that they’re not real at all.

….

Again, you want to maximize the emotional significance of the
pleasant things you’ll gain and the unpleasant things you’ll
lose by achieving your goal. At the same time, you want to
minimize the emotional impact of the things, pleasant and
unpleasant, that you get by not going after it.

First you get shifted into drive, and then you pile on the
stuff that moves you forward, to really ramp up the power
behind your desires. Keep moving the balance further, every way
you can.

That’s how you develop unstoppable motivation.

….

One thing that comes up occasionally when I talk with people is
that some of them don’t believe they can succeed.

Don’t even worry about that. It’s not possible to really want
something that you don’t believe is possible. You might think
it would be incredibly cool to be able to leap tall buildings
in a single bound, or stop a speeding freight train bare-
handed, but you know it’s not possible.

You won’t really want it.

You might miss something you can’t get back, or feel bad about
something you can’t fix, but those aren’t desires. They’re
regrets.

If you really want something, you will believe it’s possible.

….

So, make a list of all the pleasant things you’ll get by
achieving the goal of a successful online business, and the
unpleasant things that will go away when you do. Be specific
and picture them with the most powerful impact you can.

Make a list of the pleasant things you keep and the pains you
avoid by NOT creating a successful online business. For as many
as possible, figure out how to eliminate them or make them as
unimportant as possible.

If you’ve tipped the balance toward taking action, you’ll know
it.

Any time you feel discouraged or start to slow down, run
through all of those things in your mind. In fairly short
order, you should find that minor discouragements don’t even
register, and bigger ones have much less impact.

As you start to see more and more success, the positive things
will become stronger on their own, and the negative things will
fade without you needing to think about them.

At that point, you’ve got the momentum you need to virtually
guarantee that you’ll get where you want to be, and get there
in grand style.

….

Yeah. It’s a simple process. Do it, and you’ll discover that
it’s also a very effective process.

It’s surprisingly fun, too.

Enjoy!

Paul

PS: Don’t forget to check this out. (Just humor me, okay?

http://talkbiz.com/blog/goalsplr.html

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Note from George: If you’ve made it this far, you’ve just had a taste of the Talkbiz newsletter. So if you haven’t already, go and join it HERE.

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