So how does this relate to accomplishing my goals?

Here’s an interesting thing you’ll notice if you take a look at your long term goals… they all exist to help you achieve some sort of need from Maslow’s Hierarchy.  Here’s another interesting thing you’ll notice about your longterm goals… none of them exist exclusively to fulfill the bottom level of Maslow’s Hierarchy (unless you’re in a life and death situation for some reason), and in fact, you probably have a few goals which exist solely to fulfill the top two or three need groups.

So here’s the brilliant and counter-intuitive insight that Maslow’s Hierarchy gives us.  If we’re having trouble being motivated to accomplish a specific goal, the solution is NOT to direct more focus to that goal; the solution is to direct our focus to a need that is unfulfilled lower on the pyramid.

Okay, but how do I use it?

The first thing you have to do is determine what the lower need is that isn’t being fulfilled.  If it’s something pervasive like being unemployed (Safety) or sick (Physiological), you’ll probably already know about it and be dealing with it.  What may not be so obvious is some of the smaller day to day things that fulfill your needs.  Have you done some form of physical activity today, or been completely sedentary (Physiological)?  Have you spent quality time today with someone you love and trust, or merely exchanged pleasantries (Love/Belonging)? Is your environment well lit with plenty of space, or is it dark and enclosed (Safety)?  These are the types of day to day needs you want to be looking out for, and the longer you go without addressing them, the harder it’s going to be to focus in your goals.

Once you’ve identified the lower need that hasn’t been fulfilled, you have two options:

Option 1: Fulfill the Need

The first option is relatively simple and straightforward… fulfill the need.  Go have a quick workout so your body can release pent up energy, spend some time with your significant other or best friend, rearrange your space so it feels safer.  If you find that you consistently forget to do a specific thing such as being social or being active, you may want to schedule it into your day or week.  However you decide to do it, with the need fulfilled, you’re free to move up the pyramid and focus on your goal.

Option 2: Link the Needs Together

Sometimes however, immediate fulfillment of the need just isn’t possible.  Maybe you really need to get this project done in the next hour but you haven’t had a conversation all day. Or you’re stuck in your cubicle for the next three hours but you really need a breath of fresh air.  To solve these sorts of issues, you’re going to use the same sorts of technique I imagine marathon runners use to put their esteem needs before their physiological needs when they’ve run 20 miles and they hit “the wall”, or hunger strikers use when they put their self-actualization needs before their physiological needs.

The trick here is to link the higher need to the lower need by treating the lower need as a reward.  The really neat psychological phenomenon that happens here is that by linking the higher need to the lower need in this way, all your drive to fulfill the lower need gets transferred to the higher need.

For instance, the thought process of the hunger striker might look something like this:

When I get freedom, Then I’ll let myself eat.

Therefore, More hunger = More resolve for freedom.

To bring it a little closer to home, let’s go back to the office worker example:

If I finish these 4 reports in the next three hours, Then I’ll treat myself to a nice long walk afterwards.

Therefore, More claustrophobia = More focused work.

Keep in mind that this technique won’t work forever… eventually you won’t be able to focus on much at all if a basic need goes unfulfilled for long periods of time.

What now?

Been having trouble staying motivated towards your goals?  Take a look at the pyramid above and see if maybe you’ve been missing a day to day need.  Then, schedule it into your day tomorrow.

If you don’t currently have any motivation problems, I want you to remember this article the next time you’re having a bit of trouble.  Instead of listening to a motivational tape, or envisioning success, or doing anything that causes you to focus MORE on the goal, take a minute and ask yourself: “Do I need to NOT focus on the goal for a bit? Is there a lower need I need to focus on that isn’t being fulfilled?”.  That one simple change will work wonders for your happiness, wellbeing, and motivation.

Until next time,

Matt

This video is just some slight tweaks to and insights from the experiment… if you haven’t watched the original video, click the link above and watch that first.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Morpheus knows what’s up.

Morpheus knows that no matter what life throws at us, no matter what obstacles are in our path, there’s one truth that no obstacle can shake:

We are still here.
As long as you’re still here, still alive, breathing, thinking, doing… you haven’t been beaten.  You’re undefeated.  You’re still in action, you haven’t encountered a single obstacle in your life that has stopped you from moving on.

So shake things up, rock the walls, let yourself be heard, and laugh in the face of your obstacles.

You are still here.

I apologize for the inconvenience of having a video instead of a post, but I have some other things I’m working on right now that are taking up a lot of my time.  I promise that as soon as I have the time I’ll start writing again.  But don’t let that discourage you from the video… there’s some real killer content on here.

