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I’ve had my hands full over the last 3 months with a new baby boy, a new business and less sleep than I’d prefer.  I’ve been trying to keep up with all my ‘to-dos’ and not neglect any of the many avenues of online communication that I’ve been able to enjoy over the past year.  Unfortunately I’ve had to let my personal posts on this blog slip as well as my voice on Twitter and in the comments of my favorite blogs.  I call myself a blogger and yet I’ve done very little in the way of actual blogging.

About a week ago Liz and I began to talk about the fact that my home office had served its purpose to allow me to help out while Tyson was getting past those first few months of infancy, but that it was no longer a benefit, but a hindrance to both of us.  For me, dealing with two hyperactive dogs and a baby while trying to run multiple businesses was not working out.  My focus was constantly in a diluted state and seemed to be stuck on a reboot loop.

For Liz, it was the fact that my constant presence in our home hindered her ability to get into a solid routine.  She felt that if I wasn’t there she would be forced to get things done instead of asking for my assistance throughout the day.  She wanted to have the house to herself during the day so she could take care of her responsibilities with zero distraction from my comings and goings.

Basically, we needed to have our own space and time apart.  So renting some office space seemed to be the logical next step.

Natural Light

So I popped online and found a few vacancies in an office building just 2 minutes from our house.  It was a building I was familiar with as I had setup some computer equipment in one of the very offices I was going to possibly rent.  So I popped over there for a tour and found two possibilities.  Both were about 100 square feet but one had a window and the other did not.  Though a bit cheaper, the one without the window felt like a fluorescently lit cave, while the other required no light other than the natural sunlight that came through the large window.  The latter option was a no-brainer.

So I quickly signed the lease and started moving in ASAP.  It was quite obvious to me that this was going to be one of the best business moves I’ve made in quite some time.

Uninterrupted BLISS!!

It’s amazing to me how much more clear your thoughts are and how much more you can get done when uninterrupted space is provided.  For someone who is riddled with ADHD I found my productivity at home to be atrocious.  Even when I did have some quiet time I could never quite shake that largely distracting anticipation that Tyson may pipe up at any moment or the dogs may decide to alert us that a squirrel was making its way across our back yard.  It’s only now that I sit in my new office space, disconnected from any and all unforeseen distractions, that I can calmly type out this post, knowing it will get done and be checked off my list.

I can’t stress enough how important this move has been, even after only a few hours of test drive.  Kind of like love at first sight, you need nothing more than the first wiff to understand the future affect of its presence in your life.  I have no doubt that my future days will be filled with greater strides and an overall more effective focus.  Now it’s just a matter of learning how Liz’s day went.

Eric

A Pair of Passionate Writers

Leo Babauta of zenhabits and myself have brought together our best efforts to write, what we believe to be, one of the best books on motivation you’ll find anywhere! After much collaboration and pulling together our best work on the subject, we put together a powerful tool for anyone in need of more drive, efficiency and effective habits.  ‘The Essential Motivation Handbook’ is your ticket to finally getting things done and moving past the mundane!

A Perfect Companion To A Best-Seller

You may or may not know this, but Leo is the author of a best-selling ebook on productivity called Zen To Done.  The reason it has done so well is because it actually does what it says it will.  People who read it actually become more productive.  Much of the time we purchase a product that says it will meet a need, but after we’re through, we fail to see the results advertised.  Well, Zen To Done does deliver and so does ‘The Essential Motivation Handbook’.

Now, for the companion part.  When putting this work together, Leo and I wanted to not only create a stand alone solution to your motivational needs, but a perfect companion to one of the best books on productivity out there.  The fact is, learning how to be productive is only half the battle.  You need the ability to harness your internal fire to actually make things happen.  That’s where ‘The Essential Motivation Handbook’ comes in, and it’s the combination of these two awesome books that will help anyone actually reach their goals and stop just dreaming of that elusive day that may never arrive.

