How to Motivate the Motivator: 8 Step Success System

By Karen Susman

Maybe you’ve just been laid off, downsized, right sized, reorganized, or just plain fired. Maybe you still have your job, but you don’t know how long it will be before you have to turn in your key to the executive washroom. Perhaps you decided a year ago to beat the boot to the punch and leave your employer to start your own business. In any event, you need to keep yourself motivated. How do you do that in the face of numerous obstacles, threats, doom, gloom, and way off in the distance boom?

Try this 8 Step Success System:

1. Discover your passion: Determine what you’re passionate about. What is the favourite part of your work? What would you do even if you weren’t paid? Do more of these things. If you loved writing in your old job, write right now. Living with passion improves attitude and builds your immune system. Living with passion fights depression and energizes you. These are all elements you need to make a sale or solve a problem.
   
   
2. Identify your impact: No matter what your position or current situation, how does what you do make a positive impact on you, your company, your family, your neighbourhood, your community, and the world? What would be missing without you and your talents?
   
   
3. Adopt orphans and seek trouble: Take on projects, challenges, accounts, and tasks that others don’t want or have abandoned. Seek the undesirable. These are opportunities left behind. Look for the trouble; the needs of the world and find solutions. Rev. Robert Schuller said, “Find a need and fill it. Find a hurt and heal it. Find a problem and solve it. Find an obstacle and tear it down.”
   
   
4. Begin. What ever it is you want to do, start now. Don’t play the when/then game. “When I move, lose 25 pounds, get and advanced degree, then...” Jump in right now. Throw your coat over the fence and then go after it.
   
   
5. Build your momentum; don’t quit while you’re ahead or on a roll. Learn how to build momentum in yourself and others. Encourage exuberance. Generate excitement. Act motivated. If you intend to accomplish your goals, you have to want to. You have to want to want to even when you don’t want to.
   
   
6. Use experts and share expertise: You don’t have to know everything. You just have to know who knows. Or, you have to know who knows who knows. Ask for help. Be specific. Share your expertise. Don’t under value your knowledge. Be visible. Be helpful. Be known as an expert.
   
   
7. Be optimistic and energetic: Take care of your mental and physical health. Many things may be out of your control, but you still can control your attitude. You can’t control Wall Street, but you can walk up and down the street. You can’t control the job market, but you can control what foods you buy at the market. By taking care of your physical and mental well being, you are better able to handle the ups and downs of 2003.
   
   
8. Take risks: Take calculated, well thought out risks. There is an expression, “Dance while the music is in town.” Don’t wait for the music to arrive. If you want to dance, make your own music. Edward Burke said, “The past should be a springboard not a hammock.” You can indulge in nostalgia about the past or you can build on all your talent, experience, and skills, and excitedly embrace the future.
   

These are challenging times. In reality, all times are challenging times. So, work this 8-step system (much faster than 12 steps), and you’ll keep yourself and those around you motivated.

Karen Susman is a Speaker, Trainer, Coach, and Author of 102 Top Dog Networking Secrets. Karen works with organizations that want to maximize performance. Programs include Humour at Work; Balance In Life; Networking Skills; Presentation Skills; and Building Community Involvement. Order new guidebooks on humour, networking, time management, and community involvement by calling 1-888-678-8818 or e-mail Karen@KarenSusman.com.. www.KarenSusman.com. P


ublished in Networking Today, June, 2003.