LIFE
How to Stay Motivated Over the Summer Months R ecognizing why it’s hard to find the time to accomplish what you need to do, and coming up with a plan to combat your lethargy, will help you to achieve your goals, even in the midst of the summer doldrums. By Bob Davies
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magine coming home after a hard day of appointments and disappointments. Today is the day that you intended to make some “two for one” calls. It’s the day that you planned to make calls to some high-net-worth business owners on behalf of your fund-raising efforts for the hospital foundation for which you volunteer your time and leadership. You have the time set aside and then you get interruptions, one after another. You remember that you have to attend a webinar that involves one of your client’s issues. Then you have to review data from a questionnaire and prepare a present financial position. Now you’re all set to make your calls, but one of your clients calls you and says his accountant doesn’t understand the value of the premium financed insurance aspect of his estate plan. Next, you get a call from an attorney regarding some trust work. Then you need to prepare some client files for a compliance review. After that, you are told that there are some suitability issues with your annuity sale to an 80-year-old client. You still haven’t made any of those calls, but you will – right after you research competitive products and investment preferences for another client. Next, there is an issue with switching groups of funds. After you handle that, you see there is a problem with a commission and that requires you to make a call. Next, your assistant needs to see you to go over his or her progress on the tasks you assigned regarding your upcoming strategic alliance event. 38
InsuranceNewsNet Magazine » July 2013
Another call comes in about your fund allocations and the investment options not being aggressive enough in a guaranteed living benefit annuity. Your assistant then informs you that a doctor’s office is slow to provide records for another client and that your anti-money-laundering paperwork is missing. This is followed by a policy coming back rated and it’s one thing after another. Before you know it, you are absolutely exhausted as you grab your briefcase and head out the door for home. Oh, by the way, you never did make any calls. Ever had a day like this? When you get home, you find that you have no energy and you are not motivated to do anything that involves any effort. All you want to do is sit in your favorite chair and watch television. Your spouse asks you to help the kids with their homework and you simply say, “Not tonight, dear!” It would appear that you are not motivated. There is no such thing as an unmotivated person. In the circumstances I just described, you are very highly motivated to use as little energy as possible. That is a very highly-motivated state. Your body is geared to conserve energy. You will move as little as necessary and conserve your resources. Now watch how you can shift your motivation in an instant. You smell smoke and, as you look in the kitchen, you see flames shooting up the wall over the stove. All of a sudden, you get a surge of energy as you jump out of your chair, grab your favorite kid and run out of the house. What happened to your physiology and how did you go from absolutely exhausted to extreme high energy? It’s simple. You changed what you were in light of your circumstances. When you first came home, you were in reference to how hard your day was and how so many non-stop interruptions kept you from doing what you had in-
tended to do. The result of that reference point was exhaustion. In the second case, you were in reference to a dangerous and potentially-catastrophic fire, and your physiology responded with great energy and focus. It’s all about your reference point. Check out the illustion on the opposite page. Is square A darker than square B? As you look at this, it becomes obvious that the truth is, yes, square A is darker than square B. It’s an obvious truth. Would you put a hundred bucks on this? If you said yes, you’d lose it. The two squares are identical. I know it doesn’t look like they are, but you can’t trust what you see. It’s about what they are in reference to. Square A is in reference to the white squares and the open white space. That gives it the appearance of being dark. Square B is in reference to the dark squares surrounding it and that gives it the appearance of being light. Copy the picture and cut out square B. Put it on top of the first picture over the original square B. Now change its reference by physically moving it to the top of square A. It will look like it is changing colors right in front of your eyes. It never changes colors. It changes reference points and your eyes do the rest. Back to your tough day at the office. When you first came home, you were in reference to all of those obstacles. With that as your reference, your body was motivated to generate the lethargic, energyconserving state. When you changed your reference point to the smoke and fire, your body responded in kind. It was never an issue of being motivated. You always are motivated. So how do you stay motivated during the summer months? You prepare. Take a look at your calendar and decide the times you will be working and the times you will be taking off. Next, decide what you want to accomplish during the days that you are working. Here are the steps to take.