Learn the Key Factors in Self-Motivation

Self-motivation is complex. It's linked to your level of initiative in setting challenging goals for yourself; your belief that you have the skills and abilities needed to achieve those goals; and your expectation that if you put in enough hard work, you will succeed.

Four factors are necessary to build the strongest levels of self-motivation: 

1. Self-confidence and self-efficacy.

2. Positive thinking, and positive thinking about the future.

3. Focus and strong goals.

4. A motivating environment.

By working on all of these together, you should quickly improve your self-motivation. Let's look at each of these factors individually.

1. Self-Confidence and Self-Efficacy

Part of being self-motivated is having good levels of self-assurance, self-confidence, and self-efficacy.

Being highly self-assured means you will set challenging goals for yourself, and it's also a resiliency factor for when you encounter setbacks. If you don't believe in yourself you'll be much more likely to think, "I knew I couldn't do this" instead of, "This one failure isn't going to stop me!"

Self-efficacy is defined as a belief in our own ability to succeed, and our ability to achieve the goals we set for ourselves. This belief has a huge impact on your approach to goal setting and your behavioral choices as you work toward those goals.

High self-efficacy results in an ability to view difficult goals as a challenge, whereas people with low self-efficacy would likely view the same goals as being beyond their abilities, and might not even attempt to achieve them.

It also contributes to how much effort a person puts into a goal in the first place, and how much he or she perseveres despite setbacks. By developing a general level of self-confidence in yourself, you will not only believe you can succeed, but you'll also recognize and enjoy the successes you've already had. That, in turn, will inspire you to build on those successes. The momentum created by self-confidence is hard to beat.

Take these steps:

Think about the achievements in your life.

Examine your strengths to understand what you can build on.

Determine what other people see as your strengths and key capabilities.

Set achievable goals for yourself, work to achieve them, and enjoy that achievement.
Seek out mentors and other people who model the competencies, skills, and attributes you desire.

As you begin to recognize how much you've already achieved – and understand how much potential you have – you will have the confidence to set goals and achieve the things you desire. The more you look for reasons to believe in yourself, the easier it will be to find ways to motivate yourself. 

2. Positive Thinking, and Positive Thinking about the Future

Remember this…your life today is the result of your attitudes and choices in the past. Your life tomorrow will be the result of your attitudes and the choices you make today.

Positive thinking is closely related to self-confidence as a factor in self-motivation. It's important to look at things positively, especially when things aren't going as planned and you're ready to give up.

If you think that things are going to go wrong or that you won't succeed, this may influence things in such a way that your predictions will come true. This is particularly the case if you need to work hard to achieve success, or if you need to persuade others to support you in order to succeed. Your thoughts can have a major influence on whether you succeed or fail, so make sure those thoughts are "on your side."

Positive thinking also helps you think about an attractive future that you want to realize. When you expect positive results, your choices will be more positive, and you'll be less likely to leave outcomes to fate or chance. Having a vivid picture of success, combined with positive thinking, helps you bridge the gap between wanting something and going out to get it.

To apply "the power of positive thinking", do the following:

• Become aware of your thoughts. Write down these down throughout the day.
• Challenge your negative thoughts, and replace them with positive ones.
• Create a strong and vivid picture of what it will be like to achieve your goals.
• Develop affirmations or statements that you can repeat to yourself throughout the day. These statements should remind you of what you want to achieve, and why you will achieve it.
• Practice positive thinking until you automatically think about yourself and the world in a positive way, every day.

3. Focus and Strong Goals

As mentioned, a key part of building self-motivation is to start setting strong goals. They give you focus, a clear sense of direction, and the self-confidence that comes from recognizing your own achievement.

First, determine your direction through effective goal setting.

When you set a goal, you make a promise to yourself. Part of the strength of this is that it gives you a clear direction. Part is that you've made this promise to yourself, and you'll want to keep this promise. And part is that it's a challenge, and it's fun to try to meet that challenge!

But don't set just any goal. Your goal should have the following characteristics:

Clarity - Effective goals are clear, measurable, specific, and based on behavior, not outcomes.

Challenge - Goals should be difficult enough to be interesting, but not so difficult that you can't reach them.

