Motivation Mastery: How to Get and Stay Motivated

1. Get started: Hey, welcome to this course. Thank you for signing up. And congratulations on getting started. I think that you made a very good decision. The sad truth is that most people would never start with such a course, even though motivation skills are arguably among the most important skills that you can find. Because what are you gonna do with that motivation? And as cheesy as that may sound, you gonna work on making your dreams come true? You're gonna invest your motivation in whatever goal you want to reach and actively turn your life into the life that you want. 1/2. And isn't it worth to spend an hour or two off? You're life on developing that skill. I think it definitely is. And I think that you're gonna be very happy with what you are about to learn, but Okay, The big question is, how do you master your motivation? Motivation is such a fuzzy concepts. So what do you even need to do to master you? Motivation. And that is exactly what this course it's about in this cause. I'm gonna flash out the path for you. I'm gonna show you in some simple and clear steps what you need to do to get more motivated and to sustain that motivation for as long as it takes to reach your goal. And this is possible. Even if you have been terribly, I'm motivated up until now. I can actually relate to that very much because I have had huge motivation issues in the past. And I can tell you from experience that it is definitely possible to improve. So having said that, he is what you're gonna learn in this course. First, I'm going to show you some of the most common misconceptions that people have about motivation that prevent them from getting more motivated. And learning about that can help you to avoid some of the mistakes you probably have to making in the past. Then I'm gonna show you a simple trick that you can use toe overcome your mental barriers and then after that, you're going to get into the main section of this course, which is a six step motivation program. And in this program, the first thing you're going to do is pick a goal, and then you're gonna get exactly laid out what you need to do to get motivated for that goal and to stay motivated for as long as it takes to reach that goal. And really, all you need to do in that motivation program is follow the steps as they are laid out for you. So this is the main structure of this course. And before we get into it, our first want to take a moment to answer the question. Why would you want to learn this from me? So this is me. And I think the main reason why I'm a suitable instructor for this course is because I have been to the process myself. I'm really not a person to whom motivation comes easy, actually struggled a lot with motivation when I was younger and I was really the kind of person was sleeping long every day, playing computers every day for way too long. At some point, I had to repeat a year in school, and I got very close to repeating another one. And so I really had motivation issues, and I've experienced myself how dramatically your life can change once you figure out how to motivate yourself later. I finished. University is one of the top students, are one prices I got a PhD. I published my research in one of the top journals off my scientific field. So my life has really changed dramatically. And I think because I have been to their process because I know what it feels like that makes me a very suitable instructed to show you as well how to go through that process and how to make that change for yourself. In addition to that, I'm a trained psychologist and newer scientists. And so I just know a lot about our mind works and our motivation works. And these are also things that went into making this course OK, but nothing is gonna change if you don't take action. And so I want to give you two main recommendations to help you to get the most out of this course. And my first recommendation is that you don't want to over think this course this course is much more about doing than it is about thinking. And so what I recommend you do is that you go through this course relatively quickly without spending too much attention to details. Okay, so that's my first recommendation on my second recommendation is simply to do the class project. As I already said, this course is much more about doing than it is about thinking. And so doing The class project is absolutely key in this course because this course is about teaching your skills and the best way to acquire skills is to practice them. And what I recommend you do is that first you go through this entire course, get to the bigger picture, understand how all the steps that you learned in this course fit together. And then after you're done with electricity, you can start with a class project. And I'm going to explain the assignments off the class project already during the lectures . But you can wait until the end of the course until you do that. Okay, To sum it up, my recommendations are to go through the lectures relatively quickly. And then after you're done with elections to do the class project. Okay, Having said that, let's move to the next lecture in which I want to show you a quick trick to break through your mental barriers. 2. What most people get wrong about motivation (avoid mistakes!): okay. And this lecture, I will talk about some of the most important misconceptions people have about motivation that prevent them from mastering their motivation. And the first misconception I will talk about is that motivation is essentially passion. Many people equate motivation with passion, so in their mind, motivation is when you feel very, very passionate about something. But the truth is that, while passionate, certainly helpful with motivation, it is not that important in the long run. And he can certainly be very, very motivated and achieve great things without being terribly passionate. So here's a way to think about this. Take a moment to think. Bag off the people in the old classroom when you were in school and think about the people who were really working hard and studying a lot. So those are the people that we usually would describe as very, very motivates. And my next question is, how many of these people would you also describe as passionate? And you'll probably find that many of them were actually not that passionate. Actually, it may very well be that many of them were actually quite boring. They were essentially just working and studying all the time almost like a robot. And what you can see here is that while passion is certainly helpful, it is not the end all be all of motivation. It's just one aspect, and you don't even necessarily need to be passionate in order to be very motivated. So that is one misconception. People equate motivation with passion. Another misconception is that people often equate motivation with willpower. So what is Will power will power? Is this mental fours or mental strength that enables you to do things even if you don't re enjoy them? And very often people think that being motivated means that you have the willpower to push yourself to do the things that you need to do every day. And very often people feel very frustrated about that because they have the experience that they can really do that, and so they feel like they're mentally weak and just don't have what it takes to be motivated. But again, while willpower is certainly helpful, it is not that important. In the long run is just one aspect of motivation, and you can get very, very motivated and achieve great things without having a lot of willpower So here's a little example to illustrate that. Let's take brushing your teeth when you brush your teeth. Do you exert a lot of willpower? Probably not. And by the way, when you brush your teeth, do you feel that you're very passionate about brushing the teeth? Probably also not. And yet most people brush the teeth every day for pretty much their whole life. That's a pretty impressive statistic. So how do people do that without exerting willpower and without feeling passionate about brushing their teeth? And the answer is that it has to do with building automatic habits so that you get into this mindless flow where everything just seems to happen by itself. We don't really think that much about brushing our teeth. In fact, we wouldn't even think of it as something that requires motivation because we have built that automatic habit where it basically just happens by itself, and building these habits where everything just seems to happen by itself is really key to achieve long term goals. Not well power, because if you rely on will power, you make it way too difficult for yourself. So here's a way to think about motivation. Suppose that this is the complete journey from the very beginning. So from the start, all the way to your goal, then at the very beginning in this red part, that's the part where we can benefit the most from passion and willpower because very often starting is difficult. There may be obstacles that we still need to push through, and that's what we can benefit the most from passion and willpower. But this face actually fades out relatively quickly, and in the long run, there are other things that we need a lot more than passionate willpower. So, for example, what we need is clarity on what we want. Having a plan that we can follow every day and having automatic habits that push us through the things that we need to do every day, even on our bad days. And seeing this bigger picture is really key, because very often what happens is that people think of motivation as passion or willpower . And then the problem is that while that helps them to get started and of beginning, it is very hard to stay passionate