 ”Nobody’s Perfect”.

-Ubiquitous Cliche

Sometimes, I feel like my posts give the impression that I think I’m perfect, that I have all the answers.  But the truth is, I know I suck .

The blog’s subtitle, “From Average to Extraordinary”, applies to my life as much as it does to anybody elses (More about that in a future article), I screw up just as much as everybody else.

This article isn’t about screwing up though, it’s about unscrewing up.  This article is about getting back on track, after you’ve fallen off.  It’s about refocusing.  If you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been posting lately.  Part of that is because I’ve had a lot of other things to do, but part of it’s because I’ve lost sight of my goals.  My series “Becoming the Juggernaut” is all about how to not lose track… but sometimes you do, and when you do, if you’re at all serious about having an extraordinary life, you need to know how to refocus.

I’m no stranger to losing sight of my goals… in fact, it’s what I’ve done my whole life.  But recently, I’ve started to become better at refocusing.  Here, I’ll detail the things that I’m doing to get back on track, and the things that you can do as well:

1. Ask for Help

Self policing is great when you’re feeling motivated and have momentum, but when you’re unmotivated, it’s about effective as communist russia.  By enlisting the help of a third party(or second as the case may be), you can greatly reduce the self motivation problems/.

2. Harness Peer Pressure

This is great content for the blog,  and using personal anecdotes is a great writing technique, but there’s a third reason I’m posting this up on my blog for all the world to see: It Generates Peer Pressure.  Closely related to asking for help, this is more about having other people know what your goals are, and knowing that they expect you to succeed.

3. Take One Small Step

People think that goals are all or nothing.  However, small actions taken consistently can have as just as much effect as a huge single effort.  By commiting to just taking one small step, you can “get the ball rolling” so to speak, and pick up speed as you continue on.  In my case, the small step will be the publishing of this article.

4. Imagine Success

Often, losing focus is a result of losing sight of why you were focusing in the first place.   Take 2 minutes, sit down, and imagine all the wonderful consequences of realizing your goal.

 I’m sitting here, imaging the great opportunities I’ll get from having a popular blog.  Opportunities to meet some of my heroes, possible speaking opportunities, book opportunities, and most of all, KNOWING that for once I’ve followed through on a large goal to completion, and knowing that it’s only the beginning.

And how can I now not take action?

5.  Focus on Values

What do you believe as a person?  What kind of person do you consider yourself to be?

If your goal is a proper goal, that comes directly from your values, then refocusing on your values is a great way to make your goals seem like a no-brainer.

In my case, I believe in making a difference.  I believe that one person can make changes by broadening their influence, and reaching out to others, and I believe that’s what I should do.

So I have two choices.  The first choice is that I can be myself, do what I believe, and accomplish my goal.  The second choice is that I can go against everything I believe in and continue to put tings off, never knowing if I could have succeeded.

Oh wait, that’s only one choice.

6. Make a Plan

Often, losing focus is a result of not knowing what to focus on, because your efforts have been too scattered.  By making a plan, and putting it down on paper (or screen), you can refocus on what’s important, and give new life to your efforts.

I’m going to start posting again on Matt’s Journey, I’ll be posting up my plans again, and making them consistently.  

It’s time to refocus.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What if you could run through walls?  I don’t mean like kitty pride up there, finessing your way through them.  I’m talking about the Juggernaut, blasting his way through with reckless abandon, not having to worry about what’s in front him because he KNOW’S he’s unstoppable.  Through the sheer force of his momentum, he’s able to overcome any obstacle.  What if you could treat obstacles to your goals like the Juggernaut? What if you too could harness the power of momentum?

What’s Momentum?

If we want to get scientific, Momentum = Mass * Velocity.  This means that in order to have high momentum, you need a large object going at high speed in a singular direction.  But how do you apply this to personal development, how do you apply the concept to your goals?

• Large Object =Large amounts of Passion
• High Speed =High amounts of  Persistence
• Singular Direction =Focused Purpose

Passion

Passion can be defined as how much you want something.  It’s measurement is simple..measure the amount of emotion a goal arouses in you.  With low passion, one large obstacle can be enough to stop you.  With high passion,  even the large obstacles seem small in comparison to how much you want it.

Persistence

Persistence can be defined as how committed you are to something.  To measure it, ask yourself “When am I going to achieve my goal?”, the more specific and more sure of your answer you are, the more persistent you are.  With low persistence, you’ll give up after only a few setbacks.  With high persistence, it doesn’t matter how many setbacks you get, you’re determined to keep going.

