In the previous lessons, we’ve talked about getting a vision for your business, setting goals, and creating a business plan.
However, all the effort you’ve put into building the foundation of your business will be for nothing unless you follow through and take action.
So today we’re going to talk about staying motivated…
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
Examples: Losing 5 pounds or getting a new car by a certain date = short term
Feeling good about yourself or living a certain lifestyle = long term
-My faith
-Family (external factor, but there is also internal side to it)
-A sense of fulfilling my purpose
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/thirteen-tricks-to-motivate-yourself.html
http://zenhabits.net/2007/02/top-20-motivation-hacks-overview/
Action steps:
1) Figure out what really motivates you internally
2) Make sure those things are a part of your vision
3) Think about whether your vision will motivate you for the long term, and if not, tweak your vision.
Even if you follow all of my advice from this lesson, there will still be times when you don’t feel motivated. There will be times when you don’t want to complete the steps. It involves a choice, and the choice is yours. I’ll be talking about it in the next lesson.
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below. (Feel free to share something that motivates you)
Have a great day!
Hi Eric,
You are absolutely right about the importance of motivation. I think lack of motivation or failure to keep oneself motivated is one of the reasons why so many people fail to achieve their full potential and that include myself. I am impressed with your motivation to impart knowledge thru the lessons you have shared thus far despite the fact that you are doing it for FREE. Your sincerity is really a motivation for me to continue learning how to make a living online. Keep up the good work. Looking forward for the next lesson.
For me choosing mentors and following their guidance. You said in one of your earlier tips was to choose a mentor. I chose you and Robert Kiyosaki from Rich Dad Poor Dad. Now I am watching Big Idea with Donny Deiutch and focusing on the B and I sectors. Reading Rich dad’s guide to investing the 3rd part of the series he states to focus on the quadrant that interests you the most read,watch as much about operating a business and investing you can. I watched the Big Idea last night it was about how to make your first million in tough times. During economic downtimes is the best time to start a business!! Just keeping focus and wake up every day as if had already met your goal!! Thanks Eric!
I love how you tied together goals and visions with short term and long term motivation…you really bring clarity and direction to something that can seem so difficult in identifing at times(at least for me). In the past a lot of my motivation has come from seeing an increasing amount of customers or payments. Now I realize that those are only short term motivators and I need to start focusing more on long term and internal motivation….thanks again for the great lesson!
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We Give You 120 Individual Turnkey Websites With Your Paypal ID On Each
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Thanks for your kind words Wilfred đ
Sounds great Shane. You are a student of the business, and that is exactly what you want to be.
Cool đ And if you’re seeing an increase in customers and income, that IS a great motivator, so use it to your advantage as much as possible. But it’s good to have a long term internal motivator too, because you never know when hard times will hit and that income could be swept away. In a time like that, you have to pick yourself up and keep moving forward.
This is great. For my is not hard to motivate myself, but is hard to keep motivation, in part because the info overload era in which we are leaving, each day there is something new that I am curious about it, I have to stop this madness for a while and concentrate in just one project at a time â this training – the building of my new on-line business.
I also think that is good if we have small successes down the road, they can help on keeping our motivation. If each important task produces some sort of a little success, this will help a lot on keeping motivation alive. What you think!
Regards Michaela
I was very interested in this lesson. I realize that my problem in the past with âstaying the courseâ had to do more with losing that internal motivation that so often pushes me forward in the beginning.
Iâm sure everyone here has heard of burn-out. Thatâs when a person joins a project in progress, quickly assesses the situation, makes tweaks and leads the teamâand the goal line keeps getting set farther and farther into the distance. Eventually, that person becomes disassociated with the goal. The vision that put the person there in the first place gets lost in physical, emotional and mental weariness.
I suppose in ecommerce the nuts-and-bolts activity can be described as setting up a website, taking all the other steps necessary for creating interest, bringing visitors to your site and making conversions.
First traffic grows. You watch for clicks on links. You wonder why some links are clicked and others are ignored. Or why so many âhoverâ over a link but do not take the appropriate action. You learn more, go back and make tweaks until you start getting those conversions.
In ecommerce you are likely doing this all alone. You are making sales but certainly not the five or six figure monthly income youâd hoped for. Your familyâs eyes glaze over when you speak of your progress and disappointments. You might be working on your financial statement when you realize that all your hard work boils down to about $4.70 an hour! Suddenly you are focusing on the cost of your enterprise and not the gain.
Even if you have a compelling reason for your undertaking, that vision starts to fade. You come to believe that you will always be putting in 10-12-14-hour days. Thatâs when you begin to feel the trap.