for a long amount of time. And at the same time it's also very difficult to push yourself to do the things that you need to do with willpower every day for a long amount of time. Most people will simply get exhausted by that. And so the key to build up the motivation that can actually help you to reach your goal is to understand what you need on each stage on the journey towards your role. And in this course I will give you a plan with simple, step by step instructions that will help you through that process. So you will learn not just how you build up the motivation to get started, but also how you sustain that motivation for as long as it takes to reach your goal. Okay, But before we get into that, I first want to take a little moment in the next lecture to teach you a simple trick that you can use to break through your mental barriers and ideally, see results today. So, having said that, let's get right into that and moved to the next lecture 3. A simple trick to overcome your mental barriers: okay, in this lecture, I want to show you a quick and simple trick that you can use to overcome your mental barriers. And essentially, the reason why I made this lecture is because I want to give you something that you can use from the very beginning off this course. And essentially what I'm going to show you in this lecture is one of the shortest possible path to massive you motivation. Off course. There's only so much I can teach you in one election. So I definitely recommend that you do the whole course. Nevertheless, achieving significant progress after just one lecture is possible and in this election, want to help you to do that. So, first of all, let's talk about the question. What is one of the best motivators that you could find? And one of the best motivators that you could find? A. Simply experiencing success. If you want to lose weight and you find that you lost two or three or £4 that's extremely motivating. Or if you want to start a business and people are buying your product and loving your product, that's again extremely motivating. And it's also one of the best ways to shatter your self limiting beliefs. If you believe that you can do it and then you do it. There's nothing that shatters yourself. Limiting believes more effectively. But the tricky question is, how do we get ourselves active to get to that first success? And this is where we often get stuck. And one of the main reasons why we get stuck is because we start to overthink things. We start to imagine different scenarios. We start to wonder what could go wrong, and we start to wonder whether we're actually able to do this. And unfortunately, we have been trained to think this way. We have been sitting in school for a long time. Paying attention to the mistakes were making, asking ourselves the question whether what we're doing is the right thing to do, and unfortunately, now the reality is that these thoughts prevent us from getting active. So how do you break through these thoughts? And here's how you can approach this. The first part is to separate between thinking and acting, and essentially, what that means is that you want to have a planning face first and that faces for thinking and then later, you have an execution face, which is purely for doing, and in that execution face, you want to avoid thinking as much as possible. So, for example, if you want to lose weight, you could make the plan to go to the gym tomorrow at 9 a.m. and run on a threat mill for 30 minutes. And then once it's nine AM and you go to the gym, you're not allowed to change that plan anymore. All you need to focus on at this point is on executing that plan. Or let's say that you want to do some work or work on your business. Then again, you plan for us. What you gonna do? For example, you decide that tomorrow at 8 p.m. I'm going to create a landing page for my business. And then tomorrow at eight PM you simply execute that plan and you try to avoid rethinking that plan as much as possible. You focus purely on execution, okay, so the first step is to separate between thinking and acting by having a planning face first and an execution phase later. Off course. I can tell you from experience that this is easier said than done, because what's likely gonna happen is that self limiting thoughts that slow you down and want to keep you from getting active will pop up anyways in the execution face. And so a key aspect of this approach is to train yourself in ignoring every self limiting thought. And let's talk for a moment about the question why this is actually difficult. And the main reason why it's difficult is because for us, it's already difficult to even identify a self limiting thought to us. Having these starts feels so normal. And actually, very often these thoughts feel so reasonable and so necessary to think that it feels completely unnatural to ignore this thought. So here's some examples. Let's take the thought. Will this work will? This work is an excellent question, because you need to know that what you're doing actually works. But it's an excellent question for the planning face and not for the execution face. So if that question pops up during the execution face, try to ignore it. Another example is the thought. Is this the right thing to do again? A very important question. But for the planning face in the execution face that thought is just going to slow you down . So ignore it. Another example is the thought. Is there something better I could do? There's always something better that you could do, but in the end, you just need to do something so you can ask that question in the planning phase, but definitely ignore it in the execution face. Another example is is now the right time? No time is ever perfect. Decide on one time during the planning phase and then treat that as fixed during the execution face. And finally, a very typical example of a self limiting thought is every thought that starts with. But what if What if it doesn't work? What if it rains on Sunday? Every thought that starts with what if is basically about a problem that hasn't even occurred yet. It's about fictitious scenario and for all you know, that problem may never occur and you never need to solve it, So why bother with it so much? So you definitely want to ignore this kind of thought during the execution face. You may also want to ignore doing the planning phase, so the key here is to police yourself and ask yourself, Does this thought help me to get active? And very often? If the thought is a question, does this work? What if if it's a question that most of the time what this thought will simply do is make you sit down and think about it, and that's exactly what you want to prevent. You want to train yourself in paying attention to thoughts that help you get active and ignore thoughts that make you sit down and think instead of acting, and I'm not gonna lie the first time you try this. It's probably gonna be a little bit difficult. But the more you practice this, the better you get at this. This is really a skill, and the more often you do it, the easier it will get. And it can also help to keep in mind that everybody has self limiting thoughts. To some degree, nobody is completely free of doubts. But some people are better at ignoring these doubts and separating them from their actions , and you can master that skill to buy practicing it. And the more you practice it, the easier it will get to stay active to make progress and Sooner or later you will experience your first success, and when that happens, things will get a lot easier. So to sum it up, separate between thinking and acting by having a planning face first and then in an execution face and in the execution face, you want to ignore all thoughts that make you want to sit down and think and instead focus on acting as much as possible. So this is the quick trick to break through your mental barriers. Off course. There's still a lot of questions that remain open at this point. Such as What? If you just don't have the momentum to get started? How do you build up that momentum? Or how do you create an effective plan in the planning face? Or what do you do if it takes a while to get to you for success? How do you make sure that you stay motivated and to address these questions and mawr? I created the Six Staffs Motivation Program that you're going to start with out of this lecture, So now that you know how to break through you mental barriers, let's get started with the full program. In the next lecture 4. Discover the true purpose behind your goal (Step 1): All right. Now we get started with the main motivation program, and Step one is gonna be to find your true purpose because very often we don't really care that much about the goal that we want to achieve. But instead there is a bigger purpose behind that goal. And that's what we truly care about and getting clarity on what that purpose is and why exactly we want to achieve our goal is one of the key skills of motivation, and this is also something that successful people tend to be particularly good at. I'm going to give you one example, which is Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. And he was really, really good at this. So what he did technically for most of his life was selling computers. But that's really what he was talking about and said he was open talking about things like that. He wanted to change the world, and essentially, what this is is his true purpose. And the end of the day he doesn't care that much of our selling computers. He wants to have a big impact on the world, and selling computers is a means to an end to achieve that higher purpose and because he knew very well what is true purpose Waas He was a very motivated person. And so the