MBA1880 Q&A Wednesday: How Do You Motivate Yourself To Keep Going?

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Hey O welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Entrepreneurship can be lonely, but you're not alone. We' single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. Today's question is from Devin and Devin asks, hey Omar, been a listener of the show for some time and I have a somewhat personal question. How do you motivate yourself to keep going? Don't you have days where you just don't feel like doing it? Do you have strategies or techniques to force yourself to do what you have to do? Thanks in advance for sharing. Love everything you put out there Devin. Thanks Devin for the question and the kind words. This is a very interesting topic to me. Motivation is something that I get asked about a lot primarily because I run a daily podcast. The $100 NBA show, as you know, is a D show and people ask me, how do you continue to record over 1800 episodes? I also give a talk at virtual events as well as physical events about motivating yourself and teams. And in the Q and A section I get asked this question a lot. What do you do to motivate yourself to keep going? Well, in today's episode I'm going to dive deep. I'm going to tell you what I do, what my thoughts are on self motivation and maybe share some unpopular opinions about maybe you need to make some decisions about your life, about your business, about your journey in entrepreneurship that are tough but might help you in the pursuit of being motivated every day. Listen, it is tough to build a business. It's not easy and it's our Responsibility to do what we have to do to make it happen, to push ourselves. This is why I'm really looking forward to today's episode to discuss this topic and help as many people as I can in the process. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Want to start today's episode by saying in order for me to answer this question about motivation, I have to be totally honest. And I'm going to be very honest about this topic for one reason I care. I really want to give you the raw truth about this topic so you can actually get something out of this episode so you can actually use something that I'm saying. And I just want to say this is all out of love and, and really empathy. I've been there. I know how hard things can be in business. I know what it feels like to not feel motivated or feel like doing something one day or a few days in a row. So this is all advice coming from the heart and hopefully you'll receive it and see that I have all the best intentions, even if in today's episode there's gonna be a bit of tough love. I've always been fascinated with this topic because motivation is a strange one, because what motivates us, what pushes us, what drives us, is different for everybody. And the other side of motivation is our threshold for pain. How much pain can we take before we say, you know what, I've had it, and that's going to be different for everybody. And there's no right or wrong answer. There's no this person's stronger than the other person. Because a lot of what shapes this has nothing to do with something in your control. A lot of it has to do with your perspective on life. Your experiences in life, your upbringing, your culture, even your cultural background, cultural baggage, even, you know, things that maybe is in the back of your mind that you always are reminded of. For example, you probably have heard a lot of rags to riches stories by successful people, people that didn't come from much means and became wildly successful. Tony Robbins is known for this. He was homeless, lived out of his car. Oprah Win is another example Mike Tyson's another example. He came from a very difficult situation growing up. Why do I bring this up? Because when somebody is coming from a very difficult situation, very little means very little resources. They've endured a lot of pain. They have a high threshold for pain. One of my favorite stories is Sylvester Stallone's story of trying to get Rocky made. If you're interested in a really motivational story, check that out on YouTube. But basically, Sylvester had no cash, no money, hit rock bottom. And one of the things he says is that he's just used to poverty. He knows how it feels. So he's not afraid to take risks. He's not afraid to be rejected. It can't get any worse than this, you know. So people that come from that kind of experience have a different perspective on failure, on life, on winning. They're really motivated to. Because any success, even a little success, like, you know, like Sir Versus sold a script for Rocky for $35,000 and a starring role in the movie. It's not millions of dollars, but for him, he's so grateful he's off the street. He's so grateful he has so much money that if something happened in the making of this film that is hard or difficult or he just doesn't feel like doing it compared to what he was before, it's easy to get up. He has perspective. So that has a lot to do with motivation. And I can't give you that. I can't say something to you to do that's got to come within. And one of the things I think is really helpful is to start every morning with writing down three things you're grateful for. You can do this in a journal, and there's something about writing it down. Don't just say it out loud. I use a 5 minute journal, and this is part of the exercise. So if you want something that's like super simple to follow, just buy the five minute journal. Such a great investment. But basically, when you wake up in the morning and you write down three things you're grateful for, you start to realize, wow, I have a lot right. I have a lot of advantages. Sometimes I just write in my journal as one of the things I'm grateful for is I have options. You know, if you live in a country that gives you options, that you have freedoms, that you're not oppressed, that you have safety, right? There are literally people like you and me in different parts of the world that don't know if they're going to make it to tomorrow, whether it's because of famine or disease or just safety, bombs are falling from the sky. I don't mean to be overly dramatic here, but that's somebody's reality. So by starting the day by writing three things you're grateful for, you start the day realizing, okay, automatically by writing those three things down and seeing it on paper, you see it with your own eyes. You wrote it down. That's the power of writing that, hey, things are not that bad. I can do whatever I need to do to keep moving forward. That's one very powerful strategy. Another way I find very helpful to motivate myself when I'm kind of not feeling it is I ask two simple questions. One, what will happen if I don't do it? What will happen if I do do it? So you automatically set yourself up to use two things that motivate human beings just by nature. Avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. So if I talk out what will happen if I don't do it, it will remind me of all the bad things that might happen or things I will have to face. So I want to avoid that. A lot of us will do things just to avoid pain. So that can motivate you to do what you have to do. Or thinking about, what are the great things that