(Part 3) Top products from r/GetMotivated

> Do you have any recommendations on motivation and feelings of accomplishment? Nowdays I have zero motivation to do anything and I don't get any feeling of accomplishment or joy from accomplishing what I had thought were my goals.

> I got the same feeling from getting a promotion as I did when I just slept and stayed in bed all day.

This may be a case of every problem looking like a nail when you've got a hammer, but it sounds like philosophy could be beneficial. Motivation is something that I've always struggled with, and there's no effective way that I've found to really manipulate it. What did work is really thinking about what I want out of life, what my goals really are, and what I value. After I figured that out (on going process), motivation was a lot easier becasue I had a clear target and knew what I wanted to do.

I didn't get any joy from practising the guitar because it wasn't what I really cared about. But when I know what I'm doing is getting me closer to what I really want in life, then the sense of accomplishment comes easily. If you're not getting a sense of accomplishment from getting a promotion, then that's likely becasue you don't think that that gets you closer to living the life you want.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us could be a good starting point, and then I'd follow it up with The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck for an easy introduction to stoic philosophy.

EDIT: Stoic philosophy is what helped me, but that doesn't mean it'll do the same for you. I did a fair bit of reading on other subjects before finding something that worked. That's why it's important to just put the time in; it's the only way you'll find what works for you.

If he's the type that doesn't understand, then get a second opinion from another one.

As far as going 4-5 times a few years ago, then that's great. That shows that you DO have potential to get things done. That's something that can be a great motivator. If I could do it before, I can do it again.

Yea "I want to be successful" is not compelling enough. Everyone wants that.

Here's what I want you to do.

Get an excel sheet. Write down "In 3 years". Now you'll have 3 columns.

One will be (Achieve...Things I want to accomplish). Another will be (Have...Things I want to possess). Another will be Experience (Things I want to do).

So write down a few things you wanna do for each of them in 3 years. Now you're going to do one for 1 year, and one for 3 months.

It's a really simple way to do goal setting. What I do is I look at the sheet in the morning for about 5 minutes. I'll add in some pictures and stuff. I'll take a moment to VISUALIZE the future.

Ex. Pictured myself wearing a rolex. a 10 girlfriend. Sitting in a Ferrari. Blah Blah blah.

What this does for me everyday is get me excited for the future and motivate me to work.

Also in regards to the "first step". There's two things you can do. One is to well...don't think too much about it. There's two sides to me. There's the "general" that issues the command, and the "soldier" in me that follows orders. When I'm planning, I'm the general and I think about the long outcome and what I should do. When it's ACTION time I turn into soldier mode. My brain STFU and I just do it without complaining or thinking. Literally my brain shuts down and I only think about going to the gym and nothing else. LASER focus.

Another thing is...this all just boils down to habits. Think of discipline as a muscle. Yours is weak right now. But the more you do the task, the stronger it becomes. That's what was a lightbulb in my head. I do not think you're born this way or born that way. Something that has "discipline" has been doing it a lot longer than you and trained theirs over a few years.

You should pickup this book, it's the best one I read on how to make lasting changes. It also explains a lot of the "science" behind it which helps me to understand.

http://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When-Hard/dp/0385528752

Something else that helps me a lot in my travels is I've seen a lot of poverty and shit man. I've been on the road for over a year now in mainly SouthEast Asia.

College graduates make $500 a month out a college

people working 80+ hours a week for $50

Beautiful chicks having to become prostitutes to support their families in their home villages

Kids begging in the streets

You're in a very fortunate position. To waste your potential is kind of a slap in the face to others that weren't so fortunate to be born in America.

Good luck

I read these two books:
http://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Protecting-Borderline-Narcissistic-Personality/dp/1608820254/
http://www.amazon.com/Stop-Walking-Eggshells-Borderline-Personality/dp/1572246901/

They helped me understand the experience, understand the mistakes I made and that I'm not alone.

Talk to your friends. The first thing an abuser does is isolate you. Many of your relationships may not be where you want them to be. But you'd be surprised how strong they actually are. The reason I say this is because abusers have a pattern of going after people that are gentle caring people. And this means you have a strong network of friends. Go to them, and talk to them.

Take care of yourself. Make sure other things in your life are the way they want to be. Are you proud of your physique? Are you happy with where your career is going? Are you happy with your accomplishments? You're free from the overwhelming pain of a person that was emotionally insecure and made themselves feel better by putting you down. You are now free to write your own story without that crippling pain, go and write it.

