Can’t Get Your Mojo Going? Use Questions to Tap in to Yours

What  is Your Mojo?

It’s your motivation. It’s the jump start we need to get things going,

And sometimes we need a jump start to get it going.

My guess is that you get things done everyday. I’m pretty much a regular guy, and I know I do.

Yet, some of the things I just put off and put off. Are you like that, too?

Why Does Motivation Seem So Mysterious?

In reality it isn’t.

It just seems that way.

Actually, you have all the motivation to get done what you want to get done already. Buried in you lies the motvation of a lightning storm.

No one can motivate you because you already have access to your own this powerful force.

The trick is to find the ways to tap into that mojo.

Look at the question in the header of this section. What would be the natural tendency in answering such a question? Most of us would immediately begin (completely sensibly) to start searching for reasons that motivation is mysterious. People just love a mystery, don’t they?

But that’s where the question itself leads us – to find things that support the mystery of motivation.

When we ask ourselves why we don’t get done the things we say we want to do, we come up with answers to that question. We make a mental list of the reasons we don’t get x, y, or z done.

We Ask Ourselves the Wrong Questions

I am in the middle of a book by Michael Pantalon, Instant Influence: How to Get Anyone to Do Anything–Fast (affiliate link). Pantalon has developed a method based on a process called Motivational Interviewing that can help us bring out the motivation that’s already there, (or anybody else, for that matter).

Every Question Begs an Answer

If we ask ourselves why we can’t get motivated to get things done, our brains naturally start searching our mental databases for answers to the question.

• We don’t have time.
• We are too tired.
• We are fearful, uncertain, and doubtful.
• We just aren’t motivated at the moment.

Answers like that.

What if you had a set of questions and a process to get yourself started? That’s always the key for me, getting going. Once I get on the path, I tend to stay on the path.

How about you?

The Questions

The set of questions that can get us started on that path of feeling satisfied with ourselves and righteous are actually pretty simple. They help you find your own reasons for doing what you may have been putting off!

1. Ask yourself (and maybe write the answers down or say them out loud) “Why might I want to (get this done, begin this, get off the dime on this project)?”
• This is the first question that sets you on a path of deciding why you can get your goal going and not toward finding reasons why you, can’t, don’t, or haven’t.
2. Next it’s time to assess your readiness to make this change. On a scale of 1 to 10, how ready are you to undertake this?
• This give you an idea of how much you value what you want to accomplish and how ready you are to move forward.
3. Let’s say you chose a 5. The next question is this. Why didn’t you choose a lower number? Why didn’t you choose a 4, or even a 3?
• Do you see what this does? Again it aims you toward a target of why you do want to do something rather than explaining to yourself why you don’t.
4. Now let’s say, miracle of miracles, you have successfully gotten started working toward you goal. The hardest part for me in achieving any goal is getting started. Once I’ve taken a couple of steps, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, I am much more likely to keep moving forward. So now you have gotten started? If that’s true, what will the positive outcomes be? What will be the benefits for you of moving forward?
5. Next, it’s time to decide the why of it all. What makes these benefits important? So you’ve made some moves and experienced some benefits. So what? Why do they matter so much to you?
6. Finally, after you have started you quest (or mini-quest!), in a way you’ve come full circle. That happens a lot in my writing, doesn’t it? The last question, before you start again of course, is what is the next step.
• There is always a next step, With coaching clients, when I ask what the next step is going to be, they have rarely failed to come up with an answer. Then the process starts again.

These questions have helped me immensely. Try them out and let me know how they work for you. If they suck, let me know that, too. And check out the book; you can get it from Amazon or you can check it out of the library. It’s a pretty easy read.