Commitment - Goals should be attainable, and should be relevant – that is, they should contribute in a significant way to the major objectives you're trying to achieve.

Regularity of Feedback - Monitor your progress towards your goals regularly to maintain your sense of momentum and enthusiasm, and enjoy your progress towards those goals.

Sufficient Respect For Complexity - If the goal involves complex work, make sure that you don't over-commit yourself. Complex work can take an unpredictably long time to complete (particularly if you have to learn how to do the task "on the job").

 

See how each goal activity fits into the bigger picture of your overall objectives. If you fully understand your priorities, you probably won't feel as pressured to do everything at once. This can reduce stress and help you to concentrate on the most important strategies.

4. Motivating Environment

The final thing to focus on is surrounding yourself with people and resources that will remind you of your goals, and help you with your internal motivation. These are external factors – they'll help you get motivated from the outside, which is different from the internal motivation we've discussed so far. However, the more factors you have working for you, the better.

You can't just rely on these "environmental" or outside elements alone to motivate you, but you can use them for extra support. Try the following: 

• Look for team work opportunities. Working in a team makes you accountable to others.
• Ask your boss for interesting assignments with specific targets and objectives to help you measure your success.
• Set up some goals that you can easily achieve. Quick wins are great for getting you motivated.
• Buddy up with people who you trust to be supportive, and ask them to help keep you accountable.
• Try not to work by yourself too much. Balance the amount of time you work from home with time spent working with others.

When you start your self-motivation program, you may tend to rely heavily on these external factors. As you get more comfortable and confident with your self-motivation, you'll probably use them only as needed, and for a little extra help.

Key Points

Self-motivation doesn't come naturally to everyone. And even those who are highly self-motivated need some extra help every now and then. 

Build your self-motivation by practicing goal-setting skills, and combining those with positive thinking, the creation of powerful visions of success, and the building of high levels of self-efficacy and self-confidence.

Your attitude and beliefs about your likelihood of success can predict whether or not you actually succeed. Set goals, and work hard to achieve them. Examine ways to improve your self-motivation, and regularly reassess your motivation levels. If you actively keep your internal motivation high, you can significantly increase the likelihood of achieving your hopes, dreams, and visions of the future.

Achieve your full potential and work with a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years’ experience empowering individuals, executives and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional and personal lives. Book a complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com to get started today!

Simple Tools to Counter the Stress of Negative Thinking

While dealing with all the challenges that are before us each day, it is easy to feel stressful. Quite often, our experience of stress comes from our perception of the situation which can send us into a downward spiral of unhappiness and negative thinking, and can cause us to be unfair or aggressive with others.

A popular definition of stress is, "a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.”

In becoming stressed, people must make two main judgments:  First, they must feel threatened by the situation, and second, they must judge whether their capabilities and resources are sufficient to meet the threat. How stressed someone feels depends on how much damage they think the situation can do them, and how closely their resources meet the demands of the situation.

Perception is the key to this as most situations are not stressful in their own right. Rather it is our interpretation of the situation that drives the level of stress that we feel.

Sometimes we are right in what we say to ourselves. Some situations may actually be dangerous, may threaten us physically, socially or in our career. Here, emotions are part of the early warning system that alerts us to the threat from these situations. Very often, however, we are overly harsh and unjust to ourselves in a way that we would never be with friends or co-workers. This, along with other negative thinking, can cause intense stress and unhappiness and can severely undermine self-confidence.

Thought Awareness, Rational Thinking, and Positive Thinking are simple tools that help you to change this negative thinking.  They will help you manage and counter the stress of negative thinking.

Thought Awareness helps you to understand the negative thinking, unpleasant memories and misinterpretation of situations that may interfere with your performance and damage your self-confidence.

Rational Thinking is the technique that helps you to challenge these negative thoughts and either learn from them or refute them as incorrect.

Positive thinking is then used to create positive affirmations that you can use to counter negative thoughts. These affirmations neutralize negative thoughts and build your self-confidence. It is also used to find the opportunities that are almost always present to some degree in a difficult situation.

Thought Awareness

You are thinking negatively when you fear the future, put yourself down, criticize yourself for errors, doubt your abilities, or expect failure. Negative thinking damages confidence, harms performance and paralyzes mental skills.

