RISE to meet your goals

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R.I.S.E to meet your goals 

By Mark Wager

A new year brings new hope and new opportunities. It’s the time of the year when people set down their goals for the upcoming year full of hope and inspiration yet many of those goals will not be met, most of them will be given up within the month. If your goal is to regularly visit the gym then there’s a 50% chance that you will be one of the people that stop going to the gym after the first six months. Why does this happen? How can you maintain your goals?

The most powerful force you possess is motivation

Motivation is the key to everything and is the main driving force in your life. It’s what gets you out of bed in the morning, its what makes you go to work and it drives you to try to obtain a better life for you and your loved ones. Motivation is produced by your sub-conscious mind asking itself two simple questions

What’s the reason to change?

What’s the reason to try?

What’s the reason to change?

Your sub-conscious mind has to decide if there is a suitable reason to change the current status-quo. You may make the conscious decision to go to the gym but does the sub-conscious believe your reason to go is sufficient? What is wrong with the current situation in order to change it?

What’s the reason to try?

With this question your sub-conscious mind looks at the chances of success. You may want to go to the gym in order to get a six-pack stomach but do you deep down in your sub-conscious think that it's possible. If not then it shuts down your access to motivation.

If your mind has convincing answers to both of those questions then you suddenly feel the drive inside to complete the desired task – you feel motivated. When people fail,  it tends to be due to a lack of a suitable answer to one of those questions.  The sub-conscious doesn’t believe there is enough reason to change or the sub-conscious doesn’t believe there’s a strong enough reason to try. So what can we do about it?

@mark_wager thanks :-)

— Thiago Silva (@ThiagoSilva_MMA) May 22, 2013

R.I.S.E. to success

When you set a goal you need to be very clear about the reasons why you want to achieve the goal.  The key word is ‘want” and not “like”. If you would ‘like” to do something then you will only achieve it because of blind luck or the task was so simple that anyone would have done it. You need to “want” to do something and you have to feel it deep down inside, so deep that it is part of you, such an integral part that you can’t imagine living without it. In order to achieve that you must categorise what you want into one of four categories. I use the anagram of R.I.S.E to remember them.

R is for revenge

This is a powerful yet controversial reason as there are people who are not comfortable being driven by revenge.  The ironic thing is that those same people are normally  driven by revenge but consciously try to mask it as something else. When they hear negative feedback about themselves they feel discomfort and strive to do more to disprove the negative feedback, determined to self-improve in the hope of success. They might convince themselves it's not revenge but their sub-conscious mind is provoked into wanting to be so good that they can shove their success down the throats of the people who doubted them. There is nothing wrong with revenge as long as it is not your only driver. Healthy revenge is good; you can’t have angels without having some demons.

I is for Idealism

There are a lot of variations of how to use the word ‘idealism” but in this context I would like to use idealism as the undeniable belief that the world should reflect your own morals, ethics and code of honour that shape your personal world. The view of your own world is formed throughout your life by your interactions and experiences. Your driver is that you do something because you believe it’s the right thing to do. While idealism is not always the most powerful driver, it is the one which is most self-sufficient which means if you find motivation through this route then you rarely need the other drivers to assist you.

S is for survival

This can be by far the most powerful driver. This is when you have no option but to change because your very survival depends on it. If not your life will continue to spiral downwards to desperately unacceptable levels. Unfortunately if you are not conscious of where your life is at this moment in time then survival only clicks in when it’s almost too late, like someone who only changes their eating habits after a health scare. For me personally I was never more motivated to change my life than when I left my job without planning ahead and suddenly found myself pennyless after all the bills that came from nowhere because I was living a lifestyle I could not afford. The key with this driver is to be aware of your current situation  and where your current  behaviour  i. e. lifestyle, food habits will take you if you don’t change. For me it sounds stupid to say it now but I never realised just how bad my life got until I had to beg for  money to survive.  It was only then that I got a wakeup call. Most people think " this could never happen to me" but believe me it can happen to anyone. For someone who eats fried chicken everyday a heart attack may be just a matter of time. Don’t do what I did – give yourself a wakeup call today. Take control of your life and start your journey to success.

E is for expectation

The last driver is the most common driver.  It is the expectation that you have to perform a task, usually but not always connected to a contractual expectation. A typical example would be work. We attend work and do what we are instructed to do because we know it’s in our contract. We work and it is this work that pays us for doing that work. We naturally want to meet people's expectations be it the wife, husband, kids, employer, friends or colleagues.

R.I.S.E

An example of how people may face the same situation but motivated to do so by different RISE drivers is if you look at a soldier who has signed up for a tour of duty in a hostile environment

R - Revenge : I've signed up because they have threatened my country and they need to pay for what they've done

I - Idealism: I've signed up because I believe  in the cause that I'm fighting for

S - Survival: I've signed up because we will die if we don't defeat the enemy.

E - Expectation: I've signed up because it was the best career option for me.

Whatever your ambition for the year may be when you sit down and decide on your goals just make sure that you know how they fit within the RISE model so you know what is deep down your true driver for wanting to change. Once you know that then you will be able to successfully unlock your ability to truly motivate yourself and you will be amazed with what you are capable of achieving.

This article is taken from the book "Elite Leadership" currently on sale for $0.99 USD. Click the picture below to purchase through Amazon

About the Author:

Mark Wager is New Zealand's leading Leading Coach. To contact Mark regarding Leadership Coaching, MBTI courses and Team Building please use the enquiry form below

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