The Goal Achievement Podcast, hosted by Matt East, is all about helping you find clarity, design a plan, and most importantly achieve your goals.

Matt shares two secrets for finding your motivation!

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How to Find Your Motivation

Podcast audio transcription

Two Secrets for Finding Your Motivation

I hope you're all doing really well. In today's episode, I will share two secrets that you can use if you are ever feeling unmotivated. These secrets will help you get moving. And I think you'll love them. Here we go.

Every morning, the question we all face is this: How can we focus more time on the projects, activities, and relationships that are most important and meaningful to us and less time on the stuff that doesn't matter, so we can actually move closer to our goals and dreams? That is the question, and this podcast is the answer.

My name is Matt East. Welcome to the Goal Achievement Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Now, let's dig in.

Hey guys, what's up? Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to the show. Also, I've received a ton of feedback about the new intro to the podcast. For like 130 episodes, I had the same intro and then changed it a few episodes ago. And the feedback's been really, really, really positive.

Thanks for all your encouragement and all of that good stuff. It means the world to me. So thanks a ton. 

How to feel motivated.

Today we're going to talk about a couple of secrets that I like to use if I'm ever not feeling motivated or if a client shares with me that they're not feeling motivated and they need some help with that. I've got a couple of tips, or, I guess, tricks, or... I don't know, they're kind of secrets that, if you use them, they will get you moving. They work! They're awesome.

We talk all the time in this podcast, and I talk with my clients all the time, about how important it is to have clarity about what you actually want to focus on in your day, in your week and your month, even your quarter and your year. And even if you have that clarity, occasionally, it can still be challenging to muster up the motivation to actually take action.

Often, you're going to find that the clarity alone is enough to motivate you. Once you are clear on what you actually have to do, that in and of itself is a great way to overcome procrastination. So that's one reason why we want extreme clarity about what you're gonna focus on during the day.

If you're stressed, or if you ever struggle with procrastination, you want to get super clear each day on what you want to focus on with your energy, what you're going to put effort towards. I mean, everything we talk about within the show is if you want to spend more time on your projects, activities, and nurturing your most important relationships, you've got to prioritize and focus on it.

Mustering up motivation.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, it can be challenging to find the motivation, to muster up the motivation. So here's the first secret. It's something I mentioned in my book. If you guys haven't listened to my book, it is free on my website. I also posted it on this podcast a few episodes back. This concept about motivation is in the book, and it's probably one of the things that people reach out to me about most often after they read it. Here it is. 

The most successful people in the world understand that motivation is followed by action, not the other way around. 

There's a very common misconception. And I believed this forever. I felt like it was necessary for me to feel motivated before taking action. Does that make sense? For example, if I wanted to, I don't know, start my business, I thought to myself, "When I feel motivated, I'll start my business." Totally, totally the wrong way to go about it.

The most successful people realize that in order to feel motivated, you need to take action. Waiting for motivation is a productivity and dream killer. If you are waiting for motivation before you take action on your priorities for the day, or towards your biggest dreams and your goals, you're doing it wrong. You've first need to take action in order to feel motivated.

The motivation will follow your action. 

Let me give you a personal example of this. Yesterday, it was raining. I'm in Indianapolis, Indiana. And it was raining here when I got up for my run; I like to wake up and typically, when it's not COVID-19, I go right to the gym. With the current situation, I've been trying to just wake up and go for a run right away. No hesitation. Get up, get moving.

I usually have no problem with that. I actually love it and look forward to it, and it's all good; but for whatever reason... Oh, I know what it was, it was storming outside—it wasn't storming, it was raining out. And so I'm just like dragging ass to get moving, which is kind of weird, not normal at all.

I thought, "Hey, maybe my body's just tired. Maybe I should take a break and not run today." Well, I ended up pushing through. I started running. So I go out there, I did not want to run. I did not want to run. It was like the last thing I wanted to do, but I went out there anyway.

I started running and it was terrible for like 10, 15 minutes. Then, you kind of get into it, and you find your rhythm. And, you know, you're listening to music, and you just kind of get into your sweet spot. And I thought to myself, "Why was I not going to run? Not only is this a great part of my day, it's probably the best part of my day." You know, once you're out there and you're enjoying it, and you've got endorphins and stuff happening in your body, that makes you feel great. You know, that runner's high just felt great, but I would have never experienced that if I waited for motivation.

Once I got out there, I felt motivated. I felt great. I wanted to continue running; you know, as I'm out there, I'm like, "I'm going to go home, do some pushups and sit-ups, and crush it." I felt completely motivated. But I only felt that motivation because I took action. It's a perfect example of that. I mean, how often does that happen, where you don't want to do a workout, or you don't want to run or whatever, whatever it is?