better you understand what you actually care about and what the actual purposes that you're trying to fulfill with your goal, the more motivated you will feel. And in this lecture, we're gonna practice that I'm gonna help you to find the true purpose behind your goal. Okay? To make that happen, you're going to do an assignment in the class project, and I want to prepare you for that assignment in this lecture. And I want to explain your first what you going to do in that assignment? And don't think too much about it at this point, because we're going to go through some examples together. And I'm gonna practice with you together in this lecture how to do this assignment. So here's what's happening in the assignment in the assignment. You first ask yourself, How would your life change if you reach your goal? And then once you've found an answer, the next question is, does the answer he just give yourself trigger a feeling in you some positive feeling, some passion or something that pushes you forward. And if the answer is yes, then I want you to verbalize what feeling that exactly, ISS. And if the answer is no. If you don't really feel much about the answer that you just wrote down, then I want you to try to find a different answer or an answer that is a little bit more deeper than the last answer you gave. And essentially, you're going to do that until you arrive at an answer that is both vivid, so easy to imagine and emotional. And there to rules that I really recommend you follow to have you to do this assignment as effectively as possible. And the first rule is that you you gotta listen to your feelings because at the end of the day, a purpose is something very, very subjective and very, very personal. Nobody can tell you what your true purpose is. Nobody can tell you what a good purposes because a good purposes, something that makes you feel very emotional about it. So the only way to truly find your purpose is to actively listen to your feelings and to follow your feelings wherever they make. I t. It's a rule Number one. Listen to your feelings now. Rule number two is avoid the word shoot when we use the word Should were usually not that concerned with the question. What we want and more with the question. What other people want from us, and this is really a motivation killer. You don't want to do something just because other people want you to do that. You want to do something because you want to do that. So if you think something like I should lose weight or I should save money or I should study harder, I should be more successful. Ignore it because, especially in this exercise, it's really not about what other people want you to do. But it's about finding out what you actually want to do. It's a rule number to avoid the word shirt. Okay, with these two rules of mind, it's no time to walk through a couple of examples because I really want you to think off, accessing your purpose as a skill. The more you practice it, the better you get at it, and the better you get at it, the easier it gets to build up the passion that you need to push yourself forward towards your goal on the first goal we gonna practice with is the goal to study more now. As I explained earlier, the first thing we're gonna do is ask How would you left change if you reach your goal and there many possible answers that you could give here. But one possible answer is that you could get the job that you want, and that's a great start. But I would feel at this point that it's not very vivid yet, and it's also not very emotional. So my next question would be So what job do you want? And suppose that the person says, Well, you know, if I had the job that I once, then I could buy the things that I want to buy, and now we can see that Oh ha. It's actually not really about the job, but it's more about earning money. And the job is just a means to an end to make that happen. But still, I don't find it very vivid. I can't really imagine what the life of that person would look like, and I also don't find it very emotional. So my next question would be. So what things do you want to buy and suppose that the person says, Well, I would drive luxurious car living a luxurious place, and basically I could do whatever I want and buy whatever I want and notice how it gets a lot more vivid now. Now we can really imagine what the life of that person would look like once that person has achieved the goal. What isn't entirely clear to me yet is how the person feels about that. So that will be my next question. So how would that make you feel to drive a luxurious car and live in a luxurious place and do whatever you want? And suppose that the person says, Well, I would feel very accomplished and kind of powerful, like a person who has a very, very high status in our society. And at this point, we have arrived at an answer that is both vivid. We can imagine what the life of that person would look like, and we can imagine the emotions that the person would feel once that life is accomplished. And again, this is something that is highly personal, something that can be a purpose to one person can be completely not a purpose to another person. And I actually personally wouldn't care so much about driving a luxurious car or living in luxurious place. I don't care that much about these things, and so for me, that wouldn't be a true purpose. But if you do, then it may be for you. So at the end of the day, you really need to follow your feelings and trust your feelings to guide you to the right purpose. Okay, let's do another example. Let's say that a person wants to save money. And again, we started with the question How would your life change if you reach your goal? And suppose that the answer of the person is that, you know, if I save some money, then I would have some emergency money to fall back on, and that's a great start, but it isn't entirely clear to me yet what the driving emotions here are. So my next question would be okay. So suppose you have that emergency money. How would your life change? How would you feel and suppose that the person says, Well, I'd worry less about losing my job and that is definitely a little bit more emotional because now is about worrying less. But it's still a relatively weak kind of motivator because feeling less off something is usually not a strong as feeling more off something positive. So my next question would be okay, So what would it mean for your life? If you could worry less about losing your job and suppose of the person says, Well, I could you know, I could focus on other things and enjoy my life more. And actually, when I come to think about it, I could also take more risks in my job and maybe accomplishment, because right now I'm relatively scared and don't really dare to do anything that could leave me embarrassed or lose my job in the end. And can you see what happened here? I mean, we started with something very, very boring, which is saving money. Saving money by itself is really not emotional, is really not exciting. And now it's about enjoying life more worrying, less, taking more risks, accomplishing more. We can literally see how saving would completely transform that person's life and make that person feel so much better, and that is exactly what a purposes it turns. Ah, relatively dull goal into something deeply emotional and something that feels profound. And with such a purpose in mind, it is so much easier to feel passionate and motivated about saving. Then if you really just focus on the goal or saving. Okay, so let's practice this with another example to get really good at the skill and the next example is weight loss. And again we start with the question. How would your life change if you reach your goal and suppose that the person says, Well, I'd be thinner And personally, I would say that that's not the strongest start. So let's immediately ask further, Why do you want to be thinner and suppose that the person says, Well, I'd be prettier and that's a little bit better because feeling pretty feels a little bit more emotional than feeling thinner. But I still really can't imagine the new life off that person, And I still can really feel the emotions that are driving that person, So I would ask a little bit further. So why do you want to be pretty? What would it mean for your life if you were put here. Well, you know, I would like my own body more and notice how it's now about liking, which is an emotion which shows that we're really on the way towards a purpose. But it's still kind of abstract, and I still can really imagine what the life of that person would look like. So my next question would be So how would you live? Be different if you like your body more and suppose that the person says, Well, I'd feel more comfortable about myself on also less shy around people. And now we're really getting a glimpse off the new life that is waiting for that person once the person has achieved the goal off of weight loss. But as I said before, when somebody says it's about feeling less off something or doing less off something, then I would also try to figure out what the person would have Maurin the life so I would ask for the okay. So if you feel more comfortable about yourself, unless shy about other people, what was your life look like? Why would you feel like and suppose that the person says, Well, you know, I just I just enjoy my life more and I could connect more with other people and especially here, that latter part connecting more with other people. That is so much stronger than being less shy around people because, I mean, why is it bad to be shy around people because you want to connect with them? And now we can really imagine what the new life of that person would look like, and we can imagine what