peaceful motivation

This is part 3 of a 3-part series on peaceful motivation.
If you prefer video, you can watch Pace Explains peaceful motivation: part 1, part 2

Peaceful motivation is about getting things done without forcing yourself to do them. All carrot, no stick.

There are three steps to peaceful motivation: Taste, Energy, and Environment. Once you have all three, achieving your goals will happen peacefully and naturally.

Taste (step 1) gives you inspiration, and energy gives you motivation, but that’s still not quite enough. You need…

Step 3: Environment.

Your environment includes everything around you – physical and virtual – that can help or hinder you from accomplishing your goals. Your schedule, your home, your workplace, your computer – whatever’s around you when you’d like to be working toward your goals.

Why environment is so important

Motivation by itself isn’t enough to create action. If you’re motivated to knit at this particular moment, but you happen to be driving down the freeway at 70 miles per hour, you won’t (we hope) act on that motivation. If you’re motivated to write, but don’t have your laptop handy, you won’t be able to act on that motivation.

You need an environment that makes it easy for you.

And you need an environment that doesn’t make it hard for you.

Make it easy!

Set up your environment in a way that makes it easy to achieve your goal.

For example, I love to play DDR, but there’s a fair amount of setup involved. I’ve got to drag the pad out, lay it on the floor, find the control box, hook it up, then move the fan so it’s positioned correctly. Often, I’ll feel motivated to play DDR, but I think about how time-consuming and annoying the setup process is, and it just doesn’t feel worth it. I’m tasting it, and I have the energy, but my environment isn’t making it easy.

Now I have a DDR nook! I have a third of a room where my pad, control box, and fan are all permanently set up! I even repurposed an old laptop as a dedicated DDR machine. And now I play DDR far more often because it’s so much easier.

What would you do more of if it were easier?

And what’s one thing you could do right now to make it easier?

There. That’s one half of optimizing your environment. The other half is fixing things that make it hard for you to achieve your goal.

Make it not hard!

Imagine that your goal is to declutter your house, but there are pigs all over your living room.

You step over a pig to pick up a book, you straddle another pig to get to the bookshelf, you put the book on the shelf, you avoid a pig to get to the table, you pick the mail up off the table, you trip over a pig and drop the mail…

Wouldn’t you be happier if you got the pigs out of your living room first?

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’ve seen things that are just as ridiculous with my own eyes. I’ve seen a writer try to write with a sticky spacebar. I’ve seen a programmer try to code with an ancient, slow, hulking computer. I’ve seen an entrepreneur try to run a business while traveling the country adjusting to life in an RV. (All three of those examples are me, by the way. So I can totally understand why you still have those pigs in your living room.)

If someone’s in the same room watching TV, that’s a pig in your living room.

If you have a tab open to Facebook, that’s a pig in your living room.

If your work area is messy or unpleasant, that’s a pig in your living room.

If your phone goes “bong!” when you get new mail, that’s a pig in your living room.

If you’re too hot or too cold, that’s a pig in your living room.

If you have the StumbleUpon plugin installed, that’s a pig in your living room.

What’s one pig you could get out of your living room right now?

This is part 2 of a 3-part series on peaceful motivation.
If you prefer video, you can watch Pace Explains peaceful motivation: part 1, part 2

Peaceful motivation is about getting things done without forcing yourself to do them. All carrot, no stick.

There are three steps to peaceful motivation: Taste, Energy, and Environment. Once you have all three, achieving your goals will happen peacefully and naturally.

Taste (step 1) gives you inspiration. But if you’re inspired and sleepy, or inspired and just feeling like a lump today, you won’t get up and do anything about it. Because all the inspiration in the world isn’t worth a whit if you don’t have…

Step 2: Energy.

Energy is simply the physical oomph needed by your body and your brain to accomplish your goals.

Why energy is so important

A lot of advice on motivation boils down to getting around your mental blocks, your resistance. That’s important – but it’s also important to consider your body.

Perhaps your mind is totally fine and unblocked, but your brain simply doesn’t have enough energy!

Perhaps you could find your motivation by simply going for a walk instead of processing your childhood trauma.

How could you have more energy more often?

