Overcoming Negative Emotions and Boosting Motivation
July 25th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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A negative emotional state can really ruin your day. Prolonged stress, depression, or anger are clearly not conducive to high levels of performance. And the worst part is that these emotional states tend to be self-perpetuating. Working while overly stressed can lead to even more stress. Depression and worry can cause you to avoid taking the kinds of actions that will help you escape the pit of negativity. And anger can lead you to take unproductive actions you may later regret.
While emotional variety can spice up your life, hopefully you’ll agree that remaining stuck in a prolonged negative emotional state is something to be avoided. So if you find yourself in one of these states, what can you do to boost your motivation and keep it high?
I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time studying emotional states (far more than you’d care to know), and I’ve tried many different strategies for consciously managing my emotions for most of my adult life. I felt this was a worthwhile investment because of how important emotions are in human life. Our feelings largely control how well we utilize our physical and mental resources. Our feelings can literally make or break us. I’m sure you can think of a few people who’ve been ruined by their inability to successfully manage their emotions.
If you’ve followed Tony Robbins’ work, you’ll note that he places a great deal of emphasis on emotional state management. While I tend to favor different techniques than the ones he espouses in his books and seminars, I’ve found that what he teaches works if you practice it enough. The state management strategies he teaches come from neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), and there are other sources for that same material aside from Tony Robbins if you don’t like his particular style.
What I don’t like about most NLP state management techniques though is that they tend to be very short-term in their effect, and they take some serious conscious effort to apply them. If I’m feeling down, I can use a technique like changing my physiology (i.e. body stance) or conditioning an anchor to make myself feel terrific. And it works just fine. But it doesn’t stick, and an hour later I can feel I’m gradually sinking back to my previous emotional state. Given that I eventually need to sit down at my desk and get back to work, giving myself a temporary emotional boost is nice, but it doesn’t do all that much for me over the course of a week unless I’m repeating it every hour. This is my personal experience, so I’m not saying this is true for everyone. There’s tremendous individual variety in the efficacy of NLP techniques.
Similarly, I can watch a comedy or listen to some music to cheer myself up, but the effect is still very temporary. Giving myself some temporary new input to cheer myself up is nice, but usually my previous emotional state will simply reassert itself within an hour or two later.
So what does work? How do I keep my level of motivation perpetually high?
This might sound overly simplistic, but the best strategy I’ve found for staying motivated and positive is to maintain the daily habit of listening to motivational audio programs. I own quite a few of these programs, so I have hundreds of hours of audio at my disposal. Most of it is in audio cassette format, so I just pop a cassette into my tape player and listen. Some of my favorite people to listen to are Earl Nightingale, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, and Denis Waitley.
While these programs are usually packed with great information and ideas, I find that the information itself isn’t what usually provides me with the greatest benefit. It’s the emotional/motivational fact that provides me with the biggest long-term payoff. I’ve listened to some of them dozens of times, so I’m not getting many new ideas out of them. But even though the information doesn’t change, the positive attitude behind the information reinvigorates me every time. I’ll often listen to these audio programs while exercising or while doing other physical tasks like preparing meals or eating, so they don’t even take up any extra time. Most of the time I don’t even concentrate on them — I just listen passively while I focus on something else.
For me the effect is undeniable. After 30-60 minutes of listening to someone like Zig Ziglar talk about goals, I invariably feel very optimistic and focused. And I tend to get a lot of high-priority work done when I’m in that kind of emotional state. But the key was for me was to maintain this as a daily habit.
Just like physical exercise should be a daily habit, I feel daily emotional conditioning is at least as important. Whenever I’ve fallen out of this habit for weeks or months at a time, I’ve invariably gotten sucked down into negative emotional states. Then I remember my solution, plug back in, and my attitude and productivity shoot back up again.
When I went through college in three semesters, I was listened to these motivational tapes religiously. My average weekday was about 8 hours of classes, but I remember that in my final semester I had one day each week with 13 hours of classes back to back, from 9:00 AM to 10:00pm with 15-minute breaks between each class. Those days were pretty insane, but in those short breaks as I walked from one class to the next, I put my headphones back on and listen to my cassettes. So no matter how tough things got, I was constantly re-conditioning myself to have a positive, can-do attitude, and this kept me enthusiastic and on top of my workload.
