A catalyst can be something that you experience – such as an event, or it can be words spoken by another person, or a book or a movie that causes you to alter your life in some way.

Growth in both your personal life and career involves finding your catalyst for personal motivation and inspiration.

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Finding Your Catalyst for Personal Motivation and Inspiration

Some catalysts are simple – such as a man who gets fired because he’s always late.

Losing the job can be a catalyst for that man to make sure he gets to his next job on time, or find a job that gives him so much personal satisfaction, he never wants to let his company down.

The event of getting fired, often at an inopportune time, caused him to make a change in how he acts in life.

Change is hard.

It’s easier to do what you’ve always done because there’s comfort in familiarity.

Leaving your comfort zone thrusts you into new situations and forces you to deal with new ideas and new ways of handling various aspects of life.

It’s scary and no one wants to go through it voluntarily.

If you were to take a survey of random strangers and ask them, “Are you happy with your life?” you would get more no answers than you would yes ones.

There are a lot of people who aren’t happy with their lives.

They don’t like their personal life or their professional life and they don’t like how they act sometimes.

Yet day in and day out, they don’t do anything to change any of that.

Some people don’t know how to change it.

They don’t understand how they can find a catalyst to motivate and inspire themselves toward the kind of life they want.

Sometimes a catalyst enters your life and you’re too focused on the ordinary that you miss it completely.

You may have to train yourself to watch for opportunities if you want to raise yourself to a higher level of success and happiness.

Change Begins and Ends with You

If you take the time to look over your life at this moment, what would you think about it?

Think about the people in your life – those who you’re in an intimate relationship with.

Is it everything you wanted it to be and hoped it could be? What about where you are financially in life?

Does where you stand right now with your finances make you wish things were different?

Does it create a hunger within you to have more?

To be wiser about your finances? What about your job?

This is an area where a lot of people are absolutely miserable.

If you find that you’re falling into that place where your miserable in your job or about your finances, grab my FREE quick-start guide to being happier in 5 minutes a day. Just click in the image below.

Yet, they stay in that job year after year getting older and even more miserable.

If you dislike any area of your life because it simply isn’t satisfying, you but you stick with it anyway, it means that you’ve settled.

You’ve given up on the idea that there could be more – that you deserve more or that changing things is even worth the effort.

If you dislike an area of your life now, but you don’t change anything about it, you will still dislike that area of your life three months, six months or a year down the road.

You will have lost time and you will have missed the opportunity to make changes during that timeframe.

If you want more out of life – if you feel that you should have more – and the unhappiness with your life sits like a rock in the pit of your stomach, then you need to take steps to make changes.

Physical signs like that are always indicators that something isn’t the way you want it to be – that it needs to be addressed.

And ignoring these physical signs can lead to emotional complications as the stress of the matter weighs heavily on you.

Remaining where you are in a life you’re not happy with will lead to feelings of depression, sadness, and resignation.

That hole inside of you that aches for something more, for something better will never be filled.

That’s not what you deserve.

It’s not what anyone deserves.

Life is not meant to be something that’s just endured.

It’s meant to be lived with excitement because it’s an adventure if you decide that it is.

Roadblocks That Get in the Way of Motivation

Though people are all different, we all have one thing in common – roadblocks that get in the way of what we really want from life.

Roadblocks stop some people from ever making a change, but they motivate others to keep on going to find a way to what they want, regardless of the roadblock.

You might have one of these roadblocks or you might experience more than one of them.

A major roadblock to change is fear.

When things change, it ushers in differences that can make us afraid.

We’re afraid to leave behind the bad job for fear we won’t like the new one or fear that we might not fit in as well.

Remember though, that one of the acronyms for fear is False Evidence Appearing Real.

Your fears are usually based on what if myths – and they almost always never come to pass.

Don’t let fear cause you to sit on the sidelines of change.

Another roadblock that gets in the way is a lack of knowledge.

It’s hard to make changes when you’re not sure exactly how to go about those changes.

You might be branching out into an area that’s completely beyond your scope of knowledge at the present time.

Remember that what you don’t know can be learned. Use educational resources as your catalyst for change and success.

Strive for new levels of insight that you previously didn’t have.

