Let's take a look at motivation. Motivation is crucial, because most people need motivation on a regular and ongoing basis. But, you only need motivation to do those things you don't like to do.

If you love doing something, you just go and do it, right? If you love golfing nobody has to convince you on a nice Saturday when all the chores are done, and you have free time, and it's a beautiful sunny day, and you have the money, to go out and go golfing. You just go.

If you love writing articles, nobody has to convince you to sit down and write an article. You just automatically go and do it. It's an automatic for you because you love it. You get a payoff for it, and you feel good about it.

So motivation is not about doing things we love doing, motivation is needed for doing those things that we don't want to do, but that we need to do, we ought to do, we should do, we must do, but we don't really like or want to do. That's what motivation is for.

Do you ever procrastinate? If you don't you're probably one of the only people in the world who doesn't occasionally procrastinate. There are some people who procrastinate much less than others, but almost everyone procrastinates at some time. It's a natural, automatic human reaction. It happens because we have other things we'd rather do, so we put off the thing we won't want to do.

An example of somebody who broke the procrastination habit, who was able to motivate herself when she needed to, was a woman by the name of Alison Streeter. Mrs. Streeter holds the record for having swum the English Channel more times than any other male or female alive. Up to now, she's swum the English Channel 43 times! Can you imagine? Not only that, she has even done a three-way swim. That's where she swam across, then back, then across again without stopping. She's done the three way and a two way multiple times each.

When she was being interviewed, someone said, "You must love swimming the English Channel." She said, "Not particularly." They then said, "Then you must be really motivated." She said, "Well, I guess I am, kind of. It was very hard, because I wanted to put it off. Getting started is the hard part."

But once she gets started, she said that she'd start feeling overwhelmed because it is so long. She said, "What I have to do is get started, and I swim a little way. Then I have to think that I can do just a little more, and that takes me just a little farther, and then I imagine I can swim for another five minutes, and when I've swum that five minutes, I want to quit, but I tell myself no, I can swim for just another five minutes, and on and on."

What's the trick to this? The trick to all of this is that you need to see it done. There's a powerful process called the Motivation Strategy. It's a detailed process I've taught in books that I have written. But for our purposes here, just to get you going, what you need to do to raise your level of motivation, is see it done. See the objective as if you have completed it. It's finished in total.

For instance, is there something you really don't like doing? Think of one thing right now. Pick one thing - work, home, chores, something.

Now I'm going to ask you a question that I already know the answer to. When you think about that thing you don't like doing, do you see yourself just starting it? Do you see yourself in the middle of it, bogged down and still having a long way to go? Or, do you see it already done? The answer for nearly everyone is that you are either at the beginning of it, or you are stuck in the middle of it. It's one of those two, and so what you need to do is to see it done. You need to see yourself at the finish.

Do that right now. See this thing that you don't like doing, and imagine right now that it's totally done. See it finished, and notice how that feels different to you. It feels much different, doesn't it? Think about it and notice the difference. That's the key. That's what Alison Streeter did.

When she was out in the water and she wanted to quit, to give up, she would see another little piece done. She couldn't necessarily envision all the way to the end but she'd think about another five or ten minutes of swimming, and then when she got that five or ten minutes done, she'd think about another five or ten minutes of swimming and having it done and then another, and another. Pretty soon she's all the way there!

The biggest task can be done more easily if you break them down into little segments, little pieces that you do one at a time. That will get you ever closer to your goal.

So motivation is not about things we love doing, it's about getting ourselves to do things we don't like to do and maybe even procrastinate on. If you use just one strategy, see it done. Right when you're ready to start, envision the process done or see at least a chunk of it done. When you are seeing that done, you begin to feel a feeling of success for having it done, and so you start right then and there. When you get that positive boost of a feeling, you start.

That's the key. Motivation happens because we can see something done. We feel it, and we feel some of the success. Add this to your packet of tools and take another step.

The Best of Success to You!