Perhaps you could…

• go for a walk
• change what you eat
• change when you eat, or how much
• start your day with a green smoothie
• exercise more often
• exercise more strenuously – maybe you’re not really getting your blood pumping and your energy up?
• exercise less strenuously – maybe you’re using up all your energy during your workout, and there’s not enough left afterward?
• exercise at different times of the day, like when you notice yourself feeling low-energy
• get more sleep
• get less sleep (this actually sometimes helps, depending on the length of your sleep cycles)
• wake up with a sleep cycle alarm clock
• work at a standing desk or treadmill desk instead of a sit-down desk
• have your hormone, thyroid, or adrenal levels checked
• find your peak creative times and take advantage of the energy you’re already feeling

(Of course, consult a physician before making any major changes.)

Journal and experiment

Start keeping a daily journal of when you feel high-energy and when you feel low-energy. See if you notice any patterns.

Pick one of the above ideas to experiment with – or come up with your own – and give it a try.

Do your energy levels increase? Decrease? Shift to different times of the day? Memory is unreliable, but your journal will tell you the truth.

If you like the changes, stick with ’em! Otherwise, try something else. Figuring out what works for you is a process of trial and error.

What energy-increasing idea will you try first?

This is part 1 of a 3-part series on peaceful motivation.
If you prefer video, you can watch Pace Explains peaceful motivation: part 1, part 2

Peaceful motivation is about getting things done without forcing yourself to do them. All carrot, no stick.

There are three steps to peaceful motivation: Taste, Energy, and Environment. Once you have all three, achieving your goals will happen peacefully and naturally.

Step 1: Taste.

By “taste”, I mean experiencing something that takes your goal out of your head and puts it back in your heart.

The taste of chocolate

In your head, you know how much you like chocolate, but it’s no big deal. It’s not urgent. It’s just a concept, and it doesn’t move you to action. But once you actually taste a little bit of chocolate, suddenly you’re inspired to get up, go to the store, and buy some more.

The taste of being healthy

In your head, you think about being healthy, and you know that it’s important to you, but it doesn’t feel urgent. It’s just a concept, and it doesn’t move you to action. But then you have a really exciting and interesting conversation about it, and it’s like tasting how it would feel to be healthy, and that taste inspires you to do something about it.

Why taste is so important

Taste is important because when your goals and long-term desires are abstract concepts in your head, you attach all sorts of baggage to them. You resent them, avoid them, and tack on all sorts of extraneous judgments and issues to them.

All this baggage distracts you from the fact that you actually want your goals.

And tasting your goals reminds you of how much you want them, in a powerful, visceral way.

Taste one goal right now.

Pick one of your goals right now – something you know you care about, but rarely feel motivated to work on.

Got one? Good.

Let’s think of ideas for how you can “taste” that goal – how you can feel that goal in your heart and in your body, instead of just thinking about it in your head.

You could…

• have a good conversation about it
• read something interesting or exciting about it
• do a teeny little bit of it just for a minute or two (or five)
• watch someone else do it
• experience something that you associate with it (e.g. the smell of a video arcade reminds me of how much I love to play DDR)
• create a collage of images that help you taste your goal and put it somewhere you’ll see it often
• write down a reminder of why you care about your goal in bright happy colors on a piece of poster board
• set up your email program to email you something tasty every week
• get some post-it notes, write things on them that remind you of why you care about your goal, and stick them around the room
• or simply remember how much you care about your goal and feel how much you want it.

All these things are examples of re-tasting the sweet, yummy taste of your goal, the delicious flavor of what youĄŻre passionate about.

What could you create right now that will help you taste your goal every day?

Create it! Then put it somewhere you’ll trip over it. Not literally – I don’t want you to get hurt. But put it somewhere where you’ll see it every day, or every time you have the opportunity to work toward your goal. If your goal requires working on a computer, put it on your desktop background. If your goal requires driving, put it on your dashboard. If your goal requires thought, put it somewhere you’ll see it when you’ll have a few minutes to sit and think.

If you’re concerned about others tripping over your private reminders, create something that will taste great to you but won’t mean anything significant to others. Be creative!