Have you ever had a dream? Something that you really want to have or do. Did you do it? Do you know what it is that holds you back?
Would you agree that to be able to win a medal in the Olympics is the dream of all of the Olympian competitors?
And would you also agree that those Olympians who do succeed do not lack focus? Have you ever considered if it is motivation and competition or inspiration and collaboration that make you a winner?
Now obviously the Olympics has a hugely competitive aspect to it and this can be motivational in many ways. The darker side of competition is discussed in the blog Musical Chairs – Collaborate or Compete?
Outside of the games, for the rest of us, this competition may come from the other candidate at a job interview, the other businesses that compete in our field, a close friend who shares similar career or life goals, or the owner of an amazing Instagram or Facebook account. All of these can produce motivation through envy and fear.
Rather than expending all your time and energy spying on these “opponents” on social media, wouldn’t you agree that to make an effort to focus on the successes in your own journey, using this as inspiration and use competition to drive you forwards as motivation.
Then there is the wonderfully collaborative side of the Olympics, which encourages great displays of sportsmanship and respect. Imagine how much better you’d feel giving a competitor a handshake to acknowledge a game well played, rather than dwelling on jealously, resentment or perceived injustice.
Something else that is important to consider here is your level of confidence and the thoughts you have about yourself. Because if you constantly compare yourself to other people’s success this will affect your performance and hold you back. Believing you are not enough is discussed on the blog Musical Chairs – Collaborate or Compete? where we detail “The S.A.D. truth” that all of the answers to what holds you back can be associated to 3 basic fears: S.A.D. A great lesson from many top athletes, successful people and one we choose to live by at The Live Love Laugh Lounge™ is to engender the attitude – “You either win or learn – there is no lose!”
Do you have the ability, when seeing someone better than you in your chosen field, to immediately think, “how can I learn from that?” or for you is it a struggle because you automatically focus on the lack and think “I don’t have that.”?
In the recent blog post “WHY! Lack Of Focus Can Hold You Back” the difference between motivation and inspiration was defined as…
Motivated – Having a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way, outcome oriented.
Origin from late Latin motivus: ‘to move’.
Inspired – The process of being stimulated to do or feel something. Of extraordinary quality, as if arising from some creative impulse:
Origin from Latin inspirare ‘breathe or blow into’ from in- ‘into’ + spirare ‘breathe’.
At the Rio games this year, the South African swimmer Chad le Clos appeared to be focusing on the latter, losing focus on his own race to check out Michael Phelps in the lane next to his.
Comparing yourself is only good if it helps to motivate you, and while being competitive is fundamental for an athlete, the key is to focus that competitiveness inwardly — to define success as something achieved independently from outside forces and this is what I belief it is to be inspired.
The intention is to be your best self, rather than be better than someone else.
Do you look at difficult situations as a challenge or as a threat?
Here’s the thing, it’s that fear or doubt that’s helping you to keep ‘playing small’, keep you stuck in the same old rut. Now for you this may be in your business or somewhere else in your life. The thing is you’re often not even be fully aware of what the fears really are, or where the self-doubt comes from…
Well imagine finding the keys to success, using them, WHY’sly and being fulfilled, happy and frickin’ awesome as a result!
“The key to success” is for you to make a habit of doing the things you fear, because when that fear shows up, then you can do something about it, stay with me on this…
A negative state or a negative emotion is an indicator that enough is enough and you are not in alignment with and in allowance, it’s indicating you are resisting or blocking, that’s all a negative emotion is, it’s a sign post – so the best thing to do is to be as awake and aware as possible so you notice this negative place sooner rather than later…
Now maybe you don’t know what you want…
Maybe you do know what you don’t want…
Perhaps you see something that you want or you see a person being what you want to be and this creates a yearning.
A yearning is focusing on the lack. In lack you feel like there’s not enough in this seems to be when most people who haven’t succeeded realising their dreams are – all about the “Not Enough!”
- Not good enough
- Not fast enough
- Not knowledgeable enough
- Not strong enough
- Not big enough
- Not successful enough
- Not clever enough
- Not rich enough
- Not appreciated enough
- Not sexy enough
- Not pretty enough
- Not young enough
- Not funny enough,
How many of these could you tick?
Motivation relies on action to make the difference, it comes from a place of believing you have to act to make something different or have something different happen and that indicates that you’re not accepting what is!
This means that what is, right here, right now, is not enough.
Motivation: You can humiliate yourself to make you do it, feel embarrassed, shameful, jealous…
You can make a list of what you haven’t got or done and demand more from yourself and punish yourself, so many ways to make yourself feel really bad and this creates a forceful away from effect.
So rather than be embarrassed, shamed, doubting, in judgement of or disappointed in yourself you’ll do it…
Then you’re only doing it because you’re focusing on the lack, focusing on what you don’t want.
Or perhaps it’s your team mates, your country, your parents you don’t want to disappoint, perhaps it’s the expectations of others that you want to meet, perhaps you don’t want to embarrass or shame them. You just don’t want to let them down – which means you, as you are, is not good enough!
There is no power in any of this lack.
This forceful away from saps your energy its steals your power, so there is a deep need to balance motivation and inspiration.
Motivation gives you the kick-start you may need or the learning required to take the next step and then to keep moving, but how do you keep going…
At The Live Love Laugh Lounge™ the WHY’s women have access to tools and a team of supportive collaborators to help identify what the triggers are. To help understand when you are being motivated and what action you can then take or what techniques you can use to get back to inspired as quickly as possible so you can make real progress. While we are progressing we will always be in motivation or in inspiration sometimes we will be in both they are not black and white they are grey (even more than 50 shades!)
If you get stuck in motivation if you get stuck moving away from fear you will become exhausted and your journey will be more difficult than it needs to be.
Having access to this supportive community from The Live Love Laugh Lounge™ enables the WHY’s women to find inspiration whenever they need it is what’s important but there is no need to avoid motivation because it is not wrong to be in motivation we learn a lot in motivation and then with that learning we get carried we get carried very far when the next wave of inspiration takes us.
In the state of being inspired you are in true alignment – it carries you toward what you want, this is full of power, and alignment never comes from a maintenance of this kind of comparison of this recognition of the lack. Power comes from alignment with, from moving towards.
And the old question always relates to “What can I get from this choice?” or “what can I get from this relationship?”
In the new Paradigm where we recognise connection that we are all united we are all from the same human race, living on one planet.
The new question is “what can I give or share or offer or contribute?”
”What do people or family or community or society need and what can I give to contribute toward that need?”
So when you’re feeling not enough, how do you recognise when enough is enough?
Do you have access to a community and the right types of tool and techniques to be able to experience this positively and observe it objectively?
Can you intentionally allow it and do it with awareness so that then you can learn and discover more about the pattern; which will provide you with insight and choice? It’s the “Win or Learn” scenario.
Remember you are NOT doing anything wrong and even thinking that you are doing something wrong takes you down the on wanted negative thought path.
This can give you even more awareness of what you don’t want, of how and why it happens and then you begin to have access to more choices, then you can begin to respond rather than react.
To find out more, we invite you to complete the boxes below to get a FREE copy of our book Find Your WHY!
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Love Marion & Cheryl