You don’t have to wait for your feelings to come right before you can get motivated. You can choose your motivational state and act to bring it about. Your feelings will follow. WHEN YOU’RE weary, as the song goes, or feeling small—or feeling down—you tend to focus on, well, your feelings. You try to nurse them into a better shape. You need to feel better, you tell yourself, in order to get motivated, to get going. Similarly, when you’re struggling to get going on a Monday—or to drag yourself [...]

Getting motivated, and knowing how to get people motivated, is both art and science. The good news is, you don’t have to become a motivational speaker to do it. You just have to understand these five motivational states. This post is also available as a YouTube video (click here). Or jump to the audio version. IN THE days before actual coaching, the only option we had for getting motivated were those dreaded motivational speakers. They whooped onto the stage and spewed out platitudes like, “Today is [...]