Thinking that you simply can’t add another thing to your already full life keeps many people stuck where they are.

Making changes requires work.

So many people see the effort as not worth the payoff – and that’s a mistake.

This belief is what keeps you rooted in that job that you hate, to those messy finances, or to that relationship that’s sucking the life right out of you.

Learning better time management skills can be a catalyst for a better life as you clear out things that are a waste of time and make room for what offers the most benefits.

Being just comfortable enough where you are can be a roadblock to motivate you to change.

You’re not 100% happy, but you’re “happy enough.”

All this means is that you settled for a life that keeps you locked in your comfort zone.

You’re trading a full life for one that’s half empty.

If you are not 100% satisfied, then something is missing.

That something may be the very thing that you always wanted, but because you were “happy enough,” you’ll never reach it.

Visualization can be a catalyst for the changes you need to make.

Picture the next level of success in every area of your life – finances, career satisfaction, relationships, health – everything that matters most to you.

Focus on how it could be improved and then make a game plan to get you there.

If you block out those thoughts in an effort to stay content, you’ll never know what you could have made out of your life if you’d give it a chance.

Wanting everything to be perfect is a huge roadblock to motivation.

It’s here where people stall out.

They want the new situation to be perfect before they attempt any changes.

These people want the new job to have everything in place.

They don’t want to take the chance that they’ll make a switch and find it’s not what they wanted. These are people who wait for the “perfect” relationship before getting into one.

Perfectionism is the killer of change because what you see in your mind as perfection doesn’t translate that way in life.

There are no perfect scenarios in a life that’s lived to the fullest.

There are experiences to encounter – and not one of them will be perfect.

That’s okay. Perfectionism kills progress.

You don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines waiting to get into the game of life.

The number one roadblock that keeps too many people from letting a catalyst be their motivation is the fear of failure.

They falsely believe that they haven’t failed yet because they haven’t even tried – so they’re safe.

But whether they realize it or not, they have failed. They’re choosing to stay stagnant in a lesser life than what they dreamed of.

That, in itself, is a form of failure.

Another roadblock happens when people wait for change rather than seeking change.

They wait for the perfect joint venture partner to come to them instead of seeking one out because that requires putting themselves on the line.

People wait to see if the person they’re in a relationship with is going to treat them better, rather than speaking up about what they want and deserve.

They avoid tough situations and tough conversations because they’re waiting for everything to work out on its own.

Change isn’t something that happens on a whim.

It’s something that you make happen.

You have to find the motivation within yourself to make that change. And it’s uncomfortable at first.

That’s okay. Take that sign of discomfort as a compliment. It’s proving to you that you’re taking action and bettering your life, even in the face of fear or uneasiness.

Your Mind Can Be a Catalyst

You get the life that you think you deserve.

Your mind or your thought patterns lead you to make changes – to take action that alters the life you currently have.

When someone’s mind leads them to take action, they become so upset with their current situation that they think leaving it where it’s at is no longer an option.

Their emotions will often reach a point that they must make a change.

This drive can often start out backed by emotion.

For example, if someone is in a relationship with a person who didn’t treat them that well, they’ll often stick with the relationship until a catalyst fueled by emotion causes a change.

One emotion could be anger.

If the person you’re in a relationship with is unfaithful, it’s often anger over the cheating that drives the catalyst – even when the prior bad behavior didn’t induce a change.

Your subconscious knows what you truly want.

This true desire becomes buried deep under what we’re willing to settle for. This is why so many people aren’t living a life full of passion.

You can tell if you’re living a life full of passion by asking yourself this question.

Do I love getting out of bed in the morning?

If you’re not excited about what you get to do when you get out of bed, that’s a warning sign that you need to find your catalyst.

Whatever it is that motivates you is what will drive you to wake up, ready to start and excel throughout your day.

It will drive you to keep going in the face of obstacles.

You’ll continue on – even if you’re the only one who believes in you, or your idea or your change.

That’s why it’s vital to your success – to your ability to thrive – that you get in a business that you have a strong emotional attachment to – something you are proud of and believe in strongly.

How are you finding your catalyst for personal motivation and inspiration? I would love to hear from you in the comments below!