If you can only afford one such audio program, one of my all-time favorites is Lead the Field by Earl Nightingale. This program is fairly old, and Earl is deceased, but in my opinion it’s still one of the best programs of its type and a great one to start with if you’ve never listened to any other motivational audio. You can find a copy at Nightingale Conant — it’s about $40 there for the unabridged version on cassette, CD, or MP3 (Amazon charges $70 for it).
If you don’t want to spend any money, you can probably find a small selection of audio programs at your local public library. Mine has several dozen, and since the library is only a mile from my house, I often check them out and just buy the ones I feel are really outstanding.
I plan to add some of my own audio programs to this site eventually, since I personally find them tremendously beneficial, but I want to finish my book first before I start doing audio recordings.
What I like about listening to audio programs is that it’s easy, mindless, and passive. All I need to do is stick on my head phones, pop in a tape, CD, or MP3, and press play. I generally aim for about 30 minutes per day (usually when I exercise). This is enough to keep me feeling generally positive and optimistic all day long and getting plenty of work done.
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but there are an awful lot of whiny people on this planet, and their negative emotions will tend to rub off on you and infect you with the whininess disease if you don’t innoculate yourself against it. Daily innoculations of motivational audio programs are the best antidote I’ve found for this ailment. It helps me stay focused on my goals and avoid going to pity parties.
Pick up some kind of motivational audio program, and try listening to it for at least 30-minutes a day for a week, and see what effect it has on your attitude and your actions. I think you’ll find as I do that this habit is one of the best you can develop.
Reading uplifting material is also effective, but I personally prefer audio for my daily emotional conditioning, so I can do other things at the same time. But there are plenty of great books and articles that can help keep your attitude positive as well.
Is it possible to overdo it? Yeah, I think so. I find it best to maintain an even emotional state that falls on the optimistic side. In my experience that’s the best for personal productivity — I don’t work as hard when I’m feeling pessimistic. But I don’t think it’s wise to get yourself so emotionally rah-rah that you lose sight of reality and start making foolish decisions. The goal should be to manage your emotions in such a way that you can best leverage your physical and mental resources. Most people would label this “sweet spot” the state of being passionate about what you do. But don’t push your emotions to such a level of intensity where you’re blocking access to your best thinking. Put yourself in a state where you feel positive and generate positive results; don’t overtrain yourself to the point where you’re feeling great about mediocre results.
July 25th, 2005 at 8:18 am
> Steve Pavlina said:
> Some of my favorite people to listen to are Earl Nightingale, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar,
> and Denis Waitley
Could you share some of the specific titles you enjoyed/benefited from the most please?
Thanks
July 25th, 2005 at 8:29 am
The Psychology of Achievement, How to Master Your Time, and The Luck Factor by Brian Tracy
Lead the Field and The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale
The New Dynamics of Winning by Denis Waitley
Goals by Zig Ziglar
July 25th, 2005 at 9:35 am
That’s quite interesting. I am different - I noticed that I do some great work when I am feeling pessimistic.
When I’m feeling down, I bury myself in work, I focus completely on it, hopelessly surrender to it. At the end of the day I feel better because I discover I accomplished quite a bit, and because I did all day something I love.
When I am feeling optimistic about some outcome, my brain is abuzz with hopes, plans and ideas. I can’t focus as well. I start daydreaming about that outcome, I start making plans and idealizing how great everything will be. But then something wrong happens, I come down to earth and get back to work.
July 25th, 2005 at 11:37 am
you wrote:
While these programs are usually packed with great information and ideas, I find that the information itself isn’t what usually provides me with the greatest benefit. It’s the emotional/motivational fact that provides me with the biggest long-term payoff
I agree with you, Steve. In fact, oddly enough, I just made an observation last night.
I am a member of an audiobook club that happens to have a fairly fly by the seat of their pants way of managing inventory, so that the books I want are often out and I am frequently surprised to recieve CD’s that are far down my wish list - things I put on the list out of curiousity but never really expected to get to. So I got something called “A Dose Of Motivation” by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. I wasn’t especially interested in either writer, and the CD appears to be a repackaging of old early works. I almost sent it back without listening to it.