I have certainly felt it. I have certainly felt: okay, Iâve succeeded here, but now Iâm faced with [this]. Are my rewards for performing [thisâpick any negative] balancing my weariness of having to do it? You see I have lost the initial vision and all I see are the overwhelming negatives: spending more time, not less; the continual demand for creating content; measuring what works and what doesnât for marketing a particular product or service; even locating your potential customer takes time. The sales at the end of the day no longer seem to compensate for the time and effort that went into getting the project rolling and continually having to refine it.
As I mentioned, this is a place Iâve found myself beforeâbut never truly on my own as I am on the internet. I am hoping that personal choice to miss a deadline, to take a day to do something entirely different will help me shake the anxiety and allow me to return the next day refreshed with hope.
Way to much emphasis is placed on the mindset in this business. You need to be active and work on your business but you are given the impression that because of your mindset you are not successful enough or because you don’t believe enough you are not making any money.It is very harmful idea. When I hear something like that on the seminar or elsewhere , it is difficult for me to stay motivated. ‘Vision boards’….Do you really have to be fanatic to make money? I don’t thing so.This is the thing I like about you Eric, you are so normal and I don’t see in you anything like that.You preach out of your own experience and there is no crazy stuff.
Thanks for the encouragement
Great subject Eric. I can relate with Elaine comments when you start seeing your vision fading when you start to see your actual results that they don’t amount to much, then you start to doubt your vision if it will ever happen and your self-steem starts to suffer specially when is field that is completely new and one has no frame of reference or previous successes. I have been very interested and fascinated by the internet but never met anybody that really made a great amount of money online until recently and when I did that sparked a new excitement to learn it and make it work and continue to compete with myself.
“This business requires self motivation” I believe this is the KEY. External motivation may not last. When all things look going uphill, whether we have the Self Motivation to go again teh tide or not very much depend on our self not other people.
Enthusiasm is the key factor for you to stay motivated and to build successful business.
Enthusiasm will keep you maintain motivation day after day through the highs and lows.
To Your Success
Bryan Hee
Great job.Keep it up and God bless you.
On a less personal point, I just took a break and went to Barnes & Nobles. I read the latest Harvard Business Review, wherein an article on workplace motivation states the following 4 cause satisfaction or disatisfaction:
-Drive to acquire (what is important to me)
-Drive to bond (teams,coworkers relationships)
-Drive to comprehend (sense of the world around us; bad if the business is in crisis)
-Drive to defend (loyalty to the business)
Surely all of these play a huge part in OUR internet businesses. I can look at previous posts and see a bit of these there also.
Hope you found it interesting!
Kit
Eric,
A very good lesson. Thank you.
Hey Eric,
Previously getting motivated was really a hard task for me , i learned it the hard way but now things are much better. I’ve been telling myself everyday that I need to be financially free by the age of 35, and my daily motivation is staying out of employment for good. I dread to work for people, and I love running my own business. đ Thanks for this great lesson and keep up the good work. Actually if not because of you I would still be lost on the Internet (trying everything out & getting information overload). Looking forward for your next lesson.
Your Free Digital Resource Center
http://www.dbookworm.com
Great video Eric, I feel like I have all the motivation that is needed. I have two websites up but it is discouraging when I have visitors but no sales. I have been studying everything on marketing and advertising. I feel like I am doing something wrong. With being a newbie at this I could really use some advise. I hope this will be covered on one of your future videos. I have enjoy each and every one so far! Sometimes I feel like I am runnning around in circles! Thanks for all the advice!
Sandy
Really good, Eric! – and very clarifing regarding short term – long term. You paint it so understandable. Should have seen this long ago, but I haven’t.
Tormod
hello Eric, am short of words to appreciate you for all the information you’ve been sending to me. thank you very, very, very much. actually for some time have been trying to reach you and ask you how i can really start this online business. right from the beginning of this year i promise myself i want to quit my job to be my own boss. and the only place my mind is shifted to is online business. pls. i need your help.
2ndly some time ago you sent me some free ebooks which have grown my desire in online business “virtual coporation, ebay and some others”, though have been making little money from it offline. and right now am trying to develop my website and add these ebooks to other books have writing for marketing, would you mind me doing that.
ilook forward to hear from Eric.
Michael (beginner in online business)
I lose focus on things because I get lazy or distracted. So I try to kep myself motivated by keeping my long term goals in mind. Learning ne thing to help my business keeps me interested.
