Today I’m going to be talking about the difference between motivation,

which most people think of when they think about doing stuff or achieving things or creating greater success

or even feeling more fulfilled in life, versus inspiration

and the real clear differences between the two and why most people who are looking for drive and are looking to achieve more in life are actually looking to the wrong thing.

No one else is gonna believe in you if you don’t believe in you, so just get out there and do shit.

Now, when we look at motivation, motivation is normally triggered from something extrinsically.

So for most people they need something outside of themselves to trigger the internal,I guess you could say drive that they have.

Now, some people will use things like pain, stress,pressure, worry, concern, to trigger those responses,and it’s actually an adrenaline response.

I won’t get into the biochemistry of it,but what will happen is that for the average person,they’re sitting around, they’re feeling like they had a hard week, everything’s too hard, and there’s a lot of stuff going on mentally which is triggering a lot of neurochemical reactions in the body that are making them feel tired and lethargic and run-down.

And then eventually they go, you know what, I’m just sick of feeling this way.

You know what, I know what I need, I need motivation. So then they’ll go and try to find something extrinsically, so it could be a quote or it could be something exciting, something that gives them a bit of an adrenaline kick again.

And for most people that works for a short period of time, but what you’ll find is that those people who keep going back to motivation tend to keep craving and needing more motivation in order to keep their drive going.

And what I’ve seen is that a lot of people that go to personal development or self-development events, they will need that excitement, that enthusiasm, that hyperactivity in order to get themselves going, because when adrenaline’s flowing, it tends to shut down our brain function a little bit, we don’t think as clearly, and because of that it sort of suppresses a lot of fear, a lot of worry, a lot of concerns, a lot of those things that are there for a reason, but most people just don’t know how to manage it.

And then all of a sudden they just go flat out again and then bang, they burnout and they crash again and then it triggers that response again, I know what I need, I need more motivation. Now, the more a person craves motivation, the more likely they are to peak and trough.

Now, it’s a great starting point because if you’re lazy and you’re lethargic because if you’re lazy and you’re lethargic and you can’t be bothered and everything’s too hard and that’s been a pattern of yours for a long long time, it’s important to get to a point where you can actually start to realise that you can drive yourself.

And that’s where motivation is important, it’s sort of like a starting tool, it’s something that I guess is a basic response to a desire to achieve more in life, but you eventually get to a point where you go, you know what? This stuff just doesn’t work anymore, I’m sick of feeling great but then feeling down. And it’s like alcohol, alcohol can make you feel good when you have a lack of confidence or when you’re worried or when you have concerns or when you’re stressed because it sort of suppresses a lot of the thought processes that go on, and then you can just get out there and have fun and enjoy it, and why you do that for awhile, it’s great, but you sort of forget about the hangover afterwards.

Until eventually you’ll get to a point where you go, you know what, it’s not worth drinking anymore because there’s a correlation between me drinking and a hangover, and I’m not sure that the drinking and the feeling, the excitement and the enthusiasm is actually worth the hangover, and it starts to neutralise the idea of drinking alcohol.

The same thing happens for most people, they’ll get to a point where if they’re intelligent enough, they’ll start to see the correlation between their crashes and their ruts and their feeling lethargic and them beating themselves up mentally and emotionally and feeling like they’re not good enough or they’re not achieving enough, to that high and that hyper activeness of needing that external motivation.

Now, when you become balanced, a lot more mentally balanced, you will start to realise that you’re driven more by something that’s a lot more  in-flow with who you are as a person.  And it’s not being excited, it’s not being energetic and flat stick all the time, it’s about just keeping everything calm, and then when you do that, you’ll be driven by a mission and a purpose and your core values as to who you are as a person, and they will become your core drivers in life, and then goals will be the stop-off points.

What I’ve also found is that those who are driven by motivation are normally goal driven  and not so much mission or long-term driven, it’s more of short-term responses to achievement. They wanna achieve big things in the future but their daily actions and their highs and lows and peaks and troughs are normally more short-term responses and they’ll be a lot more short-term in their thinking and in their reactivity around things as well.

So when you’re inspired, you think a lot more into the future, you think a lot more about how do my actions now affect what I’m going to do in the future? Is this the life that I wanna lead? Is this getting me to where I wanna go? And you start to become more adaptable and malleable and also you don’t crave higher highs, but at the same time you don’t end up living with low lows and crashes and being lethargic and being tired.

So getting clear with who you are as a person which is what we get heavily and at our Thrive Time event and part of that reason is from seeing how many people crash and burn, including myself, from doing a lot of motivation work and just realising that it didn’t actually give me the outcomes that I really wanted in life, and that I kept looping and going around in circles and the more that I did it, the more I kept craving it  and the more I kept feeling like shit within myself because I felt like I kept failing or I felt like I kept feeling down or flat or in ruts or roughing, and when I would do that I wouldn’t tell anyone because I was like the motivation guy.

Until I got to a point where I realised that the high highs had a direct correlation to me being unmotivated, being lethargic, being tired, being rundown, beating myself up emotionally, not feeling like I was getting where I wanted to get to fast enough, and then I realised what it took to get inspired.

So I hope that it helps and I hope that brings up a lot of stuff ’cause I get asked almost every day, “How is your stuff “different than everything else that’s on the market, “especially in the mindset and motivation industry?”

That’s why, a lot of people talk about inspiration but they actually don’t know what it is and they don’t know how to do it, and a lot of people revolve around the idea of being motivated and being energetic and doing the hard work, doing the grind and all that stuff, but that won’t get you to where you wanna get to if you want to live a fulfilling life that is actually based on success and also achievement  and feeling fulfilled in all areas of life.

A lot of people who are motivated, they get super motivated to master one or two areas of life and then they watch other areas of life crumble, and then they try and jump across and then fix that and then other areas crumble and it’s just because when you are erratic, you put too much energy into one area until that area builds itself up but it starts to implode and then other areas start crashing down around it as well  and it just becomes too hard to manage.

A balanced life is a lot better then living a motivated, flat stick, energetic, grinding life that, I don’t know, that doesn’t really help people to get what they truly desire which is actually success with the fulfilment as well at the same time, not the hyperactive, energetic, pumped up.

That stuff feels good, but so does drugs and alcohol as well but it all has a downside as well. What goes up has to come back down, and the motivation industry is definitely making people feel down by giving them motivation.

So just be aware of that, I hope that that helps,and I hope that this is an insight and a different way of thinking as well.

And it’s part of the reason why I created the Thrive Time, because I saw that most people weren’t achieving what they want and they spent all this money trying to get motivated, trying to get pumped up, and trying to achieve their goals and their dreams and their fulfilment but not feeling like they were actually getting there because they kept hitting ruts or beating themselves down and so on.

So anyway, I hope that that helps and I hope it creates some clarity about what’s around in the industry as well.