the person would feel like. So we found a true purpose. And again, as I said, this is highly subjective. If you also want to lose way, then your answers may be completely different. And that's completely OK as long as you feel something about it, as long as you're emotional about what you want Now. As I said, finding your true purpose is really a skill. It's something that gets better with practice. And so it can happen that in your first attempts you still get stuck from time to time. And in that case you can use one of the following questions to help yourself get unstuck. One question you can ask yourself is, Why do I want this? You probably noticed that I asked this question a lot during the examples. Why do you want this? Why do you want that? And very often that's already enough to go a level deeper and find out what is truly driving the person. Another question you can ask is, How would that change my life? Or you can ask, What would this look like? Sometimes we're thinking a little bit too abstract, and then we need to make it more vivid and thes. Two questions can help. You will make it more vivid. How would that change my life? And what would this look like? And finally, you can ask, How would that make me feel? Because at the end of the day, that's what it's really about. You want to find the feelings that are hidden behind you Go. Okay, so this is Step one. And as I already said, you're gonna find an assignment that belongs to the step in the class project. But I recommend that you do that after you've done the whole course. Now let's move to the next lecture, in which I will show you how you can turn the world around you into your motivator. 5. A little known trick that will turn the world into your motivator (Step 2): All right, we're gonna immediately move forward with step two, and in step two, we gonna make sure that the world becomes your motivator. And essentially, what we will do here is we will make your motivation more lasting. And this is essentially an extension off the things we have done instead, one instead, Juan, I gave you the example off Steve Jobs, who was very good at extracting and communicating his purpose. And I want to show you another technique that he also in particular used to make this purpose more lasting and make the motivation that comes from that purpose more lasting. So on one day in this company, one of his employees found a way to display squares a lot faster than they could do at the time. And everybody was really impressed by that, except for Steve, because Steve really wanted to have round edges. Now, this is something the employee didn't really understand. He was offering to be able to display things a lot faster. And don't people want to have fast computers? But Steve insisted that they need to be round edges now. At this point, the employee wasn't very motivated to solve that problem because he really didn't see the point of it. He didn't see the purpose behind that goal. And so here's what Steve Jobs did. He took the employees out for a walk, and then he showed him several things. For example, he showed him that all the fancy and nice and modern buildings have rounded edges while the ugly and old and the buildings in which nobody wants to live. They basically looked like squares, and they have very sharp edges. Likewise, the nice cars, the cars that are attractive, the cars that are beautiful and that you want to drive. They always have round edges, while the ugly cars and the old cars they have sharp edges, and they look a lot more square. In fact, even if you look just into nature, you will see that the landscapes that we consider beautiful and attractive and soothing usually have a lot of round edges, while the rougher and less inviting landscapes usually have a lot off sharp edges here in terms off rocks and stones, and they're not very inviting to us. In fact, one of the things that Steve Jobs pointed out on that walk was that even such mundane things as traffic signs have round edges. Why do we give them round at just that really is necessary. But the truth is that people just enjoy seeing around edges because round edges stand for beauty, for modern, for fancy, they stand for everything that we like. So that's what Steve Jobs did, and their two things that he's accomplishing here. One is that he effectively communicates the purpose behind the goal to find a way to display things with round edges. Now the employees really understands why this is so important. But there's more happening here, and that's what we want to focus on in this lecture. Because what's happening here is that not only does the employees understand now why it is important to have round edges, but also wherever he lows, whether he looks at buildings or whether he looks at traffic signs, well, cars or just nature, wherever he looks, he gets reminded off that purpose. He gets reminded of the importance off finding a way to display things with round edges. So, in other words, not only did Steve Jobs tell him why it's important to have grown edges, but he also made the world a reminder off that purpose. Wherever that employees looks, he saw the importance of round anges, and that is a very powerful trick to make your motivation more lasting and a lot more powerful than what most motivation strategies out there suggest. Most strategies have you do something every day, such as affirming your goal every morning or meditating on your goal every morning. And the problem is that this is usually not sustainable because you already need motivation to actually do that. But this trick here pretty much works by itself. Once you have made the connection with all the things that he usually encounter in your life, the world just becomes a reminder of your purpose and thereby the world becomes your motivator. So that's what we going to do in this lecture. We're going to turn the world into the reminder off your purpose, and to do that you're going to do an assignment. And the simple assignment is to find five or more common situations in your everyday life and describe how they are related to your goal. And the two things that are important to focus on here is that first you want to find common situations situations that you ultimately encounter in your everyday life. And second, you want to make sure that there's a clear connection to your goal. So to help you with this, let's practice this a little bit with a couple of examples. And again, I'm gonna use the example off the goal to lose weight. So to what things in your everyday live with that will be connected to so. One thing it might be connected to is when you get up in the morning and you put on close and maybe you even look into the mirror and you see yourself. And that could be a moment where you could really realize that first of all, you would look different in the mirror if you had already lost weight. And second, maybe you could also wear clothes that right now you don't dare to wear, but that you really would like to wear, and your clothes and your mirror could be a reminder of that. Another example, if you're interested in close, is if you pass the store that displays closed however you would like to wear. And if you pass that store very open in your everyday life, and that could also be a very effective reminder off your goal and the purpose behind you go. Another situation that could be a good reminder of your goal is if you're sitting in the bus a lot in the train a lot and it's busy there and you get squeezed between people and maybe even feel embarrassed about the fact that you're taking too much space, then that could also be a great reminder off your goal and and your purpose, because you can easily imagine how much more pleasant that situation would be if you had already achieved Hugo. Another example could be if you go out to walk or to run, maybe with your dog and maybe your dog is pulling on your leisure. And maybe you cannot really keep up because you're just not fit enough and just not just have too much weight. And again, that could be a great reminder off your goal and the purpose why you want to reach that goal. Okay, we need one more situation, and a possible situation could be whenever he walks stairs. If you hate walking steers because you to have the for ed and you get out of breath, then that could be another great reminder off how much your life would be better once he reached that goal. But again, the important thing here is that it has to be stairs that you frequently encounter in your everyday life. If you don't frequently walk upstairs because you have elevators or for whatever reason, then that wouldn't be a good situation to use here. But if you do regularly have to walk upstairs, then these stairs can be a very effective reminder off your goal. Okay, so we have five reminders for the goal off losing weight. Now let's do another example and fined five reminders off the goal to study. And what situations are effective here for any goal really depends on what the purpose is behind you go. And in the last lecture, we used the example where somebody wants to study to earn well in the future. And in that case, a great reminder could be, for example, the room the student is living in. If it's a small room in, the student really dreams off. Living in a better place than simply the room can be an excellent reminder off that goal because that's a place where you automatically go every day. In fact, you wake up in that place. Another example to make this even stronger would be if you visit people who live in a much nicer place, and that could be friends. Or it could be your parents. Whatever works for you, whatever reminds you off the reason why your study, another situation that could help, would be if you pass your