Sucess often breeds more success, right? Yes I agree with you that vision is the long term key to staying motivated but success does help a lot. How do you keep others motivated as well is the question with they don’t see any success in what they’re doing? Yes, I know people are different and of course they all will have different reasons. At first, it’s ignorance on fire but after 2nd or 3rd month, the fire seems to die out and it’s now diffucult as a sponsor to light the embers, again so to speak. Any suggestions?
Hi Eric,
Great Lesson.
Unless you are motivated,you can’t move forward.Internal motivation is so important than external factors as these are short term.
I feel motivated when i can help others,completing a big task which i love to do.
Thanks for sharing.
Best Wishes,
Kannan Viswagandhi
http://www.growing-self.blogspot.com
I’ve never really had a problem motivating myself when I want to achieve something. I find I am able to focus on whatever I put my mind to. There are two things that I know do motivate me though… one is that I love challenges. I want to be abe to look back later in life and say I wanted to do something and I did it despite the obstacles. I’ve taked calculated risks based on this motivator and one thing I’ve found is that it also encourages others that they can do the same. My other motivator is that, when it comes to my life I’m never satisfied with just the “good” if I feel there is a chance of achieving something better or greater. A short while back I wrote a press release vision, which is of me giving an interview about my multimillion dollar copywriting and publishing empire. I didn’t post it of course but I shared it with a group of like minded people – who also wrote their own. While I haven’t physically arrived at that point yet,as far as I am concerned the steps I am taking daily are getting me closer to what is already there and established – my vision, which is very detailed. I believe in “believing it before you see it,” and that is one or my more powerful motivators. I then use intention, focus, persistance and my goals to move towards my vision.
As you say, sometimes you just don’t feel motivated when you’re going day to day… especially when you’re not seeing the results you want. That’s just the way it is – no one can be “up” all the time. What I do then is read motivational books, listen to tapes, look at what I am doing, talk to people who can inspire me with how they overcame similar obstacles, or switch actions and do something completely different for a while. Then come back to my actions. At the end of the day, achieving your goals and vision means you have to choose to keep taking the neccessary actions for success… even when you feel less than motivated.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Values (Needs) in Action
Hi Eric, Soul searching and Dispassionate Observation Time.
I owe you a hundred bucks! …or whatever the going psychotherapy rate is. I found that the thing which drives me to the computer is a need for financial security ( Maslow’s second level). I have to find a way to support myself once my current source of funds ends. I struggle past pain and a brain that is fickle, to way the least.
The thing which KEEPS me at the computer is the love of learning and expression. ( Maslow’s top value) My business plan is built on using this love and my writing talents.
This echoes your intrinsic and external model.
Also, on a practical note. I have enrolled in International Living.com’s postcard newsletters. They send a steady flow of pictures, showing me the life of my dreams. Nothing like those pictures to refresh the day!
Thanks again,
Colin
Hi Katarina – I believe that your mindset in any business is crucial. It’s not the whole story, but if you have a mindset that tells you you won’t succeed, or that you don’t deserve to make money then you won’t or you won’t make the millions. True, belief alone won’t make you money, the correct actions and the correct beliefs working together will. I personally have a vision board/treasure map and I find it very powerful. It works for me and having one doesn’t make you a fanatic about making money. it’s simply another way of physically focusing your mind on exactly what you want and recognizing opportunities when they show up.
I love to reade about how highly successful people became so, and one thing they all have in common is a certain mindset. What’s interesting is that it is often not the mindset they grew up with.
And of course the sentence should be “I’ve taken” not “I’ve taked” Ack!
Eric,
I am guilty of this.I find it challenging to take action consistently. Thanks for the tip.I shall re-evaluate myself accordingly.
Ibrahim
Thank you Eric, for providing us with such great insights and advice. My clear vision and goals, short and long term, serve as the catalyst for my motivation and staying focused. I am determined to succeed in achieving all my goals and then some. I am grateful to have the opportunity to benefit from your knowledge, experience and success that you so generously share with us.
Money is a great motivation to start, but not to keep going when it gets tough. You have to reach deep inside. Providing for family and loved ones, knowing they are depending on me is what keeps me going when I’d rather quit.
Thanks for the valuable information Eric, it a common mistake that many people make.
Your video has reinforced the concept within me.
Thanks once again
Hi Eric and all
Motivation in an info overloaded environment is a big challenge for me. Together with all the distractions we face on a daily basis, we can easily drift away from our goals. I don’t know if you will dedicate a lesson on staying on focus, but I think this is my biggest challenge that causes me to loose motivation.
Thanks for the lesson and the links in your post that include some very useful tips.
Sherif
Yes…I agree! Enthusiasm, Motivation, determenation and lots of energy with the ability to focus. Best of luck!