But I put it on, and altho it’s not material specific to what I am “working” on right and a few things about their material actually felt a bit trite, simple and out of date to me, I soon noticed how well I was feeling just listening to these men talking. It wasn’t the material. I doubt there was a single idea on this particular 45 minutes I listened to that wasn’t already known to me. It was just the feeling of being “with” someone talking excitedly about goals, vision, etc.
So even with material I wasn’t interested in, and wasn’t fully agreeing with, just the energy and purpose in their talk served to make me feel awake and motivated. I especially love Steve Chandler’s audio stuff. In a way, Steve offers nothing any one of us couldn’t figure out on our own. But I never fail to feel motvaited after listening to him for even a few moments.
The converse of this is to notice the news and other things we keep on in the background. Even if you aren’t listening, even if you don’t have a strong feeling about what you are healing, cable news (just to use one example that has been a concern for me) is just the opposite. It’s demotivating, and creates depression and cynicism. This is not because the news is bad (altho it often is) but because their language actually (in my opinion) seeks to create that feeling of fear, cynicism, distrust. Break down the language you hear on CNN some time (look at transcripts) and look at the manufactured sadness and hopelessness they seem to be training us to think is normal.
The language of motivational tapes, even those you are not especially focused on, does the opposite.
So I completely agree, and I too keep a lot of these as MP3. My iPod is about half filled with audiobooks by Chandler, Zigler, Covey, Hill and others and some of them I’ve listened to many times more than needed because they give me that same pick me up you describe.
July 25th, 2005 at 11:54 am
Steve, I’ve been checking out some of these motivational fellows for the last couple of months. I was wondering what you do when one of them does or says something that violates your personal values.
I’m not exactly the biggest liberal in the world, but I’m greatly offended by Zig’s assertions that homosexuals and liberals are destroying America (in “Meet You at the Top”). And I recently come across an offensive article by Brian Tracy (on his own website! I found it while looking for something to lift my spirits!) where he accuses John Kerry of shooting wounded viet congs in the back as part of a traitorous campaign to become a fake American hero.
I think both Brian and Zig have some great stuff to say at times but I can’t just forget the nonsense all together. What do you do when you come across a dilema like that? Do you shut out the bad and take the good, or just move on to another source for motivation?
July 25th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
Everybody probably has a different way to deal with emotional stress and negative thoughts. I have been a very negative person for a long time until recent years after I start to speak out loud about positive thoughts. I also find writing down those positive thoughts really do help. I set up a blog site( http://www.yunasville.com ) with the intention to capture anything fun, motivate and positive. By writing positive thoughts on a daily basis, I find myself in a much healthier mental state. Listening or reading anything positive no doubt will help too in a big way…
July 25th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
Sean, I realized this question was for Steve, but given that recently, I’ve been dealing with type of occurence in my personal life, I though I’d share my take on it.
Sometimes it’s surprising and disapointing to find out certain “negative” facts, behaviors, (or in this case views) about people whom we generally respect and who’s opinion we value.
However, my approach has been to reevaluate my perception of the person and/or their message, while also being careful “not throw the baby out with the bath water”… No one’s perfect, and yet we can learn from every person we’ll ever come into contact with…
In my own struggles with these type of occurences, I have chosen to remind myself how we are all in a process of growing, changing, and hopefully improving….reminding myself that we all (including “experts”) have our strong areas and areas that need work.
For me deciding what to do next would probably be a very personal matter…
I would see how this new information, influences how I feel when I listen to the tapes….e.g. are the tapes still motivating me or has that been tainted:
1. if they are, I would continue using them until that changed, understanding that everyone is on their own learning path. However, depending on how strongly I felt about the situation I might not buy any new tapes because to do so might make me feel as if I am supporting something that I do not believe in.
2. If this new information interfered with the overall appreciation of it’s content–then I’d stop.
Ultimately, I think it is rare that you find people who hold all the same values one does, at a given moment in time….and yet there may be so much to learn and teach each other, that perhaps you might want to consider “staying around” a little longer, if you still believe you are growing from it. On the other hand, you should definitely be looking into other motivayional speakers as well, everyone has there own style, method, and perspective, and each has something offer–take what works for you, give back what and to whom you can, and move on…keep growing.
