Motivation Handbook To Help Get You Back On Course

We all have grand plans, varying road maps to end goals and dreams. We might even have ideas about how the next year, 5 years or 10 years might unfold. Initially enthusiasm carries us and nothing can hold us back. As time goes on that initial excitement and enthusiasm can dwindle and unless we continually work at it we can get drastically off course or completely derailed.

Motivation is what directs goal-oriented behavior and it is what drives us to accomplishing our end goal. The ebook entitled: “The Essential Motivation Handbook” is a collaborative effort between two well known productivity bloggers, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and Eric Hamm of Motivate Thyself.

The 25 article, 112 page ebook is a one stop shop to help get you motivated and continue on the right path to realizing your goals. The book contains some theoretical “what is motivation” type articles but mostly it offers practical tips and advice that you can apply to your own life NOW. After all, you don’t make much headway only by theorizing, you actually need to DO something.

The highlights

How To Motivate Yourself

Top 20 Motivation Hacks

Progress, Progress, Progress! 5 Tips To Keep You Moving Forward

5 Tips For Motivational Recovery

How To Deal With Negative Feedback

How To Actually Execute Your To-do List

Stop Reading About It and Do It

My favorite has to be article 11 in which Leo shares 16 ideas on how to get motivated when you’re in a slump, which can be so incredibly difficult to do when you’re right in the thick of it. Of the 16 tips #4 stands out as my favorite: Build Anticipation. As with any new goal, like I mentioned earlier, you’re keen and eager to dive in, get going and make progress. Leo’s advice is completely the opposite. Leo suggests holding back, setting a start date for some time in the future and in doing so you build focus and excitement around the goal which greatly increases your odds of success. This really makes sense. Hey it helped him in kicking the smoking habit, (which is not easy so I’m told) so it sounds good to me.

It would have been helpful to have a one page summary, flow chart or diagram of some sort on the key tips and ideas for getting motivated. Although it’s not a difficult read and is designed to be used as a reference there is still a lot of information on each page and if you’re not careful you could miss something valuable. This isn’t a criticism of the book itself just something that I think would have been nice to see and would have been handy.

This book is filled with great ideas for helping you identifying what it is you actually want to do, how to get started, finding what motivates you to keep going, and how to pick up when you inevitably veer off track. I recommend this book to anyone who needs motivation – a little nudge from time to time – to keep going and stay on track to realize your goals.

You can buy the book from here for the low price of $14.95. Leo and Eric are so confident that you’ll find it useful (as am I) that they are offering a 100% money back guarantee, immediately, with no questions asked. Once you’ve read the book be sure to come back and leave a comment with your thoughts and specifically how it has helped you.

“Reading does help though: first in helping you to understand what to do, and second in keeping you motivated as you actually do the skill. But it’s not a substitute for doing. Now stop reading and go do what you want to learn to do!” — Leo Babauta from “The Essential Motivation Handbook”

Photo courtesy of: Tambako the Jaguar