The Stop Procrastinating

Now Course

Bonus Guide: How to Kickstart and

Recharge Your Motivation

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Copyright Henrik Edberg, 2015. You do not have the right to sell, share or claim the ownership of the content of this course. This course is for informational purposes only and it contains my opinions based on my experience. You should always find the advice of a professional before taking action on something I have published.

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“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.” Hunter S. Thompson

This bonus guide is all about motivation. About supercharging your motivation so you keep going towards your goal or dream. And about how you can refresh your motivation if you have a setback or fall into a motivational slump. These are the best techniques and habits for motivating yourself that I have found in the past 10 years.

1. The 10 Minute Motivation Exercise. This quick exercise can really recharge or boost your motivation. Here’s how you do it (and you can also find it in the motivation worksheet). Sit down in a quiet place. Close your eyes.

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Ask yourself these two questions:

How will my life look in 5 years if I just continue to stay on the same path as now?

How will life likely become worse for me and maybe even for the people around me?

It may be uncomfortable but try to see the negative consequences as vividly as you can in your mind to kickstart your motivation to get going for that positive change. Then ask yourself:

How will my life look in 1 year if I stick with it and I keep going with this change?

How will it look in 5 years?

How will life improve not only for me but for the people that I love if I stick with it? With these two sets of questions try to not just to see the future as detailed and as vividly as you can but also find your own very personal reason(s) for making the change. For example, getting into better shape could help you to become more optimistic and more energetic. That’s great. But to really find the heart of your motivation keep looking for a few more minutes for the more personal answer. The answer could be that you want to make this change in your health because if you don’t then you might not have the energy to have fun and play as much as you want with your son while he’s young. And as he grows up you may be too tired from work to give him quality time each day.

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If you want to make a change in your money habits then it could be because you want more financial security for your family. Or because you have always dreamed of seeing the pyramids of Egypt or visiting the Maldives with the person you love most in the world. Write down those deepest felt reasons in the exercise in your worksheet. Then print it out or transfer the top 3 most important reasons to a piece of paper. Put that piece of paper where you cannot avoid seeing it every day. This will help you to keep your focus in the right place and to keep going even on days when things feel tough.

2. Get daily motivation from outside sources. The sources of information and inspiration - like books, podcasts, magazines, newspapers, websites - you surround yourself will have a big effect on your daily mood and the thoughts that pop up in your head. If you surround yourself with pessimism and apathy then it will be really hard to keep your own motivation up. It will be like trying to drive a car with the hand-brake on. So make an active choice to surround yourself with sources of motivation and information that lift you up. Instead of the sources that pull you back and down. The easiest way to get started with that is to do the following quick exercise (you can find it in the worksheet too).

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Ask yourself these two questions:

What is one source that motivates me in life?

What is one source that holds me back or drags my motivation down? Then follow that up with asking yourself: How can I spend less time with that negative source and use that extra time I have now freed up to spend on the positive source this week? You may for example choose to delete the bookmark or app for a website or podcast that drags you down or holds you back. And set a positive website or podcast as your first bookmark or as a shortcut on your home screen on your smart phone or tablet. By doing so you can ensure that you’ll spend a lot less or no time with the negative source and more time with the positive one.

This is of course just a quick start. Rebalance the motivation you get from the outside by finding more negative and positive sources and make choices about how to spend your limited time with them.

3. Tell people to get accountability. You may have heard or discovered for yourself that telling people in your life that you will do something can help you get accountability.

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If you for example post on Facebook that you’ll aim to do a marathon next summer or go out running for 30 minutes later today you’ll feel accountable and be more motivated to go through with it. Because the people in your life are watching and you want them to be happy for you and to not fail or back down and disappoint them. This one can work really well. Especially if you have an accountability buddy. A person that keeps you accountable not just today but during the coming weeks or months. You can set that up by finding a friend who wants to get in shape too. And then the both of you can motivate each other and keep each other accountable to not skip workouts and to not cheat on your diet for instance. Or you can ask a friend or family member to check up on you and keep you accountable as you work towards a new goal. And he or she can be held accountable on one of his or her goals by you. So the two of you don’t have to have the same goal for this to work.

