Motivation and Emotions

Motivation and emotions - you may be wondering what one has to do with the other.....everything!!! Let's be honest here. If you want to make things happen the ability to motivate yourself and others is a critical skill you need. But, you have emotions that can derail or kill your best efforts. So don't ignore this fact! Without a doubt, how you feel can have a dramatic impact on what you do and say and how you experience life in general.

Mastering Your Motivation and Emotions

You have dreams for a better life. Your want to make it happen. You've read about motivation. You set your goals, and you're ready. With hope, excitement, and determination you start. However, after a very short while, reality sets in. Life happens. You lack time, money, and resources. You're stressed from the problems you are dealing with in life. Your emotions leap to life, feeding off of everything going on in your life. It starts a ripple effect from there.

The Cycle of Motivation and Emotions

1. It all starts with a trigger point (the cause of how you feel). Something happens - a person, issue, or circumstance (big or small) cause your emotions to boil inside you or bubble to the surface.
   
   Let's say you're lacking time to take a needed action towards your goal. How do you feel about this? Frustrated? Upset? Angry? Let's pretend frustration sets in. A myraid of emotions attack you - dissatisfaction and anxiety surface. You're trying to achieve something, but time simply will not cooperate.
   
   On the other hand, lack of time may serve as a sign to you that you were not meant to take action in the first place. In this case, you feel relieved.


2. Getting physical. When your emotions fire up, a physical reaction is coming along for the ride. If you're frustrated, your physical reaction may me to pound your fist on a table, or to take a deep breath, or to throw up your hands....whatever your natural inclination to that particular emotion is moving into action. On the otherhand, if you feel relieved, you may sigh, you may untense your body and relax a little.



Minding Motivation and Emotions

3. Your mind is an interesting place. All of the time, thoughts enter and exit your mind (consciously and subconsciously). You got a belief system, experiences, and habits all guiding you along the way. Your thoughts are contributing its two-cents about your emotions, your reactions, and what the heck you should do about it all.
   
   If your emotions reaction to our situation above was frustration your past experiences, belief system, and habits were working furiously to push you to react as you did. Somewhere in your life, you've learned or experienced that lack of time is a serious obstacles that you struggle to overcome. Otherwise, instead of reacting with frustration, you may have reacted with excitement, because your past experiences have resulted in you not only overcoming the obstacles, but going on to succeed, beyond your wildest dreams.
   
   On the other hand, deep down, you may believe you couldn't achieve your dream anyway. So when lack of time surfaced as an issue, you became relieved. After all, the situation proved your point in the first place. Now you feel justified in your decision to quit.



Your Motivation and Emotions Clues

4. Your Spirit - that inner self that provide glimpses into the many facets of a conscious you. If you pay close attention you will discover the parts of yourself you never realized existence. For instance, why are you reacting emotionally as you are? Are you starting from a place of openness or a place of fear?
   
   The interesting thing about your spirit is that it can show you truths about yourself you'd have otherwise missed. When people indicate they are living consciously, they are learning to connect with the inner parts of themselves. If you can gain a better understanding of yourself then you empowered with more knowledge that can help you respond better to what happens in your life.



Motivation and Emotions - The Reactions Are Yours

5. Your Choice - yep. You always make them. No matter what is happening in your life you chose your response, your next action, your behavior, etc..... It all boils down to YOU. For the record, doing nothing is a choice as well. Every choice you make or don't make impacts your life.
   
   Back to our motivation and emotions scenario. We have two emotions we are working with here - frustration and relief. Now it's time to make a choice. If you're frustrated, do you build on the negative emotions, allowing it to negatively impact your body and mind or do you decide to fight through it and move ahead anyway. How about the relief? It's so easy to quit. Will you? Or, will you find a way to keep going?

Here's the point, motivation and emotions are aligned. You can attack it from a positive perspective or a negative perspective. You can use the pain you feel as a driving force forward or a reason to give up and quit.

Make Your Motivation and Emotions Work for You

Making your motivation and emotions work for you is easier than you think. Following are several strategies that can help you manage your emotions and fuel your motivation:

Acknowledgment - You have emotions. Everybody does. You must accept the fact that your emotions impact your life one way or another. You could be a person who holds everything in. Or, you might be a person who ignores how you feel. On the other hand, you might wear your emotions on your sleeve; more than likely, you fall somewhere in between. The point is that you should acknowledge your feelings head on. Just as importantly, note those things which sets you off. Once you understand yourself and your emotions a little better, then you are in the position to steer things in your favor.

Perspective - Be realistic. Life happens. You're going to emotionally react stronger to some things more than others. You'll have good moments and bad moments. However, when all is said and done, learning and dealing with your emotions is a PROCESS. It'll take a little time. You'll experience setbacks. But, if you commit, you'll get better at it over time.

Weapons - You got three simple, but extremely powerful weapons to help you deal with your emotional reactions.

1. You can implement the 30 second breathing rule. All you do is whenever you experience an intensely negative emotion, do not automatically react. Instead, take deep steady breaths for 30 seconds. The idea is to prevent yourself from responding immediately as well as to combat the negative impact to your body.


2. Second, start an emotional reaction music collection. What is this? Well, I want you to think about your top five negative emotions. These are emotions you experience more than others. For instance, your top five may be: disappointment, anger, anxiety, depression, or sadness. Now find at least three compilations of music that combat those feelings and keep them handy. One compilation for all emotions will not work. As you know, music makes you feel certain emotions. You certainly do not want to listen to music that makes you sad if you feel depressed.


3. Lastly, create your own place of solitude for a few moments of quiet reflection time. In a crazy and busy world, a few minutes of silence can be golden. Simply use the time to regroup or recharge. You see, when your emotional - it can be draining. When you're tired, sick, or not fully feeling up to yourself then you are more vulnerable to your feelings. It's easier to react with thinking. You don't want this. At home, your place of solitude can be a seldomly used room. At work, it can be the restroom. You can chose your own bathroom stall to take five minutes to collect yourself. It really does work wonders.

The bottom line is this - motivation and emotions require energy and a "want to do" attitude. I don't know about you, but negative situations and feelings do not exactly promote what you need to be successful. This is why learning to be more emotionally discipline can help you tackle how you feel from a more constructive place - leaving you with energy and strategies to keep going when the going is toughest.

Motivation and Emotions

Motivational Quotes About Emotions

Never make a permanent decision based on a temporary storm. No matter how raging the billows are today, remind yourself: "This too shall pass!" ~ T. D. Jakes

The more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer becanse smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. ~ Thomas Merton

Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found out that it was ourselves. ~ Robert Frost

Your emotions are your inner guidance system. You have within you the power to create a life of joy, abundance, and health or you ahve the same ability to create a life filled with stress, fatigue, and disease. With very fre exceptions, the choice is yours. ~ Christiane Northrup

By starving emotions we become humorless, rigid, and stereotyped; by repressing them we become literal, reformatory and holier-than-thou; encouraged they perfume life; discourage, they poison it. ~ Joseph Collins