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Do You Know What Motivates You?
November 3, 2010
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Winston Churchill said "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
So what motivates us to continue? For some it is achieving a personal best, others may be motivated by competition or by learning something new. Do you know what keeps you going?
In this Sweeney Agency newsletter three great speakers share ideas that can help you identify what motivates YOU.
To find the perfect speaker for your next meeting visit us here. |
 Eileen McDargh The Irresistible Offer
Consider the irresistible offer. What is that one thing that if someone asked you to do it -for free- you would accept?
Often times, we resemble bobble heads, saying yes to positions or activities that don't bring joy or meaning to our lives. To what would you instantly say "yes", without hesitation, a feeling of guilt, or a response to coercion of any kind? What is it about that offer which makes it so compelling?
Answer that and you begin to identify that which motivates you. For me, such offers contain an opportunity to be creative, to experience an adventure, to be with people whom I enjoy, to learn, and to be of service in some way. That is what makes an offer irresistible to me. What would you say?
More great ideas from Eileen McDargh... |
Steve Gilliland Check Your Motivation
Purpose is the engine that powers our lives. Without it, we toil in a job but never build a career or find our calling. Without purpose, work becomes a necessary interruption between weekends. Weekends, to many people, are an escape from a weekly prison of purposelessness.
The success of an effort depends not so much on the outcome of the effort but on the motive for making the effort in the first place. The motive makes the difference.
The greatest companies, the greatest men and women in all walks of life, have made the biggest difference out of a desire to express something within them that had to be expressed, a desire to solve a problem using their skills and creativity as best they could. Granted, many of these people earned a great deal of money and prestige for what they accomplished, but the key to their success is to be found in the fact that they were motivated more by providing excellence in a product or service to fill a need than by thinking of profit.
See Steve Gilliland's bio and video on our site... |
| Bill Benjamin Motivated by Goals
I learned an important lesson from my attempt to ride the Etape du Tour (a stage of the Tour de France).
When I told my sister that I didn't finish the ride, she said "that's ok, goals are overrated anyway". I agree with that, but I want to amend it to "goals are overrated, unless you don't have them". What do I mean by that? Having a big goal like riding a stage of the Tour de France provided me with incredible motivation and focus to do things I would not have done otherwise. I would not have done all the training I did, I would not have ridden mountains in Las Vegas, California, Tuscon, I would not have had the incredible rides in the Pyrenees of France, and I would not have rediscovered my passion for cycling. Finally I would not have lost 25 pounds and gotten into better shape.
So what I really mean about goals being "overrated" is that focusing on whether or not you achieve the goal in the end is what is overrated. There are so many factors that go into making a goal that are outside of one's control. For me, I didn't achieve my goal of finishing the ride, but in hindsight, that was never realistic anyway. I didn't even achieve my "secondary goal" of making it up the first two mountains. But I had an incredible ride, I did my absolute best and gave it everything I had. More importantly, the six month journey leading up to the ride has had a huge positive impact for me.
Set big goals for yourself, but don't get too caught up in whether you actually make it. It sounds cliché, but it really is about enjoying the journey.
P.S. when I do my next Etape du Tour in a few years, I plan to reach my goal!....
Read Bill Benjamin's full bio here... |
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