There's a pretty good book on this sort of thing.You need to go digging through historical biographies and text to get a more typical view of what life was like back then (I'd start with those I recommended above.. A lot of people, myself included aren't a fan of Churchill's politics, but if you look at him through the lense of his era and keep in mind his differences to you or I... As in we weren't born in a palace as the son of a lord, on a first name basis with all of the richest & most powerful gentry. Getting to hang out in his teens & taken places by the Prince of Wales/the future King, Edward VII (who his mother was probably sleeping with)) its a great read and will give you a decent insight into what life was like for both the gentry & the people who worked for them:

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Lion-Winston-Churchill-1874-1932/dp/0385313489


The book on how great today is:

https://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Future-Better-Than-Think/dp/1451614217

Of course, luck plays a part, so does recognize chances and maximizing your opportunities. But these things are not fully under our control while exerting effort is. Sure, that is also not a guarantee of success, however you define it. But, I'm always of that "do what you can" mindset.

I want to add that I also believe that people should, if they can, work on things they own - even if these are only micro ventures (I wrote a short book on this idea). My book might not be the best in the world, but I'm working hard on trying to get it in front of people. It costs $1 and I get precisely $0.30 from each sold copy, but I'm hopefully it will make a difference down the line. Maybe it won't, maybe I'm just wasting time here to get something like $12 in the end, but I'll stick with it anyway. It might not be the best plan, but it is one I have and I'll push on with it.

So yeah, there's always the risk of someone highjacking your work and cutting you short. But, as much as working smart is a good thing to have in mind, I'd still go for working hard as well. I can't tell myself to be lucky or very smart, but I can try to work hard (but not be naive or complacent at the same time).

Finally, I'm sorry that you and your mom had bad experiences. Hope things get better for you. Do you have some options for a new job on the horizon? What did you do on your last one, if you're up for talking about that?

I didn't see what your exact age in your post so I'm not sure exactly how old you are, but I'm guessing you are around 10 years younger than me and I am 38.

I'm not going to be able to give you any answers unfortunately, because I still don't have any, but tell you about me and hope that maybe it helps you in some way.

I was raised in an almost perfect family. Now, my dad is one of the most stubborn, hard to talk to, and a person that has that old school mentality that men don't talk about the way they feel and they keep it all inside them and just get over it. Also my parents are extremely Christian, not that that is a bad thing, but I think it has kind of shaped me in my life. I'll explain a little more later. My dad is also one of the most absolutely hardest working people I've ever seen. He's retired now but it doesn't matter because he's still up out of bed at 6.30am, 7 am every morning and then he is outside doing some kind of physical labor all day. He is almost working on something, it's amazing. I would kill to have a tenth of work ethic. I just wanted to give you a little back ground information on my life.

I went to high school, never studied, was always highly active in sports, then college, and pretty much the same way. I did the bare minimum to get by all the time in everything I did. I've never had any passion for any kind of career, still don't. That has led to me never having any kind of job I enjoy.

When I was in college I was like most college age kids and partied(is that how you spell that?} on weekends. I always liked to have fun first before responsibilities. I'm a huge procrastinater, and always have been. Also, even though, I was a party person, I was always socially awkward and shy which led to very few relationships of any kind. I have a very small number of close, and have been in only a couple of romantic relationships in my life that always ended in me being dumped. So I have always had very low self esteem. Alright so I graduated college, moved away to a city a couple of hours from where I grew up and started working at a decent paying job. It was an easy job with decent pay. Did I like it? Of course not. Since I knew no one in the city I started drinking a lot. My weekend party habit turned into a daily drinking habit. The little bit of social life I had turned into none. You combine all this together and remember how I was raised led to a ton of guilt and lowered self esteem even more.

That led to even more substance abuse. So much so I thought I was having a heart attack at one point and called 911. It turned out to be a severe panic attack. I don't know changed in that part of my life but I think it was a combination of everything. My few friends were all getting married by this point. I developed severe anxiety and depression. This was probably around 25 or 26 years old. So the doctor prescribed me with anti-depressants of course, never mentioned therapy, and then my anxiety started to stabilize, and depression eased up a bit and allowed me to continue with my life. However, I never changed my lifestyle. So I continued to use drugs and alcohol.

A couple of years later, I was 28, the company I worked for was bought out and I was laid off. Combine that with substance abuse, a lack of friends, lack of hobbies, no motivation, and 0 dating and its not good.

Unfortunately I just got a phone call and have to step out so I will be back in a few to finish my story. In the meantime watch this and bookmark this guy's YouTube channel....

https://youtu.be/8g0dNjHz2_I

Ok finally back..... I know this is gotten long so I will try and hurry. It's good for me to write it though, and if it is even a small chance it could help you or someone else it's worth it to me.

