“Most of you say you want to be successful … but you don’t want it bad – you just kinda want it …
you don’t want it badder than you want to party …
you don’t want it as much as you want to be cool …
most of you don’t want success as much as you want to sleep”

Wow. Now that’s a reminder. A reminder that you can’t wish your dreams into being. Thinking something is all well and good, but it’s not the same as doing. Success doesn’t just happen – it takes hardwork and commitment and discipline. It takes pushing through the ups and downs that come your way on the journey. It takes saying no to things and forgoing other things. It takes not accepting excuses. It takes an active decision to prioritise that goal and dream that you’re chasing. It takes time. And it takes motivation.

When I coach or speak to people about motivation I always explain that to be truly effective it has to come from the heart not the head. That is, it comes from deep inside you. It isn’t just positive talk that stems from your head. Or that song or speech or video that pumps you up for that moment. Or consciously willing yourself to do something. They’re all fine and good. But real motivation is a deep powerful force coming from within you – pushing you forward to what you want. That help you get through those obstacles and set-backs and disappointments. It is those deep unconscious emotional drivers in action (see Chapter 4 of my book ‘A Life That Counts‘ for more on this and the psychology around the Limbic System / motivation / making change.

So use this video to inspire you, but realise that to really start to move forward to the things you want it will take two things:

1. A decision

2. Figuring out WHY you really want that thing / goal / dream. The deep reason of why you want whatever you want to achieve / be / do. No, really: why do you want it? What will you get from it? How will you feel about yourself? What will it mean to achieve your dream?
You see when you’re clear on ‘why’ you’re doing something, then the ‘hows’ become clearer and become simply a means of making the ‘why’ come to pass.

Here’s a couple of examples of what I mean from two incredible contributors to my book.

1. Lydia Lassila (Olympic Gold Medallist):

‘Throughout my whole career, I was frustrated because I knew my potential. I knew I was better than the results I was showing. I’d perform well and have a sense of accomplishment, but I’d then get another injury and get so down and disappointed. What kept me going, though, was knowing I was better and could be better and that I had the potential to be number one in the world. I hadn’t got there yet, but that was what was motivating me: the fact that I knew I hadn’t yet reached my full potential. I knew my potential was the gold medal. I knew it was to break the world record. It’s personal reward, and I’ll take that to the grave with me.’

2. Michael Milton (World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability, multiple Paralympic Gold medallist, Winter and Summer Paralympian):

‘One of the things cancer takes away from you is your own belief in yourself, particularly as your body starts to fail. You start to lose that self-worth. About a month after I’d finished my cancer treatment, I really had no idea of where or what I wanted to do in my life. The prognosis looked good in terms of going into remission, and my health had improved, but I just didn’t know what I was going to do. Was I going to be an athlete or apply for a real job? I found myself sitting with my ‘Goals’ folder, and when looking through it, I saw a goal I’d set myself 18 months before: to go to Beijing as a track cyclist. I think that when I wrote that goal down, it was more of an option at the time. I wasn’t fully committed to it at that time, and so after I’d researched it and considered it further, I wrote on another piece of paper a whole pile of points – the good things that could come out of this goal even if I didn’t achieve it. This was my ‘why’ and helped me to really commit to the goal fully. It was about getting healthy and fit again. It was about giving myself something to do. It was about motivation to get out of bed on a daily basis when I had no energy. It was more than just achieving that goal. And I remember the reward of just receiving that phone call from the head coach telling me I’d been selected for Beijing, and just sitting on the bed with my wife, crying our eyes out.’