A major problem with this is that negative thoughts tend to fit into our consciousness, do their damage and flit back out again with their significance, having barely been noticed. Since we do not challenge them, they can be completely incorrect and wrong. Yet, this does not diminish their harmful effect.

Thought Awareness is the process by which you observe your thoughts and become aware of what is going through your head.

One approach to it is to observe your stream of consciousness as you think about a stressful situation. Do not suppress any thoughts: Instead, you just let them run their course while you watch them, and write them down on paper as they occur.

Another more general approach to Thought Awareness comes with logging stress in a Stress Diary. One of the benefits of using a Stress Diary is that, for one or two weeks, you log all of the unpleasant things in your life that cause you stress. This will include negative thoughts and anxieties, and can also include difficult or unpleasant memories and situations that you perceive as negative. By logging your negative thoughts for a reasonable period of time, you can quickly see patterns in your negative thinking. When you analyze your diary at the end of the period, you should be able to see the most common and the most damaging thoughts. Tackle these as a priority.

Thought awareness is the first step in the process of managing negative thoughts, as you cannot manage thoughts that you are unaware of.

Rational Thinking

The next step in dealing with negative thinking is to challenge the negative thoughts that you identified using the Thought Awareness technique.  Look at every thought you wrote down and rationally challenge it.  Ask yourself whether the thought is reasonable: Does it stand up to fair scrutiny?

As an example, by analyzing your Stress Diary you might identify that you have frequently had the following negative thoughts:

•Feelings of inadequacy.
•Worries that your performance in your job will not be good enough.
•An anxiety that things outside your control will undermine your efforts.
•Worries about other people's reactions to your work.

Starting with these, you might challenge negative thoughts in the ways shown:

Feelings of inadequacy: Have you trained and educated yourself as well as you reasonably should to do the job? Do you have the experience and resources you need to do it? Have you planned, prepared and rehearsed appropriately? If you have done all of these, are you setting yourself unattainably high standards for doing the job?

Worries about performance: Do you have the training that a reasonable person would think is needed to do a good job? Have you planned appropriately? Do you have the information and resources you need? Have you cleared the time you need and cued up your support team appropriately? Have you prepared appropriately? If you have not, then you need to do these things quickly. If you have, then you are well positioned to give the best performance that you can.

Problems with issues outside your control: Have you conducted appropriate contingency planning? Have you thought through and managed all likely risks and contingencies appropriately? If so, you will be well prepared to handle potential problems.

Worry about other people's reactions: If you have put in good preparation, and you do the best you can, then that is all that you need to know. If you perform as well as you reasonably can, then fair people are likely to respond well. If people are not fair, then this is something outside your control.

A few things to remember:

Don't make the mistake of generalizing a single incident. OK, you made a mistake at work, but that doesn't mean you're bad at your job.

Similarly, make sure you take the long view about incidents that you're finding stressful. Just because you're finding that new system, or new responsibilities stressful now, doesn't mean that they will always be so for you in the future.

Often, the best thing to do is to rise above unfair comments. Write your rational response to each negative thought on paper.

If you find it difficult to look at your negative thoughts objectively, imagine that you are your best friend or a respected coach or mentor. Look at the list of negative thoughts and imagine the negative thoughts were written by someone you were giving objective advice to, and think how you would challenge these thoughts.

When you challenge negative thoughts rationally, you should be able to see quickly whether the thoughts are wrong or whether they have some substance to them. Where there is some substance, take appropriate action as this may be an early warning system showing where you need to direct your attention.

Positive Thinking and Opportunity Seeking

Where you have used Rational Thinking to identify incorrect negative thinking, it can often be useful to prepare rational positive thoughts and affirmations to counter them. It can also be useful to look at the situation and see if there are any useful opportunities that are offered by it.

Affirmations help you to build self-confidence. By basing your affirmations on the clear, rational assessments of facts that you made using Rational Thinking, you can use them to undo the damage that negative thinking may have done to your self-confidence. Your affirmations will be strongest if they are specific, are expressed in the present tense and have strong emotional content.