July 25th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
If another speaker has views on certain subjects I don’t agree with, I mainly take it as evidence that they’re human, unless I think it’s totally hypocritical and likely to corrupt their message. I can’t think of any speaker who’s bio I know fairly well that I agree with 100%.
I remember reading Marshall Sylver’s book Passion, Profit, and Power many years ago. As I read the book, I thought he sounded like a total schmuck, but I had to admit there were some good ideas in the book. Years later I found out he had a serious gambling problem and was deep in debt. Kevin Trudeau has had serious foibles as well, yet I found some of his material quite valuable.
It’s easy to alienate people just by taking a stand on a controversial issue. If you’re pro- or anti- any sensitive subjects, you’re certain to piss some people off. For example, if I say I’m pro-choice and anti-fur, I’ve just alienated loads of people. I suppose that’s one reason that the basic rule of politics is, “Thou shalt not take a stand.”
July 25th, 2005 at 10:52 pm
If I understand it correctly, NLP doesn’t work long term because it doesn’t address the root cause of a problem.
As far as regular encouragement being a great source of motivation, I have found this to be very helpful. I think it is part of the idea also behind 12 step groups for alcoholics, food-a-holics, etc.
July 26th, 2005 at 12:08 am
Hi Steve,
I concur with the remarks that NLP driven techniques on their own usually are tough to maintain. One of the problems I identified with them is that by following these techniques, you exert influence on yourself. However, we as human being are always influenced by our environment as well. If an environment drains my energy, no amount of NLP techniques will create a lasting result for me. However, if I use a technique that creates temporary positive energy but that also positively influences my environment, the chances on a lasting effect increase significantly.
I personally use two things to ensure a positive work environment: 1) wishing everyone a genuine good morning and 2) smiling a lot (look around on the street or a metro station: how many people are smiling? How many will be surprised to see your smile and return it?).
This might not work however if you work at home, with a limited amount of colleagues.
July 26th, 2005 at 1:12 am
Steve, I’ve converted the text of some of your articles to compressed audio files which I then transfer to my iPod to listen to later. I know the computer voice doesn’t sound as good as your own podcast (when you start doing it), but this will do for now. I’m using the Automator tool in Mac OS X to convert text to an audio AIFF file, which I then compress using iTunes to AAC.
July 26th, 2005 at 5:34 am
Kevin Trudeau? Are you serious? Could there be an any more bright and shining example of someone preying upon the ignorant? This man claims to be able to sell you the cure to cancer for $29.95!
I can see some folks having lots of good things to say, and then having one or 2 crazy opinions.. but this guy has got to be 99% BS. There’s no way I’d spend a hundred minutes listening to someone if it was only going to give me one minute of benefit. And there’s no way I could support someone who so blatantly lies and exploits to make his living. Yikes.
July 26th, 2005 at 5:55 am
On the theme of “When Bad Things Are Said By Good Motivators” advanced here by Sean, Elyes and Steve…
I too have experienced this, finding a work full of good ideas and enthusiasm and enjoying the teaching, but disliking some of the observations the person makes about people. At another level, I am a Buddhist and I am dissappointed that “success literature” doesn’t seem to acknowledge responsibility to the rest of the world (usually).
One of my favorite speakers routinely makes jokes about people who don’t make it, and seems to laugh at the idea that some people feel they never have a chance, saying it’s all their fault. Fact is, if you live in a house and can feed your family daily, you are in the richest 20% of the world. Here we are using the internet to discuss our personal success, when over half the world has never seen a telephone. I’mm not saying social inequality is impossible to rise above. I am saying we as Westerner’s with our Powerbooks and audiobooks have some advantages. I would like to see these men (and women) at least noting that and not ridiculing it.
Success literature has the unfortunate side effect of being all abot the iindividual. We might expect Zigler to be a great salesman and a great motivator, but we can”t expect him to be a great social observer. I think those of us who are doing this kind of development work need to establish a new model that is about success and focus for the individual without neglecting responsibility and compassion for others. There is a successful, prosperous individualism that is still possible even while being compassionate and giving to all other human beings.