neighbor's car, which is a really nice car. And if you're interested in driving such a car, and studying is a means to get to the point where you can afford that car than that can be a great reminder. The only important thing here is that it has to be, for example, the neighbor's car so that you actually encounter it frequently in your everyday life. Another example could be whenever you step on your bike. And if you don't really like being on your bike and you dream off driving, for example, a car like this, then this can be a very nice addition. A very nice reminder off why you're doing the effort of studying so hard. OK, but say No, you're not that materialistic. And you study for different reasons. Say, for example, that you study because you just don't feel that you're you're performing well enough and you feel uncomfortable about yourself. Then one reminder could be the feeling that you have whenever you're sitting in the university between the other students and you just feel like you're not performing as well as the rest of them. And you remind I could simply be that you could get rid off that feeling and maybe even feel proud of yourself. If you could make yourself study more or if you're in a long term relationship and you're planning to have a family, then your partner can be the reminder of you. Go. If you're doing this because you want to have a job that provides for you and your partner and the family that you're gonna have in the future than your partner is one of the best reminder that you can have off the reason why you're doing what you're doing. So the important points here is that you find something that works for you, something that connects not just to your goal but also to your purpose. and that you find something that you actually frequently encounter in your everyday life. And here's some general techniques that you can use for any goal. Really? So one is to choose a password or pin code that reminds you off your purpose. I do that, for example, for my laptop, because in my laptop I actually need to type in the password every time. And whenever I type it in, I get reminded again what my purpose is and why I'm working so hard. Another example is to just put a picture on your wall or you some kind of decoration in your home that reminds you off your purpose. This is something that I use a little bit less, but it can actually be very effective. So if you like doing that, then I strongly recommend that you try it out. Another really simple but very effective technique is that you develop a habit of sharing your dreams with other people, especially with your close friends, that you see very often because if you do that and if you get a habit off talking about these things from time to time, then your friends can become the most effective reminders of your purpose that you can ever have. Okay, so now that you know how to turn the world around you into your motivator, let's move to the next lecture in which are going to show you how to sharpen your go. 6. How to easily sharpen your goal (Step 3): Okay, The next step is Step three, in which we gonna sharpen you go. And this may be one of the most essential steps because if you don't know where you want to go, then you will never get there. And research has clearly shown that not only are people more motivated by sharper goals, but they are also more likely to achieve them. And in this lecture, we're going to make sure that you go is nice and sharp, and essentially, the question we're gonna answer is what would signal you that you have reached your goal and you want to extract one specific signal here That makes crystal clear that if that's the case, if that's there, then you have reached ago. So let's first have a look at goals that do not do this well, goals that are poorly formulated. And one example is the goal to get a good, great what is a good, great or the goal to achieve more or the goal to be more productive? What does it mean to be more productive? How much? How much more do you need to do to be more productive? And another example is the goal to be more happy or confident or relax and essentially everything that has to do with emotions, because the thing is we can directly influence our emotions and so our emotions can't be the goal. Instead, what we need to do is we need to formulate a goal that once we reach, it makes us feel more happy or makes us feel more confident or makes us feel more relaxed. Actually, the emotions belong more to the level off the purpose, while the goal is a bit more practical and about what you want to do and what you want the world to be like in the future. So these are some examples off poorly formulated goals. Now let's have a look at some well formulated goals, and one example could be for weight loss that when you step on the waiting scale, you see £150 and the clear signal here that would show you that you have reached that goal are the £150. And another example of a clear goal would be that you want to have at least a C on the next exam. And here the signal that would show you very clearly that you have reached your goal would be to see the sea on your next exam. Another example off a well formulated goal. Say that you want to start a business would be that you want to earn enough to live from it . And you might want to add that you want to earn that amount of money for, say, three consecutive months. And this can be a well formulated goal, provided that you know how much you need to live. If you don't know how much money you need to live, then this is actually a vehicle. And again, it doesn't work. You need to make this signal as clear as possible. And in this case it also makes sense to at the three consecutive months, because when you start a business, you often have a lot of volatility, and you have some months that go better and some months that go worse. And so if you earn enough to live in one month, that doesn't mean that you also earn enough to live in the next month, and by adding the three consecutive months, you make sure that your goal actually really means something but okay, the most important thing is really that there's this. What I'm Archie. An orange, a clear signal that shows you very, very clearly that you have reached your goal, something that just leaves no doubt about the question whether you have reached your goal or not at this moment. Now, here's some useful questions that can help you find out what that signal could be. One question you can ask is, What do you want to see once you have reached ago? So, for example, you may want to see the £150 on the waiting scale. Another question you can ask is, What do you want to happen? Or you could ask, under which circumstances would you be done? Because very often people formulate goals in a way that they actually can never be finished . For example, if you say I want to be more productive, well, when are you actually done with that? When are you more productive? Is that when you do one thing mawr or two things more? When are you done? And by asking yourself, under what circumstances would you be done? You force yourself to specify a specific endpoint for your goal at which you have reached your go so you can use these questions to extract the signal. That would make very clear that you have reached you go. Okay, So this is how you sharpen a goal and reduce it to one specific signal. Now, the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna look at the question. How do you formulate clear plans that are easy to execute and help you to get active? So let's continue with that immediately in the next lecture. 7. How to formulate effective plans (Step 4): okay, We're gonna immediately move on with step for and in step four, we're going to focus on formulating a clear plan. And this may sound like it isn't about motivation, but actually, research has shown very clearly that this is one of the most important parts of motivation because the more question marks there are on your path, the more likely it is that you get stuck. So it's essentially what I told you earlier about one of the biggest enemies off action is thinking, and especially over thinking. So what I recommend you do is as much as possible. You tried to separate between thinking and acting, which means that you have a planning face first and then later, when you're executing that plan, you are focused purely on execution and try to avoid thinking too much and especially changing your plant. You just want to do what your plans says, and I want to show. You know what exactly you need to do to make sure that your plan is effective. So what does an effective plan look like? And the good news is that it really doesn't have to be complicated. Actually, one sentence can already be enough. One sentence can already be a terrific plan, and the key for making a plan effective is that it gets two key components right, which are the trigger and the action. An effective plan needs to have a very clear trigger and a very clear action. Here's a little example At 8 a.m. I'll go for a 20 minutes. Run. The trigger here is at 8 a.m. And the action is I'll go for 20 minutes, run and notice. That is just one sentence, but it's very, very clear. At 8 a.m. You go out, you run for 20 minutes and you're done. So let's zoom into these two aspects. Let's zoom into the trigger and the action and see what those two need to look like to create an effective plan. Here's some examples off some poorly formulated triggers and some better formulated triggers So, for example, and not so well formulated trigger would be during lunchtime. When is during lunchtime is that at 12? Is that at one? Is that a to when exactly is during lunchtime? If you don't specify that clearly, then what will happen is that during