Did you ever hear of someone who had a terrible health scare because they made bad choices in life that led to the issue?
It shook them up – and for a while, they strictly followed the doctor’s orders.
The health scare was their catalyst for motivation. In order for your catalyst to motivate you, you’re going to have to accept personal responsibility.
Are you ready to face the hard truth about what’s keeping you stuck?
In the case mentioned above, they are right.
They exercised. They got the amount of sleep that they needed. They quit smoking. They quit drinking.
Yet before several months were out, they slipped right back into their old habits.
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Face the Hard Truth About What’s Keeping You Stuck
The catalyst, which was the health scare, came face to face with personal responsibility – and lost.
The hard truth is that in order for your catalyst to motivate you, you’re going to have to accept personal responsibility.
The choices that you make in life are your choices.
You made them because you thought they were the best option at the time.
You might have received bad advice that led you to a decision – but in the end, you were the one that made that choice.
You have to accept personal responsibility for what you want to see changed in your life before it can change.
People who place the blame on others for their lot in life don’t ever reach a place where they’re truly happy – regardless of the changes.
That’s because they see life as happening to them rather than them making life happen.
Accept the responsibility for your mistakes, for your poor choices, for that awful job you shouldn’t have taken, or for that relationship that was a mess from the start that you wasted too much time on.
Once you accept it, you can move on.
You can free yourself to finally accept the catalyst for change.
Don’t let where you were be a stone around your neck that anchors you to the place where you currently are.
Let the mistakes you made in the past become part of your motivation – part of your growing experience.
While growth is hard, all good things happen with the evolution to a different place in life.
5 Ways You Can Find Your Catalyst
Knowing that you want your life to change requires that you take stock of your life.
It means that you have to examine every area and look at what’s not been working to make you feel the inner satisfaction that you’d like to have.
1. Understand the things in your life that matter to you.
Your catalyst for motivation won’t be the same as someone else’s.
While what matters to one person may be an expensive house, that might not matter to you.
Your priority might be financial security for your retirement or more time to spend with your loved ones.
If having time to do what you want to do with creative work is what matters to you, then your catalyst will be whatever action gives you the chance to free your inner artist.
This may be something as simple as cutting back on hours with work or finding a different job.
It might be the catalyst for taking an art or a writing class.
Whatever it is should be something that you truly desire – something that you feel your life would be lacking if you didn’t have it.
2. Accept that you’re going to have to change things in order to get what matters to you.
Many people are willing to acknowledge what matters to them, but then they balk at the change.
You won’t get what matters to you without change.
It’s like losing weight.
You can’t shed pounds if you stay sedentary, eating copious amounts of calories. You have to be mindful of your movement and intake.
3. Give it the opportunity to happen.
For example, if you want to start your own business, but your personal and professional life doesn’t leave you with room to learn about business development or to increase your talents, then something has to give.
You have to make room to let the change in.
Maybe that means spending a little time after work on the weekdays or on the weekends to educate yourself.
It’s a temporary sacrifice for a long-term benefit.
4. Make it concrete.
Write it down. Share it with others.
Find a mentor.
Don’t allow this change you want to remain nothing more than a desire.
By naming it, you’re taking a step toward making it your future reality. Claim what it is that you want for your life.
Then make a formidable plan to go after it, step-by-step.
5. Do not let the size of the change throw you off your goal.
Some changes that people want to make really are pretty big.
Changes like moving from your home to live in another country because it’s what you’ve always wanted is a huge change.
You wouldn’t want to pack up overnight and head out the next morning.
You can’t throw away personal responsibility when a catalyst happens.
What you have to do is focus on the things you need to do in order to reach that change sensibly.
If your goal is moving to another country, you would want to find a place to live and secure a way to support yourself financially before taking the leap.
Those are action steps that you can take that lead to the big change.
Small change is what equals big change and it gets you closer to where you want to be in life.
Think about how often you’ve just accepted your fate – your lot in life.
Have you ever made an action plan to get to a better place?
To have more peaceful relationships by setting boundaries?
To feel the thrill of waking up each morning, ready to lead a niche that excites you?
If you’ve been watching time pass by, waiting for a bolt of lightning, consider this day your wake-up call.
It’s time to embrace every catalyst you encounter so that years down the road, you’re not still stuck in the mud wondering why life passed you by.
So, what’s keeping you stuck? Share with me in the comments how you plan to use your catalyst to motivate you!
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