Purpose

Purpose can be defined as understanding why you want something.  To measure how focused your purpose is, ask yourself “What do I want this week?”  Then ask yourself “What do I want 10 years from now?”.  The more specific and connected your answers are, the more focused your purpose is.   A low focus of purpose means you’ll be distracted from your goal by the very next thing that comes along.  A high focus of purpose means that somebody could offer you a million dollars to stop what you’re doing, and it wouldn’t deter you.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a series of articles on how to use momentum, as defined above.  I’ll cover patterns that maximize momentum, give you common pitfalls to avoid, and tell how you to sustain it.  Together, we can run through walls.

Part of revamping the blog has been thinking about what I really want it to be. Figuring out what changes I want to make, or viewpoints I want to get across.  In doing all that clarifying, I came upon a distinction that I think may be helpful.  The difference between the Three P’s that lead to Repeatable Success, and the Two T’s that are great for quick fixes.

The Three P’s

Principles

A principle is like an overarching theme.   It’s a general rule, which if followed, will lead to success.  There are general principles for life success (focus on what’s important, work hard, have integrity), then there’s principles which are more domain specific (if you want to have a succesful blog, have good blog content). These principles seem obvious, but putting them into practice is not.  You must find patterns that are in alignment with the principles.

Patterns

Patterns and principles are very similar.  However, the differences are that patterns give you tools to carry out the principles.  For instance, if having good blog content is a principle, write succintly would be a pattern… it’s something you can do which tends to lead to good content.  A principle is the answer to why someone is succesful, a pattern is the answer to how.

Proccesses

Finally, we have proccesses.  Processes take a bunch of different patterns and organize them together, in a way that makes sense in regards to the principles.  It then takes each pattern and breaks it down into actionable steps (techniques).  Principles are things which are pretty much universally true, patterns are things which will work for most people, processes will work for many people.  However, the great thing about processes is that (if they’re constructed correctly) they leave nothing to chance.  You start at A, you do these steps, and you get to B.

The Two T’s

Tips and Tricks

Tips and Tricks are a popular subject on many self improvement blogs.  They’re usually derived from taking bits and pieces of a process and giving them as individual tools.  A tips and trick post is great, because it gives you some simple things which you can go out and try right away, and if it works, you’ve immediately improved.  The downside with these posts is that the tips and tricks are often quick fixes, that only work in certain situations or under certain conditions.  When you encounter a new situation or condition that isn’t covered by the tip, you’re left searching for the next 

 I find it hard to apply a tip or trick aimlessly, with no thought as to why or when the tip should be applied.  Even if I do apply it, my brain immediately begins asking why it works, how else I can use it, and how I can teach it to others.

 For that reason,  you’re not going to see many tips and tricks posts here on Life of Matt.  Instead, I’m focused on timeless content, that allows repeatable success, even as circumstances change.  It might take you a bit longer to get through the posts, and it might take some work to apply what you read on here.  But in the long run, you’ll never have to keep searching for the next tip… you can use what you learn here for the rest of your life.  I think it’s worth it, don’t you?

-Matt

Soundtrack:

“Do you know what’s the difference between me and you? You practice gymnastics, I practice everything!” Socrates, Peaceful Warrior (2006)

My whole life, or at least as long as I remember, I’ve always had this obsession with improving and being better. Mix that with being raised as the kid that everyone considered  ”the most intelligent” for many years and with my huge curiosity and you can understand why I do what I do. There you have positive social conditioning at its best, but that’s for another blog.

I think one day I tasted the power of deciding to overcome some challenge and improve, focusing on it and getting it, and it became my drug – that, and chocolate . That’s the reason why as a kid I was reading lots of pages a day, why I started doing wushu when I was five, why I’ve always had such good marks, why I got into hunting, why I went from chode to the cool guy, why I started this blog, why I got into a lot of stuff (Meditation, Self-Help, Uncluttering, Organizing…), why I plan such big things for my life and, most importantly, why I live everyday as the first and the last day of my life.

Life as a journey of challenges is one of my core values, its just part of me. That way, I know no matter what I want to do, if there’s only a tiny possibility of accomplishing it – even if it seems impossible – I will do it. Because, like they say: In the way you do anything, you do everything. 

In this beautiful day, with this beautiful background music, I’m here to inspire you. Yeah, surprise… I want you to live a memorable life, a life capable of inspiring people. Only those individual that love themselves enough will start their new life. This is a life of excellence, of continual improvement and expansion, this is a life of mastery and the mastery of life. Because mastery is a lifelong process, the more you live, the longer mastery will take you. Mastery is about neither starting nor stopping, but about doing. 

