Personal Development for Smart People^TM Forums

TaylorLord · 05-20-2009, 03:45 AM

Hey friends this is my latest post at G3! Hope you enjoy. -Taylor

I feel like this post will really resonate with a lot of you.

How many times have you started a project and left it dead in its tracks? Or even started something, got great results and then quit! How bout been in relationships where you just went along with it instead of letting them know how you really feel? If your like me we have all done this many times in our lives. The reason for it is not because you cant do it, its because you don’t really want to do it in the first place.

Do you really want it?

Its not even about procrastination its about desires, intentions and motives. Do you really want it? If you don’t truly want something, you don’t truly want it, there no room for anything else and this is the truth. The desire isn’t big enough to give you the momentum to finish. It would be like you drag racing with no engine and instead your being pulled by a mule. There’s nothing there to pull you to the finish line.

What are your true motives?

Motives are the other key factor in all of this. What is your motives for doing or completing something? If your motives aren’t rich your going to do poorly. For example starting to loose weight because someone wants you to. At first you may be all about it, you do your research, you join a gym, you buy some super stretchy spandex pants and slowly you become a splitting image of your new idol Richard Simmons! Then you turn into this other person.

Now do you think that you are going to last and keep up the diet? Why don’t you think so? I’m afraid you will not. Its not going to work because you didn’t want it in the first place. There’s no real substance and solid foundation behind it. You made it something that someone wanted for you and that is an instant fail! Doing something because someone wants you to is short lived.

When i was in high school I told all my friends and family that i joined the football team to get in shape and gain muscle But deep down i had other motives

. I was doing it to impress a cheerleader that i was obsessed with. So here i was an 11th grader five foot nothing, 145 pound varsity “football player” which turned in to JV where I sat on the bench most of the season lol. Very impressing i know man she was all over that! I did stick it out till the end but had no plans what so ever of playing football again my senior year. You see stupid reasons for starting things end up ending stupidly. If your not doing it for yourself and what you truly want, you end up hurting yourself and wasting your time.

Approval Seeking

Another reason why you end up quitting something is because you are looking for approval. Approval seekers will do whatever they can to get the okay from someone even if that means putting their very personality on the line. An approval seeker will dance around someone till they get some sort of approval or acceptance and then immediately after they do, they quit. Approval seekers quit because they got what they wanted, the attention. They realized that the feeling of approval wasn’t worth the work that they were putting in and they squash it. You see if your not doing things for yourself things aren’t going to last. Filling effort into something that your not about is unfulfilling.

Gotta want it for yourself

If your a drug addict and someone wants you to go to rehab and you end up going it may keep you sober temporarily. After a little bit you will be back at it. Time and time again this happens over and over. The only way that an addict will truly quit is to do it for their self!

Focus on what comes easy

In school teachers told me “you have a problem with focus” and I was told that my entire public schooling life. The only real problem I had was forcing myself to learn things I had no desire or drive to learn. So instead of forcing myself to enjoy something and learn, i would fail it instead. Teachers didn’t realize that I had a great focus and passion in art and writing because those were the classes actually liked to focus in.

I really do not believe people have a “bad focus problem” we have a “not interested and bored with this” problem. If you don’t like something you will not give it your undivided attention, that’s the bottom line. You can pretend for quite awhile but the bottom line is there’s nothing in it for you.

Relationships

This can even effect your relationships with your friends and family and even your dating life. What is your intention of dating? “I wanted a girlfriend..” About four years ago I was in a unfulfilling relationship that lasted two long years. Although there’s no hard feelings i will admit that the foundation of my motives was off from the start. So as you can tell where this is going. My intentions were way off and I ended up having to pay the price.

Business life

Pretending to want to stay in something after you realized you don’t want to is like having a bad itch that your not allowed to touch. You can fight off the urge at first and pretend its not there but sooner or later its going to build and get to you and hopefully you are gonna scratch like no one scratched before! Why not just keep your intentions honest to yourself the first time around so you don’t have to go through all this trouble. If you are in a business or job that you got yourself into, well its never to late to get out! If your intentions of getting the job or starting a business is shallow than its time to reevaluate before you get any deeper.

Is there motivation in money? If wealth building is what you solely desire than yes money can be a legit motivator. Now is money going to make you happy. No sir probably not. Just think about scrooge!

Its okay to not finish

You see its okay not to finish. Not finishing something you don’t like isn’t a character flaw, its a character PLUS. Its better to admit defeat then to stay doing something you know that will be the death of you. If you believe in something, you give it your all, you fight with all you have, you really want it then you will be successful.

