Welcome back!
Have you ever noticed that your enthusiasm and excitement about a project is highest right at the beginning of the project? You feel like you’re fueled solely by adrenaline. Sometimes you can stay up well into the night just because you’re so excited about your project.
And then that excitement starts fading away as the reality of the work sets in. You lose your enthusiasm. This is when you’re tempted to start putting the project on the back burner and instead focus on something that does make you excited.
Generally, there are two reasons why this happens:
1. Fear. The closer you get to completing a project, the more fear you’ll feel. This fear in turn can cause you to lose your enthusiasm for the project and start making excuses as to why you’re not doing what you should be doing.
While it’s pretty common for fear to slow you down, this isn’t always the reason…
2. You’ve just lost the passion for the project. Once you really delve into a project, you start focusing on the work and start thinking less about the end result. When you stop thinking about the end result (e.g., what it will feel like to achieve your goals), your enthusiasm fades.
If you think it’s fear that’s holding you back, then you need to return to the brain dump and “what would happen if” exercises that we talked about in previous lessons. Otherwise, the problem may be that you’ve forgotten to focus on the reason why you’re doing all this. This is bound to happen, especially if you’re working on a big project that takes months to complete.
So here’s what you need to do: Remind yourself on a daily basis why you’re working towards this particular goal.
Now, in order to get your enthusiasm back you’ll need to tap into that strong emotional reason why you want to achieve your goal. Let me give you an example…
Let’s say your goal is to start an online business and make $100,000 per year. If you focus solely on the money (the $100k), you may soon lose your enthusiasm. That’s because money itself means nothing.
Instead, you need to focus on an emotional reason why you want that money. For example, perhaps you have young children and you want to stay home to raise them. Thinking about going to work every day and missing their first words, their first steps and their first everything just about kills you.
See what I mean? Focusing on $100,000 is passionless… whereas focusing on a strong emotional reason lights a fire under you.
TIP: If you don’t have a strong emotional reason, you’ll need to dig down deep to discover it. You can do this by playing the “so what?” game. First, state your goal. Then ask, “so what?” Keeping asking yourself this question until you hit upon your emotional reason for wanting to achieve your goal.
Once you know your emotional reason, then your next step is to remind yourself of it daily. Close your eyes at least once or twice a day to imagine yourself achieving the goal. Pay particular attention to how you’ll feel when you achieve it. This little exercise should give you just the boost you need to keep moving forward!
That’s it for this time. Next time you’ll discover a surprisingly simple way to make yourself feel great when you move forward… and guilty if you don’t. Stay tuned!