4. Tell no-one (at first). Here’s an interesting one. You do the opposite of the last tip. Why is that helpful? Well, when you tell people that you will start running or get your personal finances into shape then you feel good about yourself. The people in your life become happy for you. It just feels great. Your mind rewards you in this situation similarly to if you had actually accomplished your goal. And so the motivation may go down at the end of that day. You may not feel so

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ready to go and take that goal on as you did. Instead you relax and just enjoy the happy feelings and thoughts. And then that leads to not really getting started or to doing it half-assed. So instead of telling everyone your plans - and releasing that inner drive - before you get started try saying nothing. Just get started with it in secret at first. Then, after one or a few weeks, when you have gotten a good start you can tell them and share what you have been doing. I recommend trying both approaches and see which one gives you the best results. Over the past year I have started to use this one and it has actually become my favorite. So I usually just focus on action and keep my plans to myself at first these days. Then I tell the people in my life after a few weeks or maybe a month or two. It has given me better results and fewer false starts.

5. Do smart and healthy comparisons. No matter what you do you can pretty much always find someone else in the world that has more than you or are better than you at something. Yes, you may feel good for a while when you get a nicer car than your neighbor. But a week or two later you’ll see someone from the next block with an even finer car than yours.

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And so your motivation drops and you get into a slump. To avoid that simply avoid this very common comparison trap. Replace that destructive habit with the habit of comparing yourself to yourself instead. See how much you have grown, what you have achieved and what progress you have made towards your goals. This habit has the benefit of creating gratitude, appreciation and kindness towards yourself as you observe how far you have come, the obstacles you have overcome and the good stuff you have done. You feel good about yourself without having to think less of other people. Action tip: You can make this smarter comparison habit stick by for instance taking an extra minute or two when you do your weekly 5-minute review on Sundays to write down how you have grown, how much closer you are to your goals now, what you have overcome and learned and so on. By doing so your thinking will over time shift and your thought patterns will automatically become more focused on comparing you to you instead of comparing to other people.

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6. Come alive and recharge that motivation by reflecting on death.

This one may not be for everyone. But I often find it to be hugely recharging to ponder death for a little while to see things more clearly, refocus on only what truly matters in my life and to refuel my motivation. When I think about how my life will end and that I will die then I remember that my time here is not infinite. I cannot just keep procrastinating and do everything or what I really would like later on someday. Because at some point there will not be a later on for me. So how do you use this one in a way that won’t drag you down into just feeling tired and like things are pointless or very heavy? Two things that work for me a lot of the time are these: Take just 1 minute a day to reflect on death. A minute to just think about it, to acknowledge it and the presence of it in life and in the world. A minute to remember that my life, the one I am living right now will have an end (no matter what may happen after death). By just doing so for roughly a minute my focus, priorities and the people who matter the most become clearer again and I remind myself that my time here is truly limited and that I need to make good use of it.

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And this 1 minute time limit keeps me from getting dragged down into negativity and apathy. Do the deathbed exercise. You can find this one the worksheet too. Sit or lie down and close your eyes. Focus on your breath going in and out of your nose and only on that for a minute to calm and clear your mind a bit. Then imagine yourself on your deathbed. You have but a few hours left to live.

What do you remember from your life as you lie there?

What were the most important things?

What things do you wish you had spent more time on?

What things do you wish you had spent less time on?

What do you regret the most? By looking at your life from that perspective you can find more clarity in what you want to stop doing, what or who you want to spend more of your time and energy on and how you want to live the years and decades you have on this earth.

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This exercise and the one where you think about death for a 1 minute a day can be scary. But they can also help you to come alive and help you to start taking the actions that are deep down right for you. So I would recommend to at least try one of them to see if it’s something that would be useful for you.

7. Take a break. Yeah, sometimes you just need to take a break. Perhaps your time-plan for your goal or new habit is just too optimistic? Maybe you have worked harder than you can manage right now. Or there may have been too many tough things happening in your life lately that have taken a lot of energy out of you. Then take a break. A few hours or days of rest and recuperation can change how you feel in a remarkable way and recharge your batteries. This tends to be a way smarter option compared to pushing yourself forward when you are overly tired or demotivated. Not just for your health. But also for your creativity and for the quality in the work you do. Now, take a look at the worksheet and do the exercises you find there. And keep these habits in mind and this guide close by as you move forward so you can kickstart or refuel your motivation whenever you want and need to.