Evaluate and ask yourself some questions today about your intentions and why are doing things you are doing. Weather it be a relationship, job, hobbies, starting a new blog etc. be true to yourself, do what you love and you will finish and be very, very successful!

Feel free to leave a comment below, I would love to hear from you but make sure your doing so for yourself and not what i want you to do

To see more creative personal development articles go to my blog at God Given Growth!

UnleashReality · 05-20-2009, 12:49 PM

I really liked this.

I liked the bit about whether you really want it. to motivate myself when i'm feeling lazy or procastinating, i find the thing that helps most is asking myself, "do i want this?"

also really liked that you said you don't have to do this. reminds me of Seth Godin's "The Dip".

Just wrote a similar article over at my site, would be cool if you checked it out and left a comment - Why You Never Get Anything Done

all the best
alex

Orecle · 05-20-2009, 12:54 PM

I agree with parts, of what you are saying, but I strongly disagree with your main assertion, that people dont complete things because they didnt really want it in the 1st place. I prefer the NLP supposition that 'parts' of you might not want the goal for various reasons.

So to use your junkie analogy, a Junkie may want to quit, but the gain could be the pleasurable feelings the drugs give, espiecally with marajuana. But to say the person totally doesnt want to quit is false. Many people have an internal struggle for years about addiction, being overweight, pursueing the carreer of their dreams! they want to but other parts feel they cant. "I want to ask out that woman, go for that job,start that business - but I feel like I cant, - I may be rejected, i may lose my time!!!!

But to say the reason people quit tasks and goals is because they didnt want it, I can tell you for a fact, is not the sole reason.

Reasons people quit

- Laziness

- Didnt realise what the goal required in time, effort, money. Doesnt mean they didnt want it. Just means they might not want it enough to sacrifice

- Other more desirable or pressing commitments

- fears of all sorts. Fear they may fail, be rejected, unknown of what comes next, might not be able to handle consequences

- They may feel they dont deserve it, or that others deserve it more

- Also a lot of people dont know how to get something, espiecally if it is a complex competitive situations. Steve did an article on passion in which he goes on to talk about how passion is overrated, and I firmly agree. You see this in sports. I live in London, and before Ricky Hatton fought Mayweather, the press went on about how passionate Ricky Hatton was, and how is humble and alot more hungry than Mayweather who is arrogant and cocky. The result - A cocky Mayweather completely outclassed passionate Rick.
The press did the same when he fought Pacman who went on to devestate Rick.

The list goes on. I dont deny that 'not wanting it in the 1st place' could be an issue for every one. But desire is just one of the many components of success. Self limiting beleifs is another major factor that kills goals and task completion, and the worst thing is that it runs unconsciously like a virus, without your knowing, even with goals that are desirable. Sometimes you can be up all night thinking about the goal, but lose the will to act because you feel a fear you cant quite define.

I agree, its not every goal you have to complete. But from personal experience, its very important to distinguish between lack of desire and fear of failure. Its very easy to quit a fat loss program and say I was doing it for ......, but most people dont quit because of that. Most quit because losing stones of fat is very hard. It requires doing uncomfortable exercise and it requires STOPPING eating pleasurable food (a massive secondary gain for the masses)

You can get to the point where you run away from so many goals, that down the line, you look back 5 - 10 years or longer and cannot identify 1 tangible acheivement (I am talking from personal experience)

The amount of people, who have told me they regret quitting education, because they thought, they didnt want it 5 years ago is in the 100s, and now they are stuck, miserable in a dead end job, with no end in sight.

STICK-to-It-ness is major success trait, butI do agree we should always check our motives and desire

Brian Tracy defines discipline as ' getting yourself to do, what you should do, whether you feel like it or not' The thing about life, low hanging fruit might be easy, but the high hanging difficult fruit that is extremely hard to get will leave you feeling desire and pain. Character is pressing forward, even wen everything in you wants to quit, and your mind starts dangling easy fruit in your face, and your desire to stay in the comfort zone starts

Orecle · 05-20-2009, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnleashReality

I really liked this.

I liked the bit about whether you really want it. to motivate myself when i'm feeling lazy or procastinating, i find the thing that helps most is asking myself, "do i want this?"

also really liked that you said you don't have to do this. reminds me of Seth Godin's "The Dip".

Just wrote a similar article over at my site, would be cool if you checked it out and left a comment - Why You Never Get Anything Done

all the best
alex

Read the article on your website.

