The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win

by Jeff Haden

Not huge, life-changing successes. Those come all too infrequently, if ever. If you want to stay motivated, if you want to stay on track, if you want to keep making progress toward the things you hope to achieve, the key is to enjoy small, seemingly minor successes—but on a regular basis.

Motivation is something you get, from yourself, automatically, from feeling good about achieving small successes. Success is a process. Success is repeatable and predictable. Success has less to do with hoping and praying and strategizing than with diligently doing (after a little strategizing, sure): doing the right things, the right way, over and over and over.

They feel good about themselves because they’ve accomplished what they set out to do today, and that sense of accomplishment gives them all the motivation they need to do what they need to do when tomorrow comes—because success, even tiny, incremental success, is the best motivational tool of all.

Why? Improving feels good. Improving breeds confidence. Improving creates a feeling of competence, and competence breeds self-confidence. Success—in your field or sometimes in any field—breeds motivation. It feels good to improve . . . so you naturally want to keep improving.

Duckworth says that what really drives success is not “genius” but a combination of passion and long-term perseverance.

Successful people are great at delaying gratification. Successful people are great at withstanding temptation. Successful people are great at overcoming fear in order to do what they need to do.

Earned success is the best motivational tool of all. That feeling, that knowledge, is hugely energizing because it’s based not on wishing and hoping and dreaming but on a reality—a reality you created.

You’ll stay motivated when you find a process you trust and commit to working that process for as little as a week. Forget how far you need to go to reach your goal; just commit to following the process for a week.

Two essential truths: None of us receives enough positive feedback. Each of us is our own worst critic.

Happiness requires evenly balancing your multiple nonnegotiable goals, blending in a negotiable goal where appropriate . . . and never, ever forgetting to self-evaluate along the way to ensure the balance never gets out of whack.

Fuzzy goals are meaningless. The best goals are goals you can see and taste and visualize in great detail, because they’re based on a real accomplishment and not a vague statement of intent.

Stopping short is an easy habit to form. If you quit this time, what will stop you from quitting the next time? (Answer: pretty much nothing.) Quitting is a habit.

But sometimes subtraction is the best addition. Sometimes what you stop doing can be just as effective as what you start doing differently.

To succeed, hear the criticism, take the shots, endure the laughter or derision or even hostility—and stick to measuring yourself and your efforts by your own standards.

Choices are the enemy of willpower. So are ease and convenience. Think of decisions that require willpower, and then take willpower totally out of the equation.

Mental strength is like muscle strength—no one has an unlimited supply of focus. So why waste your power on things you can’t control?

Darwin said the number one survivability trait is adaptability. Adaptability