Yeah, that would be cool, but how do I get there?

Credit JoeLogan

The Introduction

This is a post about making goals.  It’s also a post about making connections.  But mostly, this post is about one thing: How I’m going to gain 500 subscribers by September 7th, 2009, at 10 AM.

IvanPerez is someone who I’ve traveled along parallel paths with for a long time.  Whether it was learning organization, teaching martial arts, becoming more productive, enhancing our identity, or getting better with girls… we just seem to be into the same things.

We had known of eachother for a while, and recently, I decided to reach out to him to see if we could start helping eachother out… it seemed almost silly not to.

The Challenge

Credit ehoyer

On March 7th, 2009, at 10 AM, I received the following message from Ivan:

“OK, we’ve cooperated with the training and organizing thing. Now it’s time for hour blogs to be on fire, to build a solid base of readers, thousands of them. What do you say, are you up to it?”

 And this was my response:

“I’ve been meaning to make growing my blog a goal for sometime now… might as well start now .

I’m not quite sure what a realistic goal is… 500 subscribers each in 6 months time?”

Finally, his simple reply:

“I think that 500 suscribers from now to September is pretty realistic if we make a plan and we stick to it.”

And with that, the decision was made.

The Plan

After me and Ivan had solidified the goal, the next step was to create a plan.

Credit njhdiver

 First, using The Law of Average Joes, I set out to find the first principles that every blogger who had a large volume of users followed. I narrowed it down to five principles:

1. Make The Blog More Accessible

2.Improve My Writing Skills

3. Get the Word Out

4. Make Better (More Commercial and More Valuable) Content

5. Create More Content

Because the Blog is a form of Creative Expression, I know that not every technique or tip that others have used will work for me, however, if I find blogs that resonate with me, I’m more likely to find a role model for what will work for me… this is an application of the Law of Similar Differences.

So, I took a look at the blogs I like to find out what techniques they’re using in the five different areas. From there, I created a few different projects that I myself could do in each area. (I’ll give just a sample here)

• Make the Blog More Accessible

  • Move to Wordpress

  • Add “Best of” Navigation (Easy Access to My Best and Most Popular Posts)

  • Move to a domain name

• Improve my Writing

  • Read and Apply “The Elements of Style”

  • Start having Ivan Proofread posts before they go out.

• Get the Word Out

  • Social Networking (Be accessible on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Etc.)

  • Blogosphere  (Being Linked from Other Blogs)

  • Forums (Getting recognition through posting on internet chat groups)

• Make Better Content

  • Start Using “Best Practices” for Blogging when writing posts. (Rules to make post optimized for both search engines and readers)

• Create More Content

  • Start a Daily Writing Habit

  • Make Lists for Ideas and Inspiration

Finally, from these projects, I draw out a list of “next actions”… the very next physical thing I can do to move each one closer to completion.

• Brainstorm a list of domain names on the computer and send them to Ivan for comments

• Go to word press, create theme, and begin porting over content.

• Buy “The Elements of Style” on Amazon

• Send this post to Ivan before I send it out.

• Create a preliminary “Best Practices Checklist” based on Write to Done posts. 

• Write for a half hour tomorrow

• Add at least three ideas tomorrow to my “possible blog posts” list.

• Find a list of social networking sites, sign up under a metasite.

• Create a list of blog carnivals based around personal development (Blog Carnivals are contests hosted by blogs, for blogs in which the best articles in a particular category get linked)

• Create a list of forums based around personal development

And Now… all I have to do is take action.

The Lesson

I lied… this isn’t a post about getting 500 subscribers. It’s a post about making dreams into reality. It’s about using the resources you have to turn ideas into action. The process I’ve used here is the same process people all around the world use to realize their own dreams. And you can do it now, right now… just make the choice.

Credit michelleBlack

It’s a simple process to go from having a dream to making a plan… Just follow these steps:

1.  Find people who have done what you want to do.

2.Find the similarities between them, and write these down as  ”First Principles”

3. Zoom in on the people that are most similar to you.  Under each first principle, write down a number of specific projects they have done aligned with this principle.

4. For each project you choose, write down the very next physical action you can take to move it closer to completion.

5. Take Action.

The Epilogue

And now the moment of truth comes… do I push the publish button. By pushing the publish button, I’ll finally have to put my money where my mouth is. By pushing that button, I’m making a promise to you the readers. I promise, that I am going to get 500 new subscribers by Monday, September 7^th, 2009… at 10AM.