Liked it, parts of it resonated

but its the same problem i had with the original poster

In Nlp, they talk about people who are motivated towards and motivated against - or to put another way - people who move towards goals (desire) or people who dont want anything more than to avoid things going up **** creek. There are many people who are only motivated to action wen things are in emergency, or they absolutely have to do something. Like the student who suddenly feels desire to do a 4 wk assignment, 2 days before deadline.

Alot of people dont feel desire towards anything, but rather their desires come from a drive to avoid something negative happening(fear)

ie. I dont want to work, but I fear being broke more.

My fear is alot of people may mistake laziness, or subconscious fear for lack of desire and it may now become a scapegoat.

I want people who read your articles to dig deep, and question their motives. If they are regularly acheiving other goals, then fine, give some goals a miss, but have bigger goals they are working on

But, if they are giving up goals, just to do nothing and wait for a goal they feel desire for, then they may get down the line and wish they had stuck it out.

TaylorLord · 05-20-2009, 04:25 PM

Hey thanks for the feedback UnleashReality i really appreciate it!

Oracle thanks you aswell! You make some great and valid points! You give this subject a whole different perspective but i think you are missing the point that i was trying to make.

I wouldn't say that someone with a marijuana addiction is a junkie nor is that person going to be sent to rehab for it...at least not here in the states

! A person that is going to rehab has a bad bad drug problem to the point that they are destructive to their self and their surroundings. Im talking needles and selling their body for drugs etc.

This was strictly written from a non NLP point a view. This is based soley off of raw observation in myself, friends and family.

I didn't say anything or write about people that start things with good intentions. If you want to loose weight and fail then you don’t want it bad enough, regardless if it’s hard or not. If you’re not willing to go through the pain or ease involved than you don’t care enough to do it. They don’t mind that they are overweight or out of shape, if they did they would do something about it for their self.

Truthfully I need to loose a good 25 pounds in order to get rid of my sugar gut

! I have "plans" of getting rid of it but my focus isn't caring about that right now. I have tried a few times started working out then got off track and stopped because my intentions weren't geared towards myself.

My focus wasn't strong enough to continue with it. Something else caught my eye and I went after it like a loose dollar bill on the side of the street. My focus got shifted so quickly because I really didn't care either way. I am still happy and people still love me but like i said there is "plans" to do it later down the road if I feel some really strong intentions!

The true reason why people start things that end up failing is because there intentions aren't right in the first place. Bottom line, that is the main reason.

It doesn't mean that your not good at it, it means that you don’t want to put the effort into it because you don’t really want it. They like the idea of a puppy but don’t like the responsibilities and effort involved of keeping the puppy. There intentions are warped!

You are right oracle sometimes people get into things and realize how hard it really is then they get lazy and quit. But before one makes a decision and starts things, you must evaluate your intentions and invest time to see what is truly involved!

Think about the things people succeed in. It’s the things that they put their whole body spirit and mind into. This has nothing to do with morals or good and bad people. It has to do with doing what you want.

A lot of people start their own myspace page with the intention of doing it because everyone else is. They try it, they end up not liking it and then they scrap it.

Then there is the rare exception of people that start a myspace page because everyone has one and they end up loving it and didn't know how they could live without it! They got lucky.

In the real world we do need to make money in order to survive and pay bills, but that doesn't mean you have to do what you are doing. Were your intentions of getting a job not to pay bills? Did your intentions involve that possibly you may not love the job? When you are getting paid happiness is often put in the gutter because you are getting something in return!

If someone got into customer support working with phones that pays pretty well but the person is shy and hates confrontation. Well id this person outweighed there intentions. They have a choice to stay and keep making money or to turn away.

I quit college after one semester and I don’t regret quitting it at all because it wasn't what I really truly wanted. I was seeking approval from a relationship I was in. I thought it was something that I "needed to do" and not what I wanted.

I had to come to that realization to get where i am at today. I love my life and sometimes I will say you have to go through some faulty times in order to get to your real passion in life. You have to fail to succeed and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Everyone I have ever known has told me that there needs to be a complete feeling involved along with dedication and commitment.

The world can be separated into people that want it and people that don’t.
You need to analyze yourself and make sure your intentions are made from solid internal desires and not soft external desires.

Jthorn · 05-20-2009, 05:06 PM

I disagree with the idea presented in the original post. In fact, I believe it's a rather poor excuse for not doing something.
People's wants aren't static, they shift according to their state of mind.
If for any reason you become nihilistic and depressed, you won't want anything at all. Should you go ahead and pull the trigger? Yet the very same person can end up enjoying up a lot of things in life and realise how much they do so only after they pushed themselves initially.

For me, it has everything to do with procrastination (which itself is multi-faceted).

Orecle · 05-20-2009, 05:56 PM

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