So anyways, I was laid off about 10 and a half years ago. I had to move back home with my family because my lifestyle didn't lead to any kind of savings the way I was living. During the last 10 years I can't count the number of meaningless, low paying jobs I have had despite having a degree and experience in the IT field. The IT field, I received my degree in Management Information Systems, is one of those fields you have to constantly continue learning and I never did that. Because like I said before, I didn't have any type of passion about it, I just knew I kinda liked computers so that is what I decided on after changing my major two previous time. So I lack the skills necessary to get a job especially now. 10 years of not working in the IT field and everything has completely changed. However, I'm still paying back that massive student load bill but that's a whole other topic. I have a job now and I scrape by barely but it's pretty miserable. I'm still battling addiction. It is getting better because I finally decided to make some changes. Now it is very, very slowly getting better but any step in that direction is better than going the other way. One of the reasons I started making some changes is because of the guy I posted in the link above. He is psychology professor and one of the smartest human beings on the planet IMO. Now there will probably be people who reply to this and bring politics into because Jordan Peterson became a well known name after his stance on the Canadian Government trying to pass a law that basically says you have to call transgender people by the pronoun of their choice and they are just a bunch of made up words basically. It's nonsense. Peterson doesn't have a problem with transgender people only the fact that the government is trying to interfere in basically the English language and making laws about it. So if anyone brings any of that up just ignore that political crap.

He has tons of videos on depression, suicide, motivation, just basically anything to do with ways to help you improve your life. The one that truly made me make the decision to start making changes is one in which he talks about 5 factors that ultimately lead to depression and/or suicide. These include.... substance abuse, lack of social circle, lack of intimate relationships, no job/structure/goal, and additional health problems. He says that in his experience in in working with people with depression is that if you suffer from 3 of those problems it is nearly impossible to overcome. I have 4. I do have a job, but it's a meaningless job and the only structure I have is going to work and back home to lay on the couch or go to bed. So you can see I have 4 out of 5. I don't have any additional health problems....YET.

So you can see how when, what I consider to be, one of the smartest men in the world say something like that it's horrifying. Because I could always lie to myself and say that I would start changing later. I will post the link to that video as well.

My whole point in this is to say that I am closing in on 40 and I am in a worse situation than you. There is a very good chance I will never recover from this and it's going to end badly somehow, someway, with that either being dead, homeless, or in prison. So I believe that has shaken me enough to tell myself to at least try. I've started making daily goals to accomplish. It might something as simple as coming home from work and going walking, doing the dishes, and studyiing/reading. I probably won't do 95% of them most of the time but it's a step forward even if it's just 5% of the time. I have signed up for one of the thousands of online courses in computer programming I've always thought computer science was interesting. Now I'm not passionate about it but I'm working on that. I'm getting help for substance abuse and going to meetings/therapy and it's getting better. But I still have a long, long way to go and I may be in my 50's even if it does finally work out.

So what I'm saying to you is..... don't do what I have done. Change things now, not tomorrow, but right now. Do not tell yourself you will do it tomorrow. Even if it is going and cleaning your room and doing situps after you read this....anything. You still have some time to correct things and have a productive life and a family if you want it. More than likely I will never have my own family and that is extremely difficult to think about. If you were anything like me you probably used to think about getting married someday and starting a family and there is a very very good chance I will never have that now. There's a really good chance that I won't make it and be dead by the time I'm 50.

So that has motivated me enough for now to at least try for now. Time will only tell what ultimate happens as it is for everybody. You said you didn't suffer from depression so that means you have an excellent opportunity to make a change and take a different path. Good luck! I don't know anything about anything but if you ever need to talk to someone, send me a message. I would be happy to try and help even if it's just by listening. That goes for any other single person that reads this. We can do this!

I just noticed I actually posted a movie link I was watching at the time lol sorry...I corrected it lol
This is the link to the video I mentioned earlier and what I mentioned earlier about the 5 things starts about 2 and half minutes in.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c9Uu5eILZ8&t=326s
This is another one of just a ton of excellent videos..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XICqcAac9jg&t=598s

Buy his book and read it as well..... https://www.amazon.com/12-Rules-Life-Antidote-Chaos/dp/0345816021/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541126808&sr=1-2&keywords=jordan+peterson+12+rules+for+life

13 years here in March. One of the hardest but most rewarding things I’ve done. I will say that I’m down to about 2-3x per year where I think about going back. Super easy to resist at this point though. I always say NOT ONE DRAG. that is the key for me. How I quit? Alan Carr: Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking https://www.amazon.com/dp/0615482155/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_JoHCCbQ1T8Q83 worth $12 if you are on the fence

I don't know if it is so much of a self-development book, but 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is a really good book that I enjoyed reading. There's a lot of good "self-help" books that aren't labeled as such if you dive deeper into the psychology side of it.

Mind you, the author gets a lot of flak for his other activities in life, but most of it is heavily misplaced.

