How to Think Bigger: Aim Higher, Get More Motivated, and Accomplish Big Things

by Martin Meadows

Surrounding yourself with empowering books and people on a daily basis will put you into a positive state that will inspire you to raise your standards. Please keep in mind it’s a process of conditioning, and it’s never-ending.

Motivation

Stay Away from Negativity

Your Energy and a Sense of Urgency

British billionaire Richard Branson, when asked about his secret of productivity, gave a surprisingly simple answer: “Work out.7” It’s his physical wellness that keeps his brain sharp and his body ready to constantly travel all over the world, build new industry-changing businesses and solve some of the world’s biggest problems. Perhaps it sounds cliché, but physical wellbeing is indeed one of the keys to success. If you don’t demand much from your body, how much more will you demand from yourself in other areas of your life? If your body doesn’t work on the highest level, how are you supposed to work on the big goals?

Your Needs

Without a powerful “why,” big achievements are close to impossible. We all need strong internal motivation to act on our goals.

extrinsic and intrinsic motivators10

Intrinsic motivation is about enjoyment, fulfillment, or challenge – anything that comes from within you rather than the influences outside of you.

A paper13 by professor and bestselling author of Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success Adam Grant suggests that the desire to help others (prosocial motivation) makes us go the extra mile and work even more effectively than if we had intrinsic motivation alone.

prosocial motivation.

If you’ve been trying to motivate yourself to work on a certain goal, write down your vision. If you’ve written it properly (meaning: it fires you up so much you’re restless), you should no longer struggle with procrastination.

However, there’s an important caveat – don’t let the false sense of achievement coming from envisioning your goal make you lazy. Studies show16 it’s the visualization of the process that’s more important than thinking about the event itself. For the best results, your vision should include the actions you need to take to achieve it and then the event to which it will lead.

A cliché, misattributed17 Henry Ford quote, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right,” is correct. There’s no substitute for the certainty that you can achieve your goal. Your mind will either help you achieve your goal or sabotage you.

By creating your vision, and most importantly, re-reading it every single day and visualizing the outcome, your mindset will shift and your physiology will reflect it. You’ll get more energized to work, you’ll increase your discipline, and you’ll get more focused and fired up to keep going.

Tony Robbins frequently says that the key to success is to raise your standards.