Continuing the examples above, positive affirmations for these feelings might be:

Feelings of inadequacy: "I am well trained for this. I have the experience, the tools and the resources I need. I have thought through and prepared for all possible issues. I can do a superb job."

Worries about performance: "I have researched and planned well for this, and I thoroughly understand the problem. I have the time, resources and help I need. I am well prepared to do an excellent job."

Problems issues outside your control: "We have thought through everything that might reasonably happen and have planned how we can handle all likely contingencies. Everyone is ready to help where necessary. We are very well placed to react flexibly and effectively to unusual events."

Worry about other people's reaction: "I am well-prepared and am doing the best I can. Fair people will respect this. I will rise above any unfair criticism in a mature and professional way."

If appropriate, write these affirmations down on paper so that you can use them when you need them.

As well as allowing you to structure useful affirmations, part of Positive Thinking is to look at opportunities that the situation might offer to you. In the examples above, successfully overcoming the situations causing the original negative thinking will open up opportunities. You will acquire new skills, you will be seen as someone who can handle difficult challenges, and you may open up new career opportunities.

Make sure that identifying these opportunities and focusing on them is part of your positive thinking. In the past, people have advocated positive thinking almost recklessly as if it is a solution to everything. Positive thinking should be used with common sense. First, decide rationally what goals you can realistically attain with hard work, and then use positive thinking to reinforce these.

Get the tools you need to excel in your life by working with Denise Dema, a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years experience empowering individuals, executives and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. Denise’s passion for personal development is at the core of her business and life philosophy and she is committed to helping others achieve their full potential in order to live richer, more fulfilling lives. To learn more book a complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com to discuss your current objectives and goals. On-site, phone, e-mail coaching available.

Leadership Tools - Building Confidence in Others

Do you ever wonder how great leaders create self-assured teams?

Think about watching a sports match between two teams, where one team is more confident than the other. The members of the more confident team know that they have a good chance of winning. As a result, everyone on the team makes good decisions, and the players work together seamlessly. Meanwhile, the other team's confidence is shaky. Players doubt their abilities, they hesitate, and they don't commit fully to any particular course of action. When this happens, it's likely that the more confident team will win.

The same principles apply in the workplace - when you have people on your team who have low self-confidence, this can hold them back from reaching their full potential.

This is why it's important that we do what we can to boost the confidence of those around us, especially if we're leading a team.

Recognizing Low Self-Confidence
People who lack self-confidence rarely thrive. They see more risks than opportunities, they don't perform particularly well in new situations, and they often have low self-esteem. What's more, they rarely trust their own judgment, and they may see any successes that they do achieve as resulting from luck, rather than from their own efforts.

By contrast, people who have high self-confidence are more productive and more effective, and can raise the morale of the entire group. They're also more comfortable taking risks, which can have benefits for their own careers, as well as for their teams.

Confidence can make or break people's ability to achieve their life goals. So how can you help boost the self-confidence of the people around you?

Help Them Develop Knowledge and Skills
Chances are that there are several skills you rely on to do your job well. When you use these skills successfully, what happens? You feel confident! These are the skills that you've worked on over the years, and you're comfortable that you can use them to accomplish the task at hand.
The same is true for the people on your team. The stronger their skills are, the more confident they're going to feel.

So a good way to increase the self-confidence of people in your team is by encouraging learning, and by providing plenty of opportunities for additional training. The more knowledge and skills that people have to do their job, the more confident they're going to feel, especially when they approach challenging projects.

Set Clear Goals and Help Them Achieve Them
Many people get confidence from completing tasks and projects successfully. But that confidence only comes if people know what it is that they're supposed to do.

This is why it is so important to set clear goals for every member of your team. Goals define success, and give people an objective to shoot for. Without them, they're working aimlessly.

So make sure that the people on your team know what goals they're supposed to be working toward, and help them to achieve these goals. Then, when they succeed, celebrate their achievements!

Help Them Identify "Triggers"
All of us experience fluctuations in our confidence - some tasks or situations lift us up, while others can cause our confidence to drop.

If you work with someone who has low self-confidence, help him to identify his "trigger situations." By knowing what causes his confidence to waver, he can work to build the knowledge and skills he needs to feel more confident.