Thanks Eric, for such a Great lesson on motivation. I would like to share my short term motivations, which kept me going, but not long enough. The no.1 goal was to make some money in the online business which I had learnt after attending a internet marketing seminar.
After I got a couple of thousands, I had achieved my goal. Then I lost “MY FOCUS”. I had failed to understood the BIG PICTURE – MY Vision.
Today, after going through lesson 16, I have realized the difference between “MY VISION” & “MY GOALS”. It great to be here…
Thanks
Julius
http://www.communicatetoriches.com
Thanks Eric again for the great lesson!
For me you are the real example to follow. I appreciate every tips you are sharing with us. Thanks for the links,
Halina
Thanks Eric, as always a great lesson and some motivation for my online business.
Thanks for everything
Mike
Extra Income for life. See more details at http://www.NextIM.ws
Hi Eric,
Yours explanation is obsolutely right, we can feel & see ourself as how we are going to move with your clues. Isn’t easy to motivate as we normally saying.
We knew it’s tough but talking by expertise like you do motivate us.
Isn’t just your lessons but your trueself with ongoing lessons do motivate us to success.
Ths, regards
Hi,
I believe that people become demotivated because they have started out with unrealistic expectations, and when they are unfulfilled they get disillusioned.
In their sales letters many marketers talk of people making ‘$000s within months sometimes even days.
But I find it more informative to read their backstories of how they have spent 3, 5 maybe even 7 years getting to their present position.
I dont know how long it might take me, but I’m assuming it will take at least 12 months before I can determine whether it is worth continuing….so if some days go slow…that’s in the nature of things, and as some one famously said “tomorrow is another day” (lol)
Thanks for all your efforts Eric.
Harry
Proper foundation will lead to greater chances of success! That is a great motivational factor that will unlock the key to wealth.
Together we shall win!
Adesegun Akitoye
http://www.repeatrichrelief.com/pips.html
A timely reminder Eric!
My music is my long term vision, but short term goals need to be clearly set along the path.
Bodywork therapies are part of my short term money at present too, but divides my time setting both short term goals with them, and still the holism and upliftment from therapies also is part of my long term vision. Wonder if I am too divided here, but feel both areas – music and bodywork therapies – are important.
http://www.myspace.com/atenrabodyworks
A few months ago I took 2 young boys fishing. They were 13 & 15 years old. They had never been fishing and were very excited to get to go. I showed them how to tie on baits how to cast and they were eager to learn.
After fishing for about 1 hour and not catching anything (not even getting a bite) their motivation for fishing was gone. My insightful lessons on persistence and simply enjoying nature around them fell on deaf ears. They concluded on the way home that âthey just werenât fishermenâ.
Recently, after months of trying to get them to go fishing with me again they finally agreed. There was no excitement about the trip. You could tell they had zero expectation that they would catch any fish.
We caught bunches of fish. Now every time I see these boys they ask me to take them fishing. Itâs amazing what catching some fish did for these boys motivation.
Elaine,
I have had to do that several times. You sometimes need to step back, take a day off, get focused on family, friends, alone time…whatever refreshes you. The day after day of duking it out with your computer and web sites, forums…it’s overwhelming and exhausting, even depressing if you’re not seeing results. There’s no quicker way to burn out and lose motivation than to let this business beat you up. You’re smart to realize this is something you must do and don’t feel guilty about it. Even people with j-o-b-s needs to take a day off occassionally!
Yes, Eric and Len,
This is exactly what I said early on, if we structure our plan and work in a way that we will start to see a little success as we progress with our tasks, our motivation will receive a great bust. My problem in the past wasnât the âinitial motivationâ; it was âkeeping motivation aliveâ.
I really think that the starting point of having some success in the middle of the learning curve has a great value in it.
Regards
Michaela
http://www.ebookscamp.com
And there is another lesson there Len… that we often tend to give up far too soon. We don’t see immediate results – we conclude that we can’t do it and give up. Sometimes all we need to do is, as you said, persist until we achieve.
Hi Eric,
It’s been awhile since we received lesson 16. What’s up? Have I missed lesson 17,18,19… or you have been busy and didn’t have time for lesson 17?
Look forward to lesson 17 soon!
It will be posted tomorrow. Yes, I’ve been busy, and thank you for your patience! đ
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Yes I think little successes along the way are a huge source of motivation.
Thanks for sharing this Elaine. I’m glad you have assessed yourself, and it sounds like you are on the right track to help yourself avoid anxiety and stay motivated.
I think I know what you are saying. Some teachers put too much emphasis on the mindset, saying things like “if you just believe it, it will come true”…
Mindset is important in business, but you are right that it’s not about fanatasicm.