“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.” – Mark Twain

Motivation is your drive and it’s a skill you can build. When it comes to your performance, motivation is one of the most important things you control. One of my favorite places to look for motivation practices is sports. After all, athletes depend on motivation to perform their best.

“Life is a big canvas, throw all the paint on it you can.” — Danny Kaye

The Web is a fountain of knowledge, especially if you know where to drink from. This post is a quick tour of some of the main sites I use that make me think.

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen … but do you know Davey Stone, George Bailey, Ralphie Parker or Emmet Otter? They’re the stars of some of my favorite holiday classics. Holiday classics are a great source of inspiration and insight. As with any movies, holiday classics are stories with conflict and resolution. Themes range from fitting in to standing out. Some of the best stories are where the villain becomes the hero and defeats their inner demons. Another common theme I see is find your version of happiness.

Movies can be an amazing source of insight and inspiration. They fill our hearts and heads with heroes, stories, songs, and scenes we can draw from.

Maybe you think of the theme song to Rocky when you work out. Maybe you think of “waxing the car” or “painting the fence” while you master your craft. What’s important is that you choose the stories, scenes or heroes that serve you.

Here is a sampling of 16 movies and what they can teach us about life and leadership:

While reading Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life , by Martin Seligman, I thought it was great to see how the explanation of human behavior has changed over time.  In the earlier days of psychology, popular opinion was that people are the product of their environment.  Eventually, psychologists figured out that habits of thinking can be changed and that individuals can choose the way they think.
I didn’t realize how many competing schools of thought there were.  I also like the fact that eventually it was possible …

The best luck quotes at your fingertips. This collection of luck quotes includes advice from Emmerson, Shakespeare, Tony Robbins, and more.

One of my mentors gave me a simple, but effective lens for analyzing effectiveness.  It’s motivation and technique. Motivation is whether you want to do something.  Technique is your method.  When you’re not achieving the results you want, you can ask whether it’s a motivation issue or a problem with the technique.  By knowing the issue, you can improve your results.
Here are examples of two ineffective scenarios:

You have lots of motivation, but the wrong technique.
You have the right technique, but lack motivation.

If you have motivation, but no technique, you end …

A friend sent me an article about what gets us out of bed each day. It’s “Seeking.” According to Jaak Panksepp, “Seeking” is the granddaddy of our emotional systems. It goes beyond fulfilling our physical needs. We end up in a crazed state of foraging, curiosity and expectancy. The rewards we seek don’t have to actually solve our needs and they don’t need to be physical. Just exploring ideas or coming up with new “ah has” is enough to keep us going.

How long does it take to change a habit? You’ve probably heard ranges anywhere from 2 weeks or 21 days, up to 30 days or more. In my experience, it depends.

In this post, I summarize the key thing that changing a habit depends on. Once you know the keys to changing a habit, you can more effectively analyze your own habit changing attempts. Here are 10 keys that influence your ability to change an old habit or form a new one:

This is a follow up post to Janine’s previous guest post, Discover Your Why. In this post, Janine shares an approach to help you find your how that supports your why. When you lead with your why and your how, you can bring your best game wherever you go. What you do is simply a channel for unleashing your best why and how.

Every day you make a choice about how you show up in this world – at work, in your business, in life. Some of us show up because of what we do. We measure our success by the number of product features we build, how many goods we sell, how many client calls we make. Others show up because of how they do things. Their success is measured in quality and precision, speed and efficiency, even the depth of client relationships. The third, and smallest group – are people who show up for a distinct reason. They have a cause that drives them, a belief that inspires them.

If you’ve given up on self-discipline, this post is for you. You probably have a lot of things you don’t enjoy doing. Worse, you might have a lot of things you simply don’t do because they suck. It becomes a game of self-discipline versus just doing what you enjoy. You try willing yourself into it, or beating yourself up, or you just plain giving up. That is, unless you know the secret. The secret of self-discipline is to change the why or change the how.

This is too cool not to share. During my Influencer training, we watched a video on delaying gratification. Apparently, people that can delay gratification can do better in school, get more promotions, have better relationships and lead a more successful life. Rather than do what they want in the moment, they choose what’s right for the long run. That’s the will part.

Inspire … “To breathe life into” …
… That’s how one of my instructors defined it.  Now, I have a new respect for the word inspire.  I find myself asking, “how do I breath life into others?”
Photo by km33068.

What’s the difference between motivation and discipline? I like to think of discipline as “what to do” and motivation as “why to do.” Discipline has a Latin root, but the gist is it’s about teaching. So I think of self-discipline as teaching yourself self-control and shaping your behavior, so that you’re not a slave to your motivations. Primal motivations served us at one point, but society’s changed what survival means. For more precision, you can think of discipline as shaping your thinking, feeling, and doing to adopt a new behavior. Discipline serves you most when motivation says do otherwise. At the end of the day though, I think a key is to find ways to link things to feeling good.

What’s your story? No, not once upon a time … what’s your story of who you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going? Your stories package and share your experience. They help you stand out if you share the right things. What are the right things? Share your unique experiences, your values, and your strengths … and even relevant flaws. Your human after all and everybody has flaws. It’s not what happens to you, but how you respond and you’re the author of your life. Choose your adventures. Write your stories with might. Lead yourself first and use your stories to guide yourself and others.

I created a browsable list of my favorite motivation quotes. Everybody needs a little inspiration now and then. I find that quotes and sayings are a great way to share insight and action. Sometimes, just the right words, said just the right way, are just the lift you need.

This is a follow up post to my previous post, Living Your Process. I’ve had enough folks ask me how to map out their success process that I’ll share some more prescriptive guidance. It’s a work in progress, but it’s enough to share for now. The big idea with living your process is that it helps you make the most of what you’ve got. It’s about living with passion and playing to your strengths. It’s also about living your values whether it’s at work or at play. It’s about knowing what fulfills you and what sparks you each day. It’s about living from the inside out and leading yourself first.

I’m a fan of “living your process.” To put it another way, this is about “approach over results.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of results. The problem is you can’t control all the events in your life or what happens to you. In life, you control your attitude and response … and it’s not what happens to you, but how you react.

Four Dimensional Thinking is a technique to help you figure out who you are and what you want. It’s a way to reflect on your life to help you get from where you are to where you want to be. Reflecting can be structured or unstructured thinking. Thinking is just asking and answering questions. If you want better answers, you need to start by asking better questions. Four Dimensional Thinking is a way to start asking better questions about your life. When you know who you are and what you want, you gain confidence and clarity in how you live your life.