The Book…

Here is the table of contents, listing the powerful insight you’ll find in this book:

1. How To Motivate Yourself

2. The Only Two Secrets to Motivating Yourself You’ll Ever Need

3. A Guide to Beating the Fears That Are Holding You Back

4. Task Ninja: Form the Action Habit

5. Top 20 Motivation Hacks

6. The Ultimate Guide to Motivation – How to Achieve Any Goal

7. Progress, Progress, Progress! 5 Tips To Keep You Moving Forward

8. 7 Steps to Turn Your Self-Improvement Desires Into Reality

9. 25 Killer Actions to Boost Your Self-Confidence

10. 6 Small Things You Can Do When You Lack Discipline

11. 16 Ways to Motivate Yourself When You’re in a Slump

12. 5 Tips For Motivational Recovery

13. The Magical Power of Focus

14. 10 Ways to Beat the “Can’t Get No Satisfaction” Syndrome

15. 30 Incredible Places to Turn When You Need Inspiration

16. How To Deal With Negative Feedback

17. How to Doggedly Pursue Your Dreams in the Face of Naysayers

18. Achieve Your Dreams Despite Pressures of Work and Family

19. Why You Should Celebrate Your Mistakes

20. How to Actually Execute Your To-do List

21. The Yin And Yang Of Persistence

22. Enduring the Valley to Get to Success

23. How To Relax And Why It’s So Important

24. The Simple Guide To Single-Tasking Success

25. Stop Reading About It and Do It

How Much?

The book is packed full of over 100 pages of powerful content and yet you can get your own copy for only $14.95!  And not only that, but if for any reason you believe this book doesn’t deliver, we offer a full 100% money-back guarantee, so you can buy with confidence!

This is a must-have for anyone in need of drive, inspiration and the tools to achieve any goal!  Get your copy here:  The Essential Motivation Handbook.

For Bloggers: If you’re interested in selling ‘The Essential Motivation Handbook’ on your site, sign up as an affiliate here.  We’re offering an amazing 50% affiliate payout and our 100% money-back guarantee covers your sales as well!

I’ve been out of commission, at least in regards to posting to this blog, but have been blessed with many great bloggers and friends who have helped keep the content flowing by submitting their own great work.  But now it’s time to get back in the driver’s seat of Motivate Thyself and share some of the new findings being a new dad has brought about.

The Hamster Wheel Effect

I’ve always been an extremely driven person, but ever since Tyson was born I’ve felt the flames of forward motion grow hotter by the day.  The desire to provide more freedom and flexibility for my growing family have brought about larger visions of success and monetary gain.  Let’s face it, simplicity and frugality are great, but a super tight budget can be a real pain in the A$$!  There’s nothing like the new found pressure of higher health insurance costs, diapers galore and a little thing I like to call the hungry baby shriek of death!

The problem is, I can easily find myself running on all cylinders, but not getting very far.  Or even worse, getting really far and then realizing I went the wrong direction.  If you’re anything like me, you shoot first and ask questions later.  I see what I think is a good opportunity and I go for it.  Part of my drive comes from the constant feeling like there are thousands of others going for the same thing and every second I wait to act is one second further from the desired destination; a prize that someone else may obtain at any minute.

Then I find myself feeling like I’m running in place.  Do you ever feel like you’re running on a big hamster wheel, breaking  a sweat, but not getting anywhere?  Or maybe a treadmill.  You run to maintain your location, but not make any real progress.  You feel if you stop you will fall way back, out of the running for your goals.

The fact is, this is mostly true.  There ARE thousands of people out there fighting for the same piece of cheese and if we stop pushing ahead we will most certainly loose ground.  But there are some key ingredients here that I want to share; things that I’ve noticed over the last 8 weeks.

Learn From Your Past, Don’t Dwell On It

Hind site is definitely 20/20 so it’s easy for us to become back seat drivers to our pasts.  We set out on a new journey for some form of positive future, yet as the months go by we look back, seeing every mistake we made along the way.  “If I had just done this instead of that I’d be this much further along.”  Or, “Why did I go in that direction?  This way would have brought about much greater success!”

