MoneyWatch

How to Get Motivated?

By Geoffrey James

Updated on: November 19, 2007 / 9:06 AM EST / MoneyWatch

Selling is emotional heavy lifting. Everything from cold calling to closing requires the ability to get motivated and to perform at your best. Not surprisingly, there are hundreds of motivational gurus and authors who promise to help.

One of my personal favorites is Omar Periu, who recently spent an entire hour of his valuable time coaching me on how to keep motivated. He explained that there were four disciplines that, if practiced regularly, make it easy to get motivated. Here they are:

Mental Conditioning. Fill your mind with inspiring ideas and powerful examples of success, thereby reinforcing your confidence and resolve. Rather than listening to the news on your morning commute, listen to motivational CDs or (at least) music that inspires you and makes you feel powerful and confident.
Physical Conditioning. Healthy thoughts are easier to generate inside a healthy body. If you're too tired to do more than the minimum, your chances for success are greatly reduced. Omar recommends daily aerobic exercise to keep your body in a condition that will help you to achieve your goals.
Social Conditioning. If the people around you are de-motivating, you'll be fighting an uphill battle to stay motivated. Treat people with negative thought patterns (including customers and managers) as if they were mentally ill; don't take anything that they say seriously.
Flexibility of Approach. Achieving a goal is like walking to a destination that you can see in the distance. As you get closer, you'll see things that were outside of your vision at the start. Change your plan so that it matches your new perception of circumstances. This prevents you from slogging at things that don't work.

That's undeniably good advice, and I think that Omar is right on the money. However... I have to admit that after waking up this morning, I didn't follow his advice. In fact, here's my morning so far:

I read the news online.
Had a cup of coffee.
Ate some tortilla chips.
Started to write my blog.

In other words, I'm pretty much doing my daily routine, even though I've got a lot of work to do today (including a sales proposal) and a little extra motivational oomph would be fairly useful. But I'll bet that I'm pretty typical. I'll bet that most people listen to motivational speakers, get all pumped up, and then go back to their daily routines.

Anyway, just an experiment, I'm actually going to follow Omar's advice, at least for today. As soon as I've posted this, I'm going to do some exercise while listening to something inspiring. Then I'm going to eat a healthy breakfast, without reading the news. I'll report back in tomorrow on how it worked.

Meanwhile, I've got a question: What do YOU do to get motivated?
Seriously, throw some suggestions my way. I could use them.