This is a guest post by Laurent Vigernon.
As an entrepreneur, your ability to keep moving forward, no matter what adverse circumstances come up, is critical for the success of your enterprise.
Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of relying solely on their willpower to go through those circumstances, and they pay a high price for this.
How do you ensure you keep moving forward even when your motivation is lacking? In one word: Persistence.
The good news is that persistence is not a talent that you are either born with or not. It is a skill, and as such it can be learned and improved.
In this series of three posts, I will be explaining the three key components of Persistence:
- Your Motivation – all the things and techniques that enable you to stay motivated and eager to move your business to the next level
- Your Environment – all the things and the people that constitute the world in which you live. Designing a proper environment is critical when it comes to working to the best of your abilities.
- Your Routines – all the habits you have in place to make sure that you do more and more of what brings the best results, without having to think about it anymore.
Master these three key elements and you will become unstoppable.
Today we will focus on some actions that you can take immediately in order to ensure your motivation stays high, no matter what circumstances or challenges you face.
Action:
- Make a list of the top 5 reasons why you are in this business. As F. Nietzsche said, “If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how.”
- Make a list of your top 3 objectives for the next 3 months. For each of them, how will you know if the objective is completed or not (how to measure it), and what is the deadline? There is some magic in setting up a deadline: it triggers something inside you that will help you achieve your objective. If you already have a track-record of achieving your goals, don’t hesitate to set a challenging objective. Otherwise, keep it simple and start creating your track record of success.
- Take a sheet of paper and write those 3 goals on it, writing as big as you can. Then put this paper on your desk, where you will see it several times per day. This will be a reminder of your objectives and a good source of motivation.
- Chart yourself: at the end of each day, make a mark (a tick or a smiley) on your calendar if you worked on moving forward at least one of your Top 3 objectives. Seeing the chart being filled day after day will motivate you to continue. Plus, you will want to avoid having a day with no tick, so it will provide extra motivation when you don’t feel like posting on a particular day. Simple & effective.
Further reading:
- Wink and grow rich, by Roger Hamilton. This book contains a wealth of precious business and life tips. You can read it 20 times, you will get something out of it each time.
- The Art Of Persistence, by Laurent Vigneron. This no B.S. action-oriented 90-day program will give you all the resources, the tools and the techniques you can use to become truly unstoppable. A must have and use for any entrepreneur.
Join the conversation
How do you keep your motivation high? Share with us in the comments.
Or use them to create a little bit of extra motivation and accountability to get your action task for today done.
And I would love you to join me on Facebook or Twitter.
Image by ecstaticist. Used under Creative Commons license
Laurent Vigneron is the founder of Origami-Asia and writes about living a meaningful and adventurous life in his blog A Life Worth Living, focusing particularly on the human potential and peak performance. He is the proof that you can run a business, invest time with your wife and children, and still do many other things to live an amazing life. He wrote books endorsed by Brian Tracy and two World Champions, played in a movie, lived in Paris, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, drove the fastest cars, jumped from an airplane, learned Chinese, traveled around the world, and many other things to make each day a daring adventure. He is also the author of “The Art Of Persistence“, a system that can teach anyone how to become unstoppable and reach the finish line of their projects.
This is a great article, I think the key point that you touch on is the need to ensure that you goals are measurable. You mention that we should make 3 month goals, I personally think you need a range of goals long, medium and short and the the short and medium term goals should support your overall long term goal. Ensuring that the targets you set are measurable preferably in quantitative terms, this allows you to look directly at where you are today compared to say three months ago, thanks for sharing.
Entrepreneurs should always stay motivated no matter what the circumstances are. Your suggestions when applied by entrepreneurs should help them be motivated every time. Goal setting is also a timely task especially in preparation for next year. When entrepreneurs understand the “Why” in their goals, they can easily find the “how” to do it. For example, when they set a goal of targeting a new market, they should not stop from that. They need understand ways more than one on how to reach that goal. Analyzing the data about the new market will help them attain that realistic goal.
Every time when I need a bit of a motivation push I remind myself why I started the charity in the first place. It works every time. I also set annual goals and sub-goals, and every tick helps me to stay motivated. I love reading stories of inspiring people and my favourite magazine now is Renegade Collective.