lunchtime you won't immediately get active. But if you first ask yourself, Is this the right moment to do it, or should I do it 20 minutes later? And that's what you want to avoid? So a better trigger would be at 1 p.m. And here's another example of a not so well formulated trigger after work. But when is after work? Is that right after work? Or is that an hour after work? So you want to pick something here such as, for example, right after work? And another example of a not so well formulated trigger would be as hope Would you probably mean, if you say at home is as soon as I'm home? And if that's what you mean, then say that because when exactly is at home, is that right after you arrived at home? Or is that an hour later and you want to make that clear? Okay, here's one more example, and this one is a little bit more tricky. S O. This is a nut so well formulated trigger, which is after I am done and their two main problems here. The first problem is that after isn't very clear, is that right? After you're done or is that an hour after you're done? And again you want to pick something here such as, for example, as soon as I'm done. The second problem here is what happens if whatever you need to do first takes longer than you think. And what if once you're done, you don't have the time anymore, or you don't have the energy anymore to do what you were planning to do. For example, if you want to go to the gym after work, what if you work takes so long that you don't have the time or energy anymore to go to the gym? And a good way to prevent that this happens is that you set yourself a deadline, you say, as soon as I'm done and, for example, no later than 6 p.m. And the key here is to really take that serious and prioritize here. So one way to think about it is, let's say you would have to pick up your son from school. If that has to happen at 6 p.m. That it doesn't really matter what happens at work. You know that in six PM you just need to go and the key here is to treat your plan in the same way. If you want to go to the gym to help yourself lose weight, then you will say that Okay, until six PM My work has priority, but after 6 p.m. The gym as priority. So you really want to stick to your dad line here. I know that it can seem a little bit silly to focus so much on these little details, but research has really clearly shown that these are the details that matter. If you really specify the trigger, well, then you will find it a lot easier to get active when the time comes. So it's really worth spending a little bit of time here to get that trigger as clear as possible. Okay, let's zoom into the action part of the plan again. Here's some examples off actions that are not so well formulated and actions that are better formulated. So here's an example of a not so well formulated action exercise. What is exercise? Is that running, or is that lifting weights? What exercise do you want to do? If you don't specify that, then what's likely gonna happen is that at the moment you actually should get active. You wonder. Hey, what am I actually going to do? And that's what we want to prevent. We want to separate between thinking and acting so that once you're done with thinking, you can focus on acting. So a better formulated action here would be. I go for a 20 minutes run. Here's another example. I eat something healthy. But what is something healthy? It's not very clear here. So a better example would be. I eat a pangas. Is fillet with broccoli? If you like that, I happen to like that. Okay, Another example. Not so well formulated would be. I work on my business. But what exactly are you going to do? So a better example would be I create a full landing page and another example of a not so well formulated goal would be I study a better example would be I read 30 pages off some book. So as you can see, a plan is something that can be really, really simple. Just one simple sentence and you just want to make sure that you get the two key aspect off the plan right, which is making the trigger clear and making the action clear. And if you get that right and you will find that it gets a lot easier to consistently get active, okay. But there's more we can do to make the plan even more effective, and that is to prepare. And the reason why we want to prepare is because our mind has this inertia. You could say it is relatively difficult for our mind to go from a state off in action to estate off action, and what we want to do is we want to make that transition as easy as possible. So essentially we want to make it as easy as possible to get started. So what do I mean by that? Here's an example. Let's say you want to study tomorrow or you want to work on your business. And if you worked as it looks like this, then you will probably have to spend the 1st 10 minutes just cleaning up your desk before you can actually get started. And this is one of these subtle motivation killers. Just because of this, it may happen that you decide in the end to not do it. So a very simple way to dramatically increase The likelihood that you actually follow through with your plan is to clean up your desk the day before so that once you get started , you can immediately actually get started. Here's another example, and this actually made a huge difference for me. I actually apply that in my own life. Almost a year ago, I decided that I want to go to the gym much more consistently than I was going before. I wanted to go five times for a week in the morning before work. The problem is that I'm really not a morning person, So getting up in the morning five times a week earlier than I normally do is not easy for me. And here's one thing I did that made a huge difference from me. I started to pack my gym back the evening before I went to the gym, and I also prepared my breakfast the evening before I went to the gym, and I even put the close out that I would wear for the jail. So all already had to do in the morning was get up, put on my clothes, grabbed my sandwich from the fridge. So my breakfast and then grab my gym bag and go to the gym, which really just takes me five minutes and makes it so much easier to get started in the morning. And just because of this change, I got so much more consistent at going to the gym, and by now, I've managed to do it consistently for about eight months. Okay, here's one more example supposed that you are on a diet because you want to lose weight. Then you want to make sure that your flat is really full of healthy things to eat. And you want to make sure that if you get hungry at some point, you know where you can grab a healthy snack that you can eat to kill your hunger. Because if you don't have that and you already hungry and now you need to think of something to eat and you don't know what, then it's likely that you resort to something that is not so healthy and actually compromises your diet. So it's as the famous saying goes. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail, so make sure that you prepare well and you will find that it gets a lot easier to stay motivated and to make consistent progress towards your goal. Okay, So this is how you formulate an effective plan and how to make it easy for yourself to execute that plan. Now, in the next lecture, I'm going to show you how you can turn the things that you need to do to reach your goal into an automatic habit that happens almost by itself. So let's continue with that in the next lecture. 8. The best strategy to reach long-term goals (Step 5): okay, We're gonna immediately go on with Step five, and Step five will be about building habits, and this relates to the point I made earlier about brushing our teeth. What motivational mechanism enables you to brush your teeth every morning for pretty much your whole life? Is it? Passion isn't willpower, and the answer is, it's simply that you turned brushing your teeth into a habit. Turning your action into a habit is possible for virtually anything that you might have to do to reach your goal. You can develop a habit off exercising regularly. You can develop a habit off eating more healthily. You can develop a habit off studying. You can develop a habit off working on your business for anything that you need to do to reach your goal. You can build a habit and their number of reasons why that's a good idea. So one reason is that habits become triggered automatically. You don't need to push yourself to do them. Instead, it kind of just happens by itself. If you wake up in the morning, you immediately think that you need to brush your teeth and then you already doing it, and that is a huge advantage. Habits become triggered automatically now. The second benefit is that habits require no thinking. And, as I explained earlier, thinking is one of the enemy's off action. So if you can reduce that effectively by making you action small automatic, that is a huge advantage. Another benefit of habits is that they require little to no energy. You don't get tired from following your habits. It just happens by itself. If you're following your habits, you can pretty much go on forever or for as long as it takes to reach your goal. Finally, it can actually be hard to stop your habits. Habits, funnily enough, kind of turned the situation around where, at the beginning you have to push yourself to do them, and then later you suddenly need to push yourself to stop them. For example, if Monday has been your gym day for a couple of months, then if somebody proposes to do something else on Monday, you may actually struggle to do that because it is so imprinted into your mind that Monday's your gym day and so taken together, these benefits make habits a very powerful strategy for reaching long term goals. OK, but how do you turn your