Fire Up Your Motivation|Smart Career Moves

CleverNews - The E-Newsletter That Shows You How To Coach Yourself
And Others
From Kathleen Alexander and CleverNews
This Issue: Fire Up Your Motivation
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If you asked my friends to describe me, a good cook isn't a phrase
they would readily associate with me.

'Tis true... I'm no Nigella Lawson in the kitchen.

But...

... (Drum roll, please). Last night, I whipped up some aromatic
coconut rice pilaf, spicy Malabar chicken, green beans with mustard
seeds and a homemade mango sorbet. Not bad, if I may say so
myself.

In fact, in the last month or so, there's been a marked change in
my culinary efforts. Gone are the feelings of dread I used to
associate with having to cook. Now, I actually want to cook!

The principle behind this transformation is the exact same
principle you can use to motivate yourself to achieve your business
and personal goals.

It's the ABC's Delicious magazine.

More precisely, it's the close ups and tantalising full page
pictures of vine ripened sweet tomatoes, the sublime sun beams
shining through the kitchen window and the beautifully presented
dishes staring straight out of the page at me.

And have you noticed? Everyone looks happy in these pictures - the
featured chefs are smiling, the people in the print ads are having
the time of their life using some obscure sauce. Even kids have a
serenity about them.

A cooking magazine obviously isn't going to motivate you to pursue
your goals. What's important, as I mentioned earlier, is the
principle behind them - using attractive visuals as a motivator.

If you're pursuing a goal, try firing up your motivation with the
following suggestions.

Make your mental images big, bright and colourful.
In fact, if it was a still image you are seeing in your mind's eye,
imagine it as a moving image or movie.

Make sure that what you are visualising is something pleasant that
you want, not something that you are trying to avoid.

Adjust those images. Discover what else you could change to make it
even more motivating for you. If the picture you are visualising is
black and white, make it colour. Perhaps you could make the colour
more saturated. If it's framed, make it panoramic. And vice versa.

To make it even more enticing, you could add sound - for example,
music or the conversations that might take place along with your
mental image. Try adjusting the volume. Is the sound coming from a
particular direction? What if it was surround sound? Does that
make it more attractive or less?

You might even want to add other representational systems like
smells, tastes and sensations to go along with your mental visual
and audio.

In Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), we call the components of
your senses submodalities.

Submodalities in the visual representation include brightness,
saturation, size, distance, sharpness and focus amongst others. In
auditory, they include (but are not limited to) volume, pitch,
tone, tempo and timbre. Kinesthetic submodalities includes temperature,
texture, intensity, rhythm and so on. By noticing and then changing
your submodalities, you can lessen or intensify the response to
your thoughts.

Visualising isn't going to make your outcomes materialise in a puff
of smoke. However, by tweaking your visual, auditory, kinesthetic
(even olfactory and gustatory) submodalities appropriately to make
it more compelling, you will be more likely to take the necessary
steps to make your outcome a reality.

Please Note: Many of my coaching clients first contact me because
they feel they lack motivation. However, it is not always as
straightforward as motivation. Often, it has to do with
conflicting values, lack of information, personal beliefs and a
whole range of other possibilities.

In the coaching process, I help my clients uncover and address these.
Motivation flows on automatically as result.

If you'd like to see a few short case studies of clients who
initially thought their problem was a lack of motivation but discovered it
wasn't quite as simple as that, read Case Studies One and Two on
Clever Fox's Coaching For Women website by clicking here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have dinner to prepare for tonight's
guests.

Until next time, all the best!

Kathleen Alexander
Clever Fox
1/9 Grange Road, Kew VIC, Australia 3101
T: + 613 9817 3482
E: kathleen@cleverfox.com.au

To find out about Clever Fox's NLP based coaching and training
programs please visit www.cleverfox.com.au and
www.coachingforwomen.com.au. Or call us on on +613 9817 3482.

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