The problem with this kind of thinking is that we not only distract ourselves from making better decisions in the future, but we weigh ourselves down with negativity.  There’s nothing worse then trying to climb a mountain with a backpack full of unnecessary junk.  The lighter our load, the more capable and clear minded we become.  So never look at your past mistakes with a ‘What if?’ mindset.  Instead, learn everything you can from it, assuring you don’t make the same mistakes further along in your journey, then move on.

Think about it like this…

A professional sports team will spend just as much time watching old recordings of their past games as they will planing for future ones.  But the coach doesn’t sit there and say, “You guys stink!  See here, you did this and that and look what happened!  We lost the game because of you!!”  No, they will pick apart the actions of each player and determine what was done right and what was done wrong.  Then they figure out a better future action for that player if that specific scenario comes up in future games.

You can do this with more than your own past.

You don’t have to wait for your own mistakes to learn the best way to accomplish a goal.  Just like a sports team will study other team’s games, you can learn from the mistakes (and accomplishments) others have made by studying their actions and the results that follow.

The bottom line is, ‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.’  But when you fail to execute, figure out what went wrong, make note of this, and move on.

Constant Reflection Provides Pinpoint Accuracy

Earlier in this post I mentioned the problem of making up a lot of ground and then realizing your heading was misguided.  The best way to avoid this potentially devastating mistake is to periodically reflect on your current situation and remind yourself of the desired destination.  Try and re-envision the sight, sound, smell and feel of this goal.  Just like hounds need to refresh their scent to keep from losing the lock on their pursuee, so too do we need a constant reminder of exactly what we’re working so hard to accomplish.  Lose the scent and risk completely missing the mark.

Why do we so often run in place?

I don’t know about you, but for me it’s a combination of impatience and fear.

• Impatience: I want to reach my goal so badly that I see a ‘quick stop and reassessment of the situation’ as just one more thing to slow me down.  Little do I know that the greatest danger to my speed at which I reach my goal is inaccuracy, not lack of brute force motion.  A running back in an American Football game may see the time ticking down to zero, but knows from experience that it’s constant reassessment and redirection that will give them the greatest opportunity to score, not a blind sprint to the end-zone.
• Fear: Picture yourself in a sail boat race.  Neck and neck with the leader, you and your team put forth all your effort to not lose ground and lose the race.  Along the way you hit some debris which puts a hole in the side of your boat.  You’re taking on water.  You split up your team, having half maintain the sails and steering while the other half is to bail out the water.  You’ve successfully prevented your vessel from sinking, but with a split up team you have slowed way down.  Deep down you know that you need to just stop and focus the full force of your team into plugging the hole and then put that same force back into pushing ahead, but you’re afraid of losing more ground.

It’s this fear of momentarily stopping to reassess the situation that can keep us sailing with a sinking ship.  It’s this fear that often keeps us from taking much needed vacations or even just a long weekend of reflection.  But just like the sailboat will regain its ground and then some, once repaired, we will almost always come back from our necessary reflection times with a renewed vigor and a sharper vision of the future.

Final Thoughts

Coming up on my 1 year blogging anniversary, I’ve been able to witness many failures and a few exciting accomplishments.  Often filled with 2 steps forward and 2 steps back, I’ve struggled much of the time.  Yet I’ve learned so much and have made up much ground.  Not in spite of my mistakes, but because of them.  I’ve taken what I’ve learned, reassessed and pushed ahead with greater accuracy and better technique.  I’m still making mistakes left and right, but I’m learning from each one.

So I guess the best way to sum up my thoughts would be to say, “Embrace your imperfections, learn from your mistakes and always keep your eyes focused on the positive possibilities of a brighter future.”  We’re all going to screw up along the way, but few make the most of these faults and use them to their future advantage.

Eric