I think Steven Covey, for example, walks that line. His works is designed for personal prosperity, workplace prosperity, but includes a plank about giving back to others. I think it’s impossible to be personally successful while still scorning other people.
July 26th, 2005 at 6:08 am
@Brandon: The only thing I own from Kevin Trudeau is his Mega Memory program, which I bought around 15 years ago before I knew anything else about him. It’s certainly not original, and Trudeau’s claims were overblown (which is apparently one of the reasons he got sued). However, I did learn some useful memory techniques like pegging and chaining which I used a lot in school and still use today. You can find web sites with this information for free now, but back when I bought it, there was no web.
@Joe: I agree. I tend to shy away from the “me, me, me” motivators as well as the “give until it hurts” ones and find myself more attracted to those who can strike a balance between the two, not as opposites in conflict but as two parts of an integrated whole. I especially like Covey’s private/public victory model as well as some of Dr. Wayne Dyer’s ideas. Integrating this kind of balance into my own work has been hugely important to me. To me there’s a natural flow between giving and receiving — they can work in harmony if you run your life to invite that harmony.
July 26th, 2005 at 6:42 am
Your attitude is a muscle, and like any other muscle in the body, it needs regular exercise to stay in shape and stay positive. There are so many things going on in the world and in our lives that make it challenging to stay positive, but as they say, 85% of your success and happiness comes from attitude. Listen to some of these posts if you believe this (or even if you need more convincing
July 26th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
Silent Power
by Stuart Wilde
July 27th, 2005 at 6:44 am
Hello. Do you know any spanish motivational tape???
I can use them in english, but my wife can’t.
Thank you,
Daniel
July 27th, 2005 at 4:09 pm
I completely agree with you! Listening to audio programs on a daily basis can be a very powerful technique to constantly maintain a healthy and positive attitude. One of my favorite audios is by Burt Goldman. He used to be the single most famous Silva instructor in the 70’s for over 10 years. He has a website where he is now giving some of his audios (including is most popular one - the daisy pond and golden image) away for free. You can download them here: http://www.selfmindcontrol.com/
Mike
July 27th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
I listened to The Power of Intention on my hourly drive to work for a week. I had borrowed my mother’s car while mine was in the shop, and found it waiting for me in the CD Player. Pleasantly surprised, easy to listen to (even for a cynic like me), and I recommend it highly.
July 28th, 2005 at 1:46 am
This is very true. I’ve been listening to The Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne Dyer and everytime I put my headphones on I’m amazed at how my energy levels invariably shifts to a positive state. Highly recommended!
July 30th, 2005 at 1:51 pm
I have been stuck with falling back into negative emotional states in the past years. I am better every day in staying positive but still I used to fall back many times (yesterday evening, for example). In the last couple of weeks I have the same thoughts in my mind what you describe above. You need to take actions daily to keep your spirits high.
As I don’t own any tapes or mp3s yet, I regularly read blogs and share my thoughts to give something back to others. Similarly to yunasville, I want to systematically write about positive thoughts (personal development, entrepreneurship) on a daily basis. I do it in the morning to get the positive energy for the day. As I already have my blog running since more than a year, I can start right after getting up. I’m very enthusiastic about this and I’m looking forward to see myself a month later.
August 2nd, 2005 at 8:32 am
Some Call It A Bonfire/Carnival Of Classiness…
We call it “Classiness, All Around Us.” Click to explore more WILLisms.com. In no particular order, WILLisms.com presents classiness from the blogosphere (now with 50% more classy!): 1. Tobacco Coincidence- Division of Labour blog points out an inter…
August 3rd, 2005 at 7:32 pm
I hit things. Music doesn’t really help but I find 10 minutes beating the smack out of something really makes me feel better. If I can use a gim or a spear, I feel even better.
Never decided if its the exercise or the hitting that does it…
August 4th, 2005 at 8:19 am
Beyond audiobooks, there is also inspirational music.
Music is a very strong effect on you mood and should not be forgotten.
I’ve got a playlist full of things like: I’ve got the Power, Get on your feet, Book of Days, Calyspo, Fame, Everybody wants to rule the world, and Rhythm is gonna get you.
I, too, have loaded my iPod with a whole lot of audiobooks, thanks for the recommendations.