And then you actually start doing it, and then you think to yourself, "Man, I can't believe I wasn't going to run," or "I can't believe I was going to skip the gym today," or whatever. It was the last thing in the world you wanted to do, but once you actually get started, and you do the activity, the motivation follows.

So that is the secret of all secrets. 

Motivation is going to be followed by taking action, not the other way around. 

That is a cruel, cruel, cruel life lesson if nobody's ever told you that. I mean, it is a game-changer. If you can implement that into your life and realize, like, "I just got to get moving and motivation will follow," that is like a secret weapon you can use. You can just weaponize yourself with that and really become effective and productive and perform at a high level every day.

If you're not waiting around for motivation to get started and you can become a self-starter, knowing that the motivation will actually come later, that is so powerful.

It's just critical that you don't wait until you feel motivated to begin working on your goals and your dreams. You know, I talk all the time about the top three priorities. It's critical not to wait until you feel motivated to begin working on your top three priorities.

That motivation will follow if you trust it. Trust yourself, and that if you do the hard work and just get started, your motivation will follow.

Trust your motivation to follow. 

Once you start taking action... I've been doing a lot of work on my website, and I do all that stuff myself. For the most part, I outsource—like, to Upwork—the design of my book and stuff like that. But as far as the website stuff, I play around with it a lot and I like to tinker with it and see what's working and all that good stuff.

Well, you know, I very rarely feel like doing any of that; if I block time and there's something that I want to focus on, you know, if I'm trying to improve some copy or improve conversion rates on the people joining my email list or whatever, I never really want to do that stuff. Like, I'm not super jazzed about it.

And then, once I start doing it, it's fun, and I love it. I feel motivated and, you know, it's taken time to trust myself and trust that the motivation follows if I start taking action.

So, try that next time you're struggling. Try to just get started. 

Just start and trust your motivation to follow after you begin taking action. 

I know you guys have experienced that with, like, a workout, where you totally didn't want to go work out, or you didn't want to run, and then you start doing it and 20 minutes in you're like, "Oh my Gosh, this is amazing. How was I not going to do this?" Almost everyone in the world gets to experience that. So, hopefully, you have, with like an art project or writing project or some type of work, or even cooking a meal sometimes; you have felt like, "I'm not feeling like I want to start dinner," or whatever. And then I get started, and I enjoy it. And then the motivation follows. 

If you can can implement that mindset into your day-to-day, you're going to be dangerous. I mean, you will be able to do just about anything you want in your life if you can take action and not wait for motivation in order to take that action. Let the motivation follow. Does that make sense? Hopefully, that all makes sense. If not, send in your questions, and I'll try to clarify. 

The next motivational secret: tie your task to your larger goals and the larger outcomes you want to create in your life.

If you are dragging to get started on something, think about connecting that task or that activity to your larger goal or larger ambitions and expected outcomes. So to illustrate this, let's use the most mundane priority as an example.

So let's use an example I saw today. One of a client's top three priorities is to change out one of the car seats for his kids. So his wife's telling him to do it. He wants to do it, but he's dragging to get it done.

If you're struggling with a small task, try to tie it to your larger goals and the larger outcomes you want to create in your life. So in this example, you know, just take 20 seconds and think, why is this important? Why does this car seat have to get changed out? And it's because, in this instance, this guy loves his kids and wants to show them that he cares about them and their safety. And one way to show them that is by keeping them safe in the car. That's a core thing that this guy wants to demonstrate as a father, that he loves his kids and wants them to be safe. He wants them to know that.

And this is one way to demonstrate he wants to be a good husband. He wants to be a good partner spouse. So one way to do that is by owning small tasks like this, which aren't much fun, but you take action and knock it out and make your spouse happy and all that good stuff.

So, tying this super small kind of mundane priority—I shouldn't say small priority, it's a big deal, but it's kind of like doing laundry or something like that—tying it to the bigger picture and your bigger ambitions. 

In this example, this is one way to show your kids that you're a great dad and that you care about them. You want them to be as safe as possible, and that's important to you. You want to be a good partner. Even if this task seems like a very mundane one, it's something that displays that too, he can display that to his wife through this action.

It helped him think through that and tie this mundane task to the bigger picture of his life. That is another..., I mean, that can be like a secret weapon. If you're struggling with a task or with getting stuff done, take action on your priorities.

So, those are the two things. The first one we talked about was your motivation follows your action. So don't wait to feel motivated before doing something. That's a game-changer. It's awesome. If you can build that into your mindset, into your skillset, as a human, that is so powerful.

And the second, tie your priorities to your larger goals and expected outcomes in life. Your priorities from a day-to-day perspective should be aligned with your broader goals. Obviously, that's how you're going to get stuff done. That's so important. So, you know, if you have too many days go by where your priorities aren't aligned with those broader goals that you have set for yourself or your business, or for your family or for your health, then rethink that; you want those priorities to align with your larger goals.