actions into habits? And I want to show you a very simple formula now that you can use to turn your actions into habits. And the simple formula is that a habit is formed if you have two key components. The first component is repetition. The more often you do something, the more automatic it becomes, and the second component is having a consistent trigger. So let's zoom into these two components and see how we can apply them. So the first component is repetition. So the simple principle here is that the more often you do something, the more automatic it becomes, and that's what do you want to achieve here. You want your actions to become automatic and here to tips to help you make that happen. The first tip is to spread your activity, so essentially what you want to do is you want to do less, but he want to do that more often. So, for example, rather than going to the gym once per week for a very long session, you want to have several sessions per week that are relatively short because the more often you go to the gym, the more this will turn into a habit, and my second tip is that you want to start easy and increase the difficulty slowly over time. At the beginning, it might feel relatively difficult to go to the gym consistently, so at the beginning it makes sense to keep it easy by, for example, keeping the gym session short. But over time, this becomes more and more habit, and it will feel more more normal. And so at this point, making the sections a little bit longer is not that difficult anymore, because you already have the habit to go to the gym and do a workout. So why not add one or two exercises more so start easy and increase the difficulty slowly over time. So that's the repetition component. Let's move to the next component. The second component off the habit formula is to have a consistent trigger. You want to keep your trigger, so the time and the place the same over time, and that's really essential. And this is something that sounds so simple. But still so many people screwed up because what usually happens is that people think Hey, in this week, Actually, it makes the most sense to say Go to the gym on Wednesday, but in the next week, I'm pretty busy on Wednesday, So I guess on the next week I go on Monday. And while that makes sense from a planning perspective, it doesn't make sense. If you want to build habits because in order to build habits, it is necessary that your action becomes associate ID to some trigger. So here's some examples. For example, you could decide to exercise every week day right after work. And then what will happen over time is that your brain will start to associate after work with exercising, so that once you're done with work, your brain will automatically trigger you to exercise, just like your brain ultimately triggers to you to brush your teeth in the morning. Another example would be to go to the gym every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And then again, what happens over time is that you will associate Monday and Wednesday and Friday with going to the gym. Monday, Wednesday and Friday will become imprinted in your mind as the gym days. Another example could be to make 8 to 10 PM your fixed business time, and the same will happen over time. Business will become associated with 8 to 10 PM so that at eight PM without thinking about it, you will start working on your business just like you brush your teeth when you get up in the morning. So again, this is so simple. But this gets screwed up very, very often. You have to keep the trigger consistent over time, and the assignment of this lecture is simply to create a fixed day or week schedule for your activities. So you take the activities that you picked in the last assignment, and you organize them into a day or week schedule that will allow you to build habits over time. And an example of a day schedule would be, for example, working on your business every day from 8 to 10 p.m. While an example of a week schedule would be, for example, to go to the gym on every Monday. And when you make that schedule, keep in mind that you want to spread your activities to create some repetition, and you also want to keep the times and places as constant as possible either over days or over weeks. And if you follow that schedule, then you will find that your actions slowly become more automatic. He will think less, and things will feel easier over time. Okay, so that's the assignment that belongs to this lecture. And you will find that assignment in the class project after this course. Now, the next thing we going to do is talk about the question, how you can stay energetic. So let's continue with that in the next lecture. 9. How to stay energetic (Step 6): Okay, welcome to Step Six and the last step of this program. And in this step, we're gonna look at the question. What can you do to stay energetic? Often when we pursue goals at the beginning, we still feel fine. Our energy level is high, but then slowly over time and sometimes without noticing it, our energy level decreases until we're at the point where we're pretty much exhausted. And if you take this too far, it can even lead to a burnout. And I can tell you from personal experience that burnout is really something that you want to avoid. A couple of years ago, I had worked very hard for many months in a row. And then one day I woke up and I didn't even have the energy anymore to make myself breakfast. And actually, I didn't eat anything the whole day because I just couldn't find the energy to make myself food. So that was the first and so far, only time that I experienced a burnout. And I can tell you from experience that it isn't pretty, and unfortunately, it's something that can happen with any goal that you could be pursuing. You can be over doing it with dieting, with exercising, with working with everything, you can overdo it. And so in this election, I want to talk about the question. How you can manage your energy so that it will stay high while achieving as much as you can possibly achieve. And the first step here is really to talk about mindset. Because many people have believes, such as that you can always work mawr for as long as you just push yourself. If you really want to, you can always do more. And with that come believes, such as that taking breaks or taking a holiday is basically just a luxury. And if you just cared about your productivity than you would just keep working and never take any breaks. And that is definitely not true. Research has shown that taking strategic breaks actually helps your productivity and helps you sustain your motivation. So here's a little analogy to illustrate what I mean by that. Let's take running as an analogy here. So my simple question for you is how far can you run without taking breaks? And it's probably not very far now compared to that, how far can you run with taking breaks, probably a lot further rights. So if you take breaks the right way, it's not reducing your output. It's improving. Your output is not a sign of laziness. It's a sign of being smart because you're basically just managing your energy well. So the first simple message I want to give you in this lecture is that the number one rule off effective energy management is to take regular breaks. It seems obvious, but the simple truth is that many people already don't do that. So make sure that you take regular breaks and you're some examples what taking breaks could look like for different goals. Suppose that the goal requires you to work a lot or study a lot. In that case, I would recommend that you have regular breaks during the day, and it also helps to have some holidays from time to time. And regular breaks during the day can, for example, be a five minute break. For every hour that you have worked, how many breaks you need and how long the brakes need to be is a matter off trying out because it's different for every person, but a good starting point is a break of five minutes for every hour that you have worked, or suppose that your goal is to do some form of physical exercise may be to lose weight or to get fitter than in that case, I strongly recommend that you have red states that you have days on which you don't train. And if you train very hard, it can also make sense to have weeks in which you lower the training to give your body time to recover. Another example could be if you're on a diet that well, first of all, I'd recommend that you never starve yourself. If you're on a diet, I recommend that rather than starving yourself, you fill yourself up with healthy, low calorie food. Second, if you love food, and if you feel that you're missing something when you're on a diet, you may also want to consider controlled cheat meals, which means that you eat what you like, but to a degree that it doesn't compromise your diet, and this can also give you an emotional break from always preventing to eat the things that you actually love. So it's not just about taking breaks from work but also to give you the opportunity to recover emotionally. So the first rule is that you want to have some form of regular breaks. Okay, now you may wonder what the right amount of breaks is for you, because on the one hand you don't want to lose the momentum. You want to achieve as much progress as possible. But on the other hand, you need to take some breaks. So how do you figure out how many breaks you need to take? And essentially, the answer is that you need to try it out, and you can do that by monitoring yourself for signs that you're over doing it. Science that you may be approaching burnout. He's a little list off science that you can pay attention to. One sign of burnout is chronic fatigue. If you feel tired all the time, even in the evening, even