You can motivate yourself to work harder without doing extra mental work.

No meditation. No retreats. No weekend-long planning sessions.

We all do things that don’t inspire us. They fall outside of our critical A & B level activities.

That’s the nature of the beast.

In every job.

But if you want to succeed, you need to be motivated. You need to be inspired by your work.

I’ve been running my company for over ten years now. Sure there were times when I was demotivated. Tired. Burnt out.

Or when it all started. Stuck in a shitty sales job because of a shitty manager, with no guidance. No training. No motivation.

So, what did I do?

I made my own way. I created my own path. I generated motivation from what inspired me.

I’m going to share with you how to motivate yourself. And it’s a rather simple hack I use.

To motivate yourself, tie pain to the goal you’re trying to achieve.

You might think, wait, what? Pain!

You may even furiously click the x button in your browser. Pain scares you!

Breath.

You’re going to live.

Now hear me out.

We’ll start with a couple of examples of pain…

• You want to work hard in your career as you grew up poor, with little food and no toys and you NEVER want that for your child. You want your children to have whatever they desire.

• You want to work hard in your current job as no one thinks you’ll amount to anything. You’ll show them once you get promoted and become their boss and end up making 3x what they do.

• You were a fat, dorky little kid that always got picked on. You’ll never be picked on again as you’re in shape, crushing your career, and have a fantastic family.

The pains in your life are unlimited. This may sound sadistic. Fine. Use them.

Tie enough pain to the reason you want to motivate yourself, and sure enough, you’ll find a fire lit within you.

My father once told me, if you’re going to do something for nothing, you might as well do nothing.

Now, this isn’t entirely correct, but there’s some truth to it.

In high school, I worked a little for my families business. And by a little, I mean a little.

During those years, I also played a ton of sports. I was good. I was always the captain. I was respected. Trusted. Recruited from over 50 universities.

But when I got to the office, I was just a boy. A nobody. A little twerp screwing off at my families company.

And screw off I did.

There was no motivation for me. But on the field…I was a bad ass.

What was the difference?

People are much more willing to do things to avoid or resolve pain.

It’s also a great sales tactic.

When I began taking over as CEO of Skylink, I had already put in many years of blood sweat and tears.

I’ve been motivated.

When it all started, my mother was having issues with the company. She was tired, always stressed and a few toxic things were robbing all the hard work she and my father had done.

And they were way too generous. Seriously.

This made me sad. Sad for her. It was painful to watch.

So, I told myself, I’m going to reorganize this company and make it something much bigger than it ever was.

Why? So she never had to worry again.

And here we are…in our 33rd year, more profitable, less stressed, and we have a kickass team.

I tied a personal pain to ignite the goals I wanted to achieve.

The same thing goes for wanting to lose weight.

People don’t tie enough pain to motivate themselves. The status quo and the current pain is more comfortable than all the work they have to do to get healthy.

That’s not fun.

On the health side, for me, I never want a day to come that I can’t run around the yard with my son. I’ve watched my father abuse his body. And the result? Not good.

I want to be able to beat my son in a wrestling match, well, forever.

I always want to have the energy to take him to Disney for 8 hours and be able to play when we get home (here’s a great post on why Disney is such a great company and how it can change your life).

I want and need energy for my business and my family, all day long.

Those are some of my pains. Now go find yours.

Once you tie pain to your goal or ambitions, you’ll find the motivation. It’s a perfect little strategy for helping you achieve everything you deserve.

Thanks for reading.

Be safe. Be humble. Be you.