For anyone that would like to understand more about this kind of mindset, I highly recommend this book I read recently!

It walks through why focusing on individual bricks, even though it's more time consuming, is a lot more advantageous and has a higher payoff than trying to throw a wall together just to feel like you accomplished something.

"The Art of Expressing The Human Body", by John Little.
You can find it on amazon here

If you are interested in these types of books, then I would also recommend "Zen In The Martial Arts" by Joe Hyams. (My personal favorite)

You can also find it on Amazon here

Enjoy!

"The Art of Expressing The Human Body", by John Little.
You can find it on amazon here

If you are interested in these types of books, then I would also recommend "Zen In The Martial Arts" by Joe Hyams. (My personal favorite)

You can also find it on Amazon here

Enjoy!

It's a bio-trilogy called The Last Lion.

I'm still only on the first book but it is fantastically written, incredibly informative, and a joy to read.

They are not a quick read however; the one I'm reading now is over 800 pages, but I can't put it down. Right now I'm reading about Churchill as a 21 year-old youth serving in the Victorian army as a second lieutenant.

Really highly recommended.

> just imagine good things happening to you and they will

The Antidote is a good book to start with if you think that's what stoicism actually is about. It's essentially a response and critique to the very idea of the 'power of positive thinking'.

Too many comments to see if this has already been suggested, but this book on mindfulness was very helpful to me. I also think CBT will be helpful here, but her therapist probably already knows that. If the therapist isn't working I think you should switch to a different therapist. I went through 3 before I found someone I "clicked" with. Also, maybe show her the comments in this thread?

> I highly recommend his Biography.

Are you referring to Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future? Or do you have a different recommendation? I haven't read a bio about him yet but I would like to.

If you can afford it, please do yourself a favor and buy a copy, I got this one from amazon for $1 (with prime), $1! It is always in my bag with me.

I highly recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Striking-Thoughts-Wisdom-Living-Library/dp/0804834717
It's a collection of quotes by Bruce Lee on various subjects, and it's extremely interesting to read through.

I'm a pessimist, and I really enjoyed The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0080K3G4O/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

This is from a series of books by Carlos Castaneda and you can find the books here

Well worth the read. Start with "The Teachings of Don Juan"

Edit: Since i know im going to hear "no it isnt...it has its own book" there is a book called "The Four Agreements" but the author readily admits that the teachings come from the late Carlos Castaneda.

FYI, this image is from a tweet by /u/math_rachel : https://twitter.com/math_rachel/status/856349514730422272 . And the quote is from 'Confessions of a Public Speaker' by Scott Berkun : https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Public-Speaker-English/dp/1449301959

http://www.amazon.com/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-Smoking/dp/0615482155

The best $13 I ever spent in my life. Give it a shot. What do you have to lose?

For anyone struggling with procrastination. I suggest The Now Habit book. It has a great chapter about self talk.

The Four Agreements by Don Ruiz

Made an account just to say this:

I read most of the replies and didn't see anything regarding it; there is a book called "Striking Thoughts", which is basically a compilation of quotes attributed to Bruce Lee. I read my first copy so many times that I wore it out. Everything in it is good, but some of the things he says really make you reflect.

http://www.amazon.com/Bruce-Lee-Striking-Thoughts-Library/dp/0804834717/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450383301&sr=8-1&keywords=striking+thoughts

I read something along the lines of
this in the book [Critical Thinking](
htt p://w w w. amazon.ca/gp/aw/
d/0130647608). They had argued
that we really are our own enemy.

They continued on, saying that when
we don't explicitly put our emotions
and perspectives into words, we can
easily lose sight of their true nature
thanks to bias, complication|s or
simply the stress of the situation.

I suggest reading at least the first 20
pages. It's a great book for when
you're idly waiting by. it will literally
change your life.

Here

Switch


And also similar, but more broad in terms of ideas (by the same author):

Made to Stick

here's the book on amazon

Meditations is 112 pages, at least, according to Amazon. It depends on your reading speed.

That is a part of the title of his book.

https://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Protecting-Borderline-Narcissistic-Personality/dp/1608820254/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539625721&sr=8-1&keywords=splitting+protecting+yourself+while+divorcing

I've been listening to The Now Habit. It has similar ideas to this.

Pillow Thoughts II by Courtney Peppernell

Pillow Thoughts II: Healing The Heart

https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Public-Speaker-English/dp/1449301959

Reminds me of "The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck"

You can read more in depth on all of this in Elon Musk's biography which he actually cooperated with. Like how his first son died of SIDs, his companies were close to bankrupt way more than once, how many arguments there were in the PayPal days, and how absolutely incredible the feats of Tesla and SpaceX really were given the small time frame they were working with.