Kickstart Your Motivation: The Complete Guide to Challenging Yourself to Win (The Kickstart Series) [Paperback]

"highly recommended." (Business Age, January 2002)

"highly recommended". (Business Age, January 2002)

At some times in our careers we are brimming with enthusiasm and feel we can face anything that life throws at us. At other times we become jaded, lose focus and fail to achieve anything meaningful. Kickstart Your Motivation helps readers to understand the complex factors affecting motivation and to set challenges through which they discover their true capabilities. Sue Stockdale interweaves sound business lessons with inspirational stories from her own remarkable adventures – including her triumphant march to the magnetic North Pole – to provide readers

Motivation is a topic that affects everyone throughout their working lives. Sometimes you may feel brimming with energy, confidence and enthusiasm. At other times you feel jaded, unfocused and demotivated. What is needed is a way of tapping into that resource of positive energy on a more regular basis. Sue Stockdale′s upbeat guide will enhance your understanding of the way motivation works, as well as provide invaluable practical lessons. It will be a source of both inspiration and easy–to–follow hints and tips on how to foster a go–getting attitude both within yourself and those around you. It will encourage you to step out of your comfort zone and really challenge yourself to win.

The lessons of the book are provided by someone who has found themselves in some of the most challenging situations life can throw at an individual, and still come out on top. Experiences are drawn from adventures around the world in Kenya, the former Yugoslavia, Chile as well as both the North and South polar regions. So, whatever your situation, read this book, and give yourself the perfect chance to KICKSTART YOUR MOTIVATION!

Sometimes in our careers, we are full of enthusiasm and energy and feel we can face anything that life will throw at us. At other times, we get jaded, lose focus and lack motivation to achieve anything meaningful. Wouldn't it be great if we understood more about what affected our motivation and how it could be harnessed to ensure that more of us are motivated for longer at a time to achieve what we want!

This book is designed to help you do just that. It is a story to provide inspiration about the amazing things we can achieve in our careers and our lives when we are motivated. It is also a guide with simple easy-to-follow lessons that enable the reader to take the meaning from challenging situations that have occurred in some of the most extreme environments in the world and apply this learning to your own journey towards achieving your goals.

You can do whatever you want, be whatever you want, and achieve whatever you want. What it takes is to understand and challenge your own beliefs which impact on your level of motivation, and then harness the most powerful part of your body - the brain - to listen to the messages that you choose to program it with, rather than the ones that it takes in from other people and your subconscious mind.

If you choose to take control of your brain and the messages you tell yourself, then your life may never be the same again. It does not matter if you are 15 or 55 years old, the principles are just the same. We can learn to become personally empowered, capable of withstanding the pressures of life and work, and able to bounce back even though things get tough.

At the heart of this approach lies the concept of Learned Powerfulness. This concept was developed by Dr Alan Beggs and Graham Williams in 1999 to encompass the three key elements that contribute to peak performance: Focus, Authenticity and Resilience.

Focus - They focus on what they want to achieve in the future and have a high level of awareness.
Authenticity - They ensure that their goals are in alignment with their true values and beliefs.
Resilience - They are able to withstand the emotional knocks in life.

FOCUS - Think what happens when you are not focused on what you want to achieve. Competing priorities get in the way, and we end up being very productive but not moving towards our goal. In business this can be seen in people who are always very busy but never seem to achieve anything. Energy needs to be focused and in order to achieve this you need to be aware of what is happening in the present to help or hinder your progress towards your goal. In my own experience of working in a small company, time can often be spent fighting problems for other people and if you are not careful then time runs out during the day and the key tasks that were meant to be achieved are not done. A weekly review of progress against targets can help to overcome this problem by keeping you focused on what the priorities are.

AUTHENTICITY - Being true to your values is also critical otherwise you might end up in the situation of being a vegetarian working in an abattoir! In business this can cause problems when the goals and values of the company do not align with your own personal values.

I experienced this when I worked on a contract with the United Nations Protection Force for a year in the former Yugoslavia. My role was to improve the efficiency within the civilian organisation, and in the short term it appeared to be possible, but after several months it became obvious to me that while those at the top said they wanted to be more efficient, their actions did not live up to the rhetoric.

For example, senior staff would arrange for us to work with a particular department to improve the way it operated, and when we presented the report outlining our findings and suggesting some changes, the report would mysteriously go missing, or the head of the department would then explain all the reasons as to why our recommendations could not possibly be implemented. This was particularly noticeable when the recommendations involved reducing staff numbers or suggesting that UN employees were not skilled enough to carry out the tasks they were meant to be doing.

In the end I decided not to renew my contract because the role I was trying to perform (to improve efficiency) did not match with the organization's behaviour, when it appeared to me that there were too many people with too much at stake to be willing to reform or improve efficiency. These decisions are tough ones to make, but being authentic and living your values is not always an easy road.

RESILIENCE is the third quality that peak performers have. They are able to withstand the tough times and can bounce back. This mental toughness can be illustrated in people who just do not give up, even though all the odds are against them. Recently Ellen Macarthur, the British yachtswoman who finished second in the Vendee Globe race in January 2001 showed remarkable resilience to keep fighting to the end of the race when her yacht encountered all sorts of difficulties along the way. Her story received a lot of media attention perhaps because she was a successful female who had achieved her goals while competing in a male-dominated environment.

She also showed her emotions at times in the documentary footage that was shown after the race. The viewers witnessed her carrying out a repair balanced at the end of the 60-foot mast while at sea and then breaking down in tears afterwards because it had taken so much out of her. But despite showing these emotions, Ellen would bounce back with remarkable resilience.