To do this, grab a piece of paper and a pen, and sit down with this person. Divide the page into two columns. On one side, ask him to list the situations that make him feel confident. This could be anything, from writing the corporate blog to helping shape your department's budget. Anything that makes him feel happy and confident should go on this list. Then, next to each task, have him write down why he's confident in these situations. What knowledge or skill is he using that makes him feel good?

Next, ask him to list the situations that don't make him feel confident. This could include giving presentations, expressing his opinion in meetings, or writing a report. Why doesn't he feel confident in these situations? What new knowledge and skills would help him feel better in each scenario?

It can be an eye-opening experience to identify these triggers. But, once he can see which skills he could improve on, he'll be more motivated to face his fears.

You could also use role playing with him. This is a useful technique that allows him to practice succeeding in low-confidence scenarios. To do this, you'll need to talk to this person about his self-confidence, which may be something that he instinctively tries to avoid. You're much more likely to be successful if you have this conversation as part of a coaching or mentoring relationship.

Encourage Autonomy
If you want your team to tackle tasks with confidence, it's important that you allow them the autonomy to make their own decisions. When your people have the power to decide what needs to be done, they start to take ownership of their work. It truly becomes their responsibility, and when they succeed, their confidence can soar.

Whenever you can, delegate tasks and give your people the power to make their own decisions. Be aware, however, that people who have low self-confidence may resist this at first: after all, they may doubt that they'll make the right decisions. To fight these doubts, encourage them to take on small, achievable projects. Then, if they rely on you too much for help or guidance, encourage them to be more independent This will push them to make their own decisions, instead of running to you for help or advice.

Celebrate Success
It's important that all of us celebrate the success we've achieved, because recognition of success builds self-confidence. Whenever your people accomplish a goal or hit a key target, then celebrate with them! Reward them with a gift certificate, party at the office, or even do something small like bringing in donuts, cookies or cake. At the very least, congratulate them on their success, and let them know how much you appreciate their hard work.

It's also important to keep your team excited about what they're doing. Celebrating success helps with this, but keeping motivation high long-term is key to building a team with high confidence levels..

Encourage Positive Thinking
Many people who lack self-confidence focus on negative thoughts. They may think things like, "I can't do that!" or "I'm not smart enough." These negative thoughts cause people to spiral down further, reinforcing their belief that they'll never be good enough to succeed. Of course, this just makes things worse!

Encourage people to think positively. One technique is to show them how to "flip their thoughts" - every time they catch themselves thinking a negative thought, teach them to think its rational opposite.

For instance, if they think "I'm not smart enough to finish this project," instead they should think "I know I have the knowledge and skills to finish this project. If I do need help, I can always ask for it." Flipping a thought from negative to positive creates a subtle shift in our minds. The change in our outlook and energy is almost palpable, so this technique can make a big difference in confidence!

Balancing Self-Confidence and Over-Confidence
When people become more self-confident there's always the risk they can become over-confident, or even arrogant. There's no doubt that there is a fine line here, but once it's crossed, these people can start to impact the morale and productivity of the group in a negative way. What's worse is when people get careless, because they over-estimate their own ability to improvise in difficult situations.

If this happens to a person on your team, start by gently bringing the situation to their attention. Chances are that they might not have realized that they crossed the line into arrogance. Meet with them in private, be specific about what their saying or doing, and explain why their behavior could be construed as arrogance. If their behavior has caused tension or upset in the team, then make sure that you let them know. Usually, when people are aware that their behavior is hurting others, they're motivated to change.


Key Points
If you work with people who have low self-confidence, there are several ways that you can help.

First, encourage them to develop additional knowledge and skills. Help them set clear goals, and sit down with them to identify specific situations that cause their confidence to plummet.

If you're leading a team, give your people as much power as you can to make their own decisions, and celebrate the success they achieve along the way. But remember that too much self-confidence can be just as damaging to your team as low self-confidence, so help them find the right balance.

Confidence is key in working effectively and productively. So do everything that you can to help boost other people's confidence, as well as your own. You'll start to see huge improvements in people's performance!

Get the tools you need to excel in your professional and personal life. Work with a Business Coach that specializes in the development of human potential and personal effectiveness. Book a complimentary session today!

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