when you're on a holiday, then that's a sign that you're over doing it. Another sign is if you have trouble sleeping, if you lie awake at night, or if your sleep quality is not as good as it used to be, that's another sign that you're over doing it. Another sign is increased illness. If you constantly get ill, or if you have been having a cold for months, then that's again a sign that you're over doing it. But it doesn't have to be physical. It can also be emotional if you constantly feel stressed or depressed or angry, or if you feel anxiety all the time, and that's another sign that you're over doing it. Finally, some people are not that sensitive to these kinds of science, and in that case you can pay attention to your performance. If you find that you make a lot of mistakes and your performance is declining, that's another sign that you're over doing it. So if you find that you have one or more of thes science than I recommend, that you try out one of the following remedies of burnout and the first very straightforward remedy I recommend is to simply dial it back, take more breaks, maybe take some days off, and, generally speaking, dollar back a little bit. Another thing you can do is to reduce caffeine. Caffeine helps us to work, but prevents us actually from recovering and so reducing caffeine can help you recovery. Another thing you can do is to meditate. Meditation can be very effective for reducing stress and getting your mind off your work so that you can recover better. Another effective remedy is physical exercise, although in this case it depends a little bit. If you pursuing a goal that requires physical exercise such as running a marathon, then doing more physical exercise is not a great remedy. But if you're doing a lot of mental work such as studying or working on a business than physical exercise can be a very effective remedy to counter burnout. Another remedy is simply to connect with people, especially if you spend a lot of time by yourself. Studying or working on a business and connecting with other people can be very helpful for reducing stress and making you a lot more resilient to burn out. So Rule Number two is to monitor yourself with signs off burnout, and if he experienced signs off, burn out, then you want to pick a remedy. All right. The third and last rule is to strategize, and he is a way to think about this. You can think off your energy pretty much working like a credit card meaning that you can either be in a positive energy balance or you can be in a negative energy balance, which means that you're actually consuming more energy than you can recover every day. So pretty much like a credit card allows us to spend money that we don't actually have. Our body allows us to spend energy that we don't really have, but the problem is that we need to pay that energy back later with interest. So what do I mean by that? And essentially, what it comes down to is that you have the choice between either having short breaks now or long breaks later. Usually, it's better for your long term productivity to have short breaks now because the brakes will be shorter. But sometimes it can still make sense to all for the longer breaks. And the way strategize about this is, you ask yourself whether you have some kind of critical period. So, for example, if you have a job interview that the time before the job interview is much more valuable than the time after the interview. And so in that case, it can make sense to work hard and build up some energy debt. Another example could be if you were studying for an exam. Studying before the exam is a lot more valuable than studying after the exams. Again, it makes sense to work hard. Another example is if you're starting up a business, usually when you start up a business, you have a certain amount of capsule. And when you run out of that capital, it's game over. So it makes sense to get as much out of the time that you have. And in that case, it can also make sense to work heart. But the key here is that you have to be aware that you are building up energy debt and that you do need to pay that debt back later, which essentially means that you don't just want to work hard. But you also want a plan in recovery time for later. And the way I often approach that is that if I know that I'm going to be very, very busy for the next month, then the first thing I do before I even get started with working is book a holiday for afterwards. Okay, so those are the principles behind effective energy management now Let's talk about the assignment off this lecture, which is about adding breaks and holidays and essentially recovery time to your schedule. So if you're studying, that could be regular breaks in which you do something relaxing. If you're trying to lose weight, then that could be determining one day in the week in which you have a cheat meal. If your goal involves physical exercise than a Kewpie defining on which days you arresting and maybe planning in the week Once in a while in which you go a little bit lighter, just make sure that there's some form of recovery in your schedule. Okay, you made it through all six steps really well done, and now is the best time to do the class project. There's still two lectures to go, but actually, if you want to have the ideal moment into the class project, do it now. Remember that this cause is not just about passively following lectures, but about acquiring skills which you do through practice. So I recommend that you do the class project now to get this practice, and then I see you again in the next lecture 10. What's next?: all right. So you made it through all six steps, and now the next question is, what's next? So let me first give a little recap off the essential lessons off this course, and I think the most important take away. If you take anything from this course, it will be. This motivation is not something that we either have or don't have. Motivation is a skill, and the more we practiced the skill, the better weekend it. And you've already come a long way because in this course you practice six essential motivation skills. You learned how to find your true purpose and tap into your inner passion. You learned how to turn the world around you into a motivator. You learn how to sharpen your goals so that you get a clear idea where you're going. You learned how to formulate clear plans that make it easy to start without thinking too much. You learn how to build habits that get triggered automatically and require little energy, which is one of the most important motivation skills to reach long term goals. And in addition to that, you learned the principles that will allow you to stay energetic for as long as it takes to reach your goal. So I think that you have learned a very powerful set of motivation skills, and I think that in itself is already a great accomplishment. Now, the question is, what are you going to do next? And the first thing that I recommend is that you go through this course one more time. Now, as I said, the things you learned in this course are really skills. And you get better at the skills, the more you practice them. And you will find that once you go through this course one more time that you will discover new details that you missed the first time and you will understand things a lot better now that you know the bigger picture and you will get a lot more value of this course, and then once you're ready with this, the next step is simply to start your journey. If you have done all assignments off this course, then you should have a pretty clear idea what you need to do. In fact, you should have a full schedule that lays out what you need to do, and then the next step is simply to do it. Remember that we want to have a separation between ah planning face and an execution face, and we want to use the planning phase for thinking and the execution phase for doing well. If you have done this whole course, then you're pretty much done with thinking you should have a full schedule that you just need to execute. And so the next step is simply to execute it. Don't think about it too much, just do it. And don't worry so much if it feels difficult at the beginning because it is completely normal to struggle at the beginning. Don't give up because of that. Motivation works in many ways pretty much like a space shuttle at the beginning. It takes a lot of energy for the space shuttle to take off and lift itself off the ground. But the further it gets, the week of the force of gravity that wants to pull it down gets until the space shuttle is at the point, with just floating by itself through space and where it doesn't need any energy at all to move forward. And motivation pretty much works the same way. It is hard to get started. It is hard to go through the first initial face, but it will get easier over time. I can promise you that. And I can promise you that it's so much worth it because you really don't know what you're capable off until you have walked that path. I used to be so insecure and didn't dare to do anything and gave up on pretty much everything I did just because I didn't believe that I was capable of doing it. But then once I picked one goal and really push myself through that initial face, I couldn't believe what I was suddenly achieving. And that experience spilled over from that one goal to every other aspect in my life. And it has completely transformed my life. So just commit to one goal and push yourselves with the initial face. And I promise you that it will get easier. And I promise you that it will be worth it in the end. At this very moment. All that's between you and getting started. A simply thoughts don't listen to them. You know what to do. So just get started. Good luck