Motivation and self confidence can be very closely linked. Sometimes we lack motivation because we don't have the confidence in our abilities to succeed at the task. Other times, we just suffer from apathy or procrastination. If you are suffering with low self confidence as well, you should check out my self confidence article. It contains a lot of similar recommendations to those found in this article due to the similarity between them.
The most well-known motivational speaker in the world is probably Anthony Robbins*. He was the guy in Shallow Hal who hypnotised Hal to see the beauty inside women. So he's certainly made a name for himself.
Now, when you first hear this guy speak, he comes across as an overly excited annoying American with a hyperactivity disorder and it can be off-putting. But give him the benefit of the doubt, try to see through the voice and what he says is actually very helpful. He provides useful skills and teaches neat psychological tricks to overcome your apathy and take control of your life.
Anthony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within* is a great place to start because he covers all the important areas and skills required to give yourself the motivation to succeed. It includes decision making and learning from bad decisions, belief systems and how they affect your behaviour and he teaches all about his neuro-associations principle, which demonstrates why we do the things we do, and what we need to do to break out of those habits and create new successful habits.
The basic premise of his neuro-associations principle is that everything we do is controlled by either our desire to move away from pain or to move towards pleasure. Our brain works by associations, so we associate things we don't like with pain and that stops us doing them. We associate fire with pain, so we don't put our hands in the fire, we associate falling with pain so we try not to fall. It's not just physical pain though. If you're the sort of person who has difficulty getting up early in the morning, it's because you associate more pain to getting up early than to rushing around at the last minute because you got up a bit too late.
We also associate things with pleasure, such as food. Our brain tries to move us away from things it associates with pain and towards things it associates with pleasure. If you are having trouble losing weight, it's because you associate too much pleasure with the wrong foods (like chocolate or fish and chips) and too much pain with foods that you should be eating (like broccoli or spinach).
Anthony Robbins* explains neuro associative conditioning in Awaken the Giant Within*, which allows people to consciously change what they associate pain and pleasure to. In the dieting example it can be used to make you associate more pleasure with eating less food or better food and more pain with eating unhealthy food and snacks. This can make dieting much easier. It can also seriously help with making you associate more pain to procrastinating and more pleasure to trying things out and getting things done.
The pain/pleasure principle may seem like over-simplification but it's a very useful model to understand how your mind works and how to change your life and regain control of your destiny. Anthony Robbins* has created several books and courses and runs his own seminars but I think the Awaken the Giant Within* course is probably the best place to start. It gives a very broad and stable foundation, and gives enough to completely change your life in one package. And if you like what he's teaching, then his other products are useful secondary tools.
