The First Step Is Always The Hardest

 

J.D. Meier wrote an interesting article for Time called “15 Ways to Motivate Yourself and Others”. For the sake of brevity, and to allow time for a different perspective, I’m only going to mention the first 8…

 

1.    Connect to your values

2.    Find your why

3.    Change your why (if your original why isn’t right for the long haul)

4.    Change your how

5.    Remember the feeling (more on this later)

6.    Shift to past, present or the future

7.    Find a meaningful metaphor (for example “the little engine that could”

8.    Take action

 

It’s the “take action” step that I want to use to springboard to a book by Jeff Haden, the

“Motivational Myth – how high achievers really set themselves up to win”. His book starts with number 8 (take action).

 

He writes about not being able to find the motivation to start something big. He was waiting for the spark that he thought was needed to get him going.

 

Without going into a lot of detail, he discovered that for him, as well as for most people, motivation is not a lightning bolt, and even if it were, he describes it as something similar to a sugar rush. It feels great, but it’s impossible to maintain the high, and when you come down, you feel even worse. You feel like a loser, like a failure, which in turn simply reinforces your feeling that you can’t do it.

 

Mr. Haden says that the only recipe for motivation is success. When I read that I thought, wait, is that a chicken/egg thing? If you’re not motivated, how do you achieve the success? His answer is pretty simple – you start. You start and create one little success, which then motivates you to do something else along that path that earns you another success, and another hit of motivation. The author explains that success is a process. A process that is repeatable and predictable.

 

Learning a language can, for some people, seem like an impossible task. It’s like there’s a different word for everything! Not to mention that some languages put the verb or the noun in the wrong place, and they somethings have masculine or feminine versions for the same word (or they don’t). So, after stumbling through a few on-line or in-person classes, you throw in the towel. It’s impossible. Until it isn’t. Until you take the first step.

Self-help books are great. Support groups are great. Telling people want you plan to do is great. But none of that matters if you don’t get started. As Mark Twain wrote, “If you have to eat a frog, don’t look at it too long”.

 

The question remains, how do you motivate yourself or your employees to swallow the frog? To take the first step?

Donald Latumahina, writing in Lifehack, provides some advice that will help us take that first step.

 

 

As you can see, the three points above have “don’t wait” in them. So here is the bottom line: the best time to start is now.

 

If you would like to know more about how to implement "the first step mindset" in your organization, we would love to talk with you about it. Just give us a call.