What Motivates You?

There is no ‘what’ that motivates you.

There is only ‘you’, who motivates you.

There may be tools, courses, friends and family who support, encourage, offer advice (good or bad) that may help you to nourish your own motivation, but at the end of the day, you still make the choices that affect your future.

How often had you heard someone in your down-line, a prospect, another network marketing colleague, or anyone operating a home-based business, say that they want you or someone else to ‘motivate them.’

My feeling is that when someone is seeking external motivation, they are not clear enough or passionate enough about what they are doing.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking for help to better understand what motivates you – in fact, if more people did ask and did the work (sometimes painfully difficult) we’d have so many more success stories in this industry.

For me, joining Better Networker has been my way of ‘asking for help’. I need to continually reinforce to myself that there are incredibly successful people in this industry – great, kind, compassionate, exciting and fun people – achieving whatever level of financial success they want.

BN is a ‘safe place’ for many of us to come and talk, share ideas and to network with other like-minded people.

Let me share a very personal example. Two weeks ago my boyfriend and I got into a very uncomfortable conversation, which eventually turned into an argument about my involvement in direct marketing. I went home that night, alone, and very shaken in my own beliefs about what I was doing in direct marketing.

My productivity in my business dropped that following week, while I was ‘licking my wounds’ and feeling sorry for myself, my motivation slowly started to kick back in… in part because I was pissed off. Pissed off because the person I have chosen to be closest to didn’t respect what I was doing – but in all fairness, he just doesn’t understand what direct marketing is all about (suffice to say, the real issue for the argument was something altogether).

So I grabbed onto my annoyance and looked at it square in the face. I looked at ME square in the face. My moment of weakness was not caused by him, rather it was my own level of belief about what I can or cannot achieve.

I recently read an incredible article by Jeffery Combs on BN entitled, “Success Is A Process.” One line in particular caught my attention. Jeff writes about what it takes to achieve success in this industry, namely that, “You are really marketing your confidence. “ So there it was – for a brief moment my confidence was shaken (and by the person closest to my heart).

What kept me motivated in the following week was my self-respect and the fact that I know I will succeed in my business, no matter what it takes. In my moment of weakness I saw that the only place to go was further into that weakness in order to re-discover my strengths.

And checking in to BN this morning, I had the good fortune to happen upon Jeff’s article – which is exactly what I needed to read at this exact moment. Thanks for being there Jeff and BN!

© Darren Stehle 2008

Darren Stehle is a Fitness and Wellness expert, having operated his own Personal Training Business, Integrated Fitness Inc. He is the author of the free e-book, Flex Your Mind, and many fitness and mindset articles available on his blog.

Darren's current passion is working with other like-minded people who desire to 'Define Life on their own terms'. Learn more about Darren's system at DefineLife.com.