Master the Art of Motivation by Making Pain-to-Passion Transition

Motivation - Seize Your Day


If you want to become a master of your own motivation, so that you have relentless discipline and persistence to achieve your goals, you must understand that there is a past, present and future to the evolution of motivation.

In the past. . .

You had no motivation. But then something inspired you. I can’t say exactly what it was, but I can guess that you developed a burning desire to succeed based on the old methods for motivation.

. . . Methods that are now obsolete.

. . . Let’s say one day, you suddenly felt the urge to become better. You wanted to become “YOU – Version 2.0

But you may not have realized that your burning desire to be a new person reinforced that the current you sucked!

Old school self help and motivational experts commonly taught that in order to build a burning desire, you must come up with enough reason WHY you want to succeed, and eventually, you would develop a burning desire to succeed.

This kind of motivation was mostly interpreted as running away from negativity, and there are pros and cons to using negativity as motivation.

The Pros:

  • It worked, and in the short term, you had a surge of motivation to succeed.

The Cons:

  • It reinforced that you were not enough as you are. When coming from this mindset, success is never enjoyable, because you were never enough, and you’d get on a vicious cycle of always wanting more, and wanting to be better than other people.
  • It also became a perfect excuse to justify being miserable in the moment, while you suffered your way into success – some day in the unforeseeable future, but never now.
  • You became addicted to fear and negative emotions. When you get into the cycle of running away from bad things, you may succeed, but you’re always in “run away” mode, and even when you have success, you can’t enjoy it. Ebenezer Scrooge is a good example of this.
  • You became like bitter old grandpa if you didn’t succeed.

Now don’t get me wrong, this kind of motivation was extremely powerful, it had its place, and it’s quite easy to accomplish, but we’re now seeing the effects of negative motivation.

In the present. . .

We find now that many of the people who were motivated by running away from negativity are burnt out. They are successful — but bitter, they have many health problems, and the other areas of their life are a mess.

I also think that this negative, insatiable thirst for success driven by wanting more, lead quite naturally to corruption.

They say, “Power corrupts,” and “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Well it’s quite easy to become drunk on your own power when your core motivation is “I am not enough, I must have more.”

There are things you need to do right now to shift away from this kind of negativity, acquire an unstoppable motivation for success that is healthy and wholesome.

  1. First you have to stop using negativity to motivate yourself. Life is too short to be fueling your life by unhappiness. There are better ways of succeeding at life than that.
  2. Second you have to accept yourself as you are. You really are good enough. How much better would you have to become if you knew you were going to die tomorrow? Enjoy life for both today and tomorrow — walking  around beating yourself up is a tragic waste.
  3. Third, discover your true passion and purpose to motivate yourself with healthy, positive emotions by following the pain-to-passion transition.

In the future. . .

I am convinced that the pain-to-passion transition will change how people approach motivation, and eventually the world will change for the better.

When you use the pain-to-passion transition to motivate yourself, you not only will you achieve your dreams, you will also connect emotions like joy, enthusiasm, and anticipation to your daily life.

These powerful emotions will give you power to influence important people in your life, and they will help you get what you want.

And because you’ve created a compounding loop of joy and awesomeness in your life, you will radiantly attract the good people and high quality relationships to your life.

When you keep using the old ways of motivation, achieving goals will be a constant series of banging your head up against the wall.

Nobody will want to listen to you, or follow you because you will likely come from desperation or some other form of scarcity — and as I mentioned earlier, you will ultimately repel good people from your life.

This technique is all about finding your passion. When you live your passion, then not only will you have an unstoppable motivation to achieve your goals, you will also enjoy doing what you are doing for the sake of it.

This is extreme positive reinforcement. You don’t need to wait until some future to be happy, you can always be happy now, because you love what you do.

Except this time, rather than getting addicted to negative emotions that suck your life away in the long term, you become addicted to extreme positivity.

How to Make the Pain-to-Passion Transition

  1. Let go of the negative reasons for success; accept yourself as you are. This might seem more difficult than it is so here’s a tip: If you have trouble accepting yourself, or the events of the past, accept that you refuse to accept the past, and see what happens.
  2. Discover what you love. Don’t worry about if it’s possible; just be open to whatever comes to mind. In this day and age, with the rise of things like the internet and social media, it’s literally a thousand times easier to live your passion.
  3. Debunk all of your excuses for not following your dream. You might already know what your passion is, but have a ton of excuses for why you haven’t followed it. See my article on debunking your excuses.
  4. Make a plan. Figure out what needs to get done so that you could really enjoy doing what you love. Do you need some business skills? What books might you need? What would you need to learn or do?
  5. Take the first step. Knowing what your passion is isn’t enough.  If you don’t take some action, you’re simply deluding yourself. This is also why most goals fail, as I mention in my article on The Charlie Brown Method for goal setting.

True success in life isn’t just getting rich. If you’ve sacrificed all the joy in your life, and you’ve shunned love from other people just for money, I feel very sorry for you. That’s why I think it’s important to make the Pain-To-Passion Transition. Not to mention that true genius can only come from passion – and the people who truly impact the world live from passion.

Try out this technique of art of motivation RIGHT NOW, and share with us what you learned in the comments below.

Image by Nono Fara via Flickr.


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Logan Parker's irreverent approach to personal development challenges old assumptions about success and human potential. He spins a new light on these subjects for an up to date "fit" with today's audience.

Discussion

  1. Aman Gupta on the 22nd August

    A beautiful n devoted piece on PAIN-2-PASSION transition….do u feel attachment wid our fellow beings can be a source of motivation n 2 wat extend can it b useful ??

  2. Dennis on the 25th August

    I think in the past I focused on negative motivation. Like sometimes I don’t want to make any progress or that I don’t know what is stopping me. Also that I need to accept myself more and don’t overpush myself into unrealistic things. Just need to take it one step at a time.
    In the present.. is really important, too much toughts about the future or the past can suck up a lot of energy and it really can mess up my actions. I think I’m on the right track, one step at a time. Habits & things from the past are not yet completly gone and have their impact still on this day. I just need to take the right road from now on.

    Inspirational!

  3. Dave on the 31st August

    I am currently the first paragraph of this article.

  4. macuache on the 13th December

    It is all good and useful but what if you don’t know what your true passion is. How about that? If so than all the strategy is collapsed.

    How to understand what your true passion is ?

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