will happen if I do this thing? And I'm talking about, really visualize, close your eyes, think about it. What's the feelings that you're going to feel when you do do it? The sense of accomplishment, the sense of, hey, I'm able to empower myself. And then, of course, all the other benefits of actually completing a task, the return on investment, right? That will motivate you because you're seeking pleasure, you're seeking things that are good for you. So those two techniques really help. But if you're having to do that second technique, you know, think about, well, what. What would happen if you don't do it? If you do do it, like, on a daily basis, every single time you do a task, we have a problem. Okay? This should just be something you do once in a while. Once every two weeks, maybe. You know, I don't have an exact cadence, but the point here is, is that if this is a daily thing, this is a bigger problem that we need to solve. Now I want to take this moment to say, hey, depression, anxiety, these are real things, okay? And you should consult a professional. I'm not a professional when it comes to these things. Consult a professional. If you are experiencing these things, you have symptoms of these things. This is not something to be ashamed of. This is Just something that you need to check up on. I'm not a doctor, I'm not an expert, so I can't really advise you in that area. But if it's outside that area, if it's more like you just don't enjoy what you do, you need to evaluate your business. And I've been there. I had a business that I just didn't enjoy and realized, wow, I don't really like doing any of the things that I have to do in this business to make it happen. Why did I build this thing for me? Why did I trap myself into this torture chamber? Right? And I realized, hey, I can change it. I can sell this business. I can get rid of it. I can close it down if I wanted to, and I can start something that I do enjoy. So reevaluate. What are you building here? Maybe you need to tweak your business, change it. Maybe you need to delegate the task that you hate to somebody else actually loves it. Sometimes you're gonna need a radical change to make a radical change, right? To make a radical difference in your experience every day. I know this sounds simpler than it actually is. Some people are like, I can't just change my business. This is how I earn my money. It's how I feed my family, all that stuff. But your happiness and your ability to do it at a high level is very important to. We'll talk about that. Being able to do it at a high level in a moment. But this is actually something you need to look at. My first attempt at fixing this problem would be to take a look at all the things that you don't enjoy doing in the business. See if you can hire somebody to do it or outsource it to somebody already on your team. Or better yet, ask yourself, what are some things I can eliminate totally? Do I actually need to do these things? Can I do something different? Can I just chop them off completely? If you're still left with things that you can't outsource. Change the business model if you can, or slowly change it. Add different things into the business that can allow you to earn money so you can transition out of one thing to the next.

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Wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday question about how do you motivate yourself? I'll speak about myself. When I feel a little bit demotivated, it's usually because of burnout. I never really feel like I just can't do what I have to do, but it's more of a question of am I doing it at the same level as I expect from myself? Am I motivated to do it well and not just get it done? And that's when I have to start using some of the techniques I talked about today. If I feel that I'm feeling a bit demotivated a few days in a row, I realize I feel a little burnt out. You know, I feel I need a break. And I look at the calendar and I ask myself, when's the last time I went on holiday or took a break or had a long weekend? And I start to realize, wow, it's been a while. Okay? And like I mentioned in previous episodes, it's so important for us to schedule our holidays in advance. And I, and I normally do this, I already know in advance throughout the year when our breaks are, when we're going to have some time off and get a chance to step away from the office and refresh the brain. But curveball, Covid, right, Lockdown, quarantine, not able to really do that, as expected. So my job at this point is to readjust. Okay? I can't go anywhere. I can't really have a typical vacation. So I really should consider curing burnout in a different way. Maybe stepping away from the office, from work, even within the home, would be helpful, even if it's just for a few days where you just enjoy catching up on some books that you've wanted to read or some shows you wanted to watch or whatever it might be. For me, burnout and being just mentally and physically tired has a lot to do with motivation. So check yourself, right? Make sure you're giving yourself the rest and the break and the mental break that you need. Um, if you're able to step away from work, shut off as much as possible in terms of communication, messages, emails. This will allow you to refresh and be remotivated to get perspective. You know, when you step away from something, you know, you start to realize, oh, you know what? I love my business. What was I mad about? And if we don't do that frequently enough, it can really affect our work and our feelings towards our business. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Devin, thank you so much for asking that question for today's Q and A Wednesday's episode. If you got a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me over at Omar MBA Net and I'll make sure to answer right here on Q and A Wednesday. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Sometimes we get demotivated because we're overwhelmed. One of the things I do at the start of my day is I just have like a legal pad, like literally a yellow physical legal pad. And I step away from my office, I go out to the balcony. This could be a living room. This could be something close to a window. Something just gets you out of the work mode. And I actually just create the to do's I need to complete today. I just list the things I have to do. I try to keep this list less than eight items and I try to prune it and say, what is the most important thing I need to complete? You know, what are the things If I don't complete this, it's not a big deal. And what are things if I complete? It will really move the needle. In our business, having things written down, just a list really makes you feel like, okay, I can do this. This is not too bad. And as you cross off things on the list, you start to feel, okay, I'm getting closer and closer to the end. And what happens is that you do that enough times, you do that enough days, you realize, oh, I can accomplish many things. I can do things. There's no reason to feel overwhelmed. I am able to conquer my to dos. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 MBA show and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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