After studying communication for almost a decade, I notice we make many dumb relationship mistakes and communication errors that I’m about to share with you. I use the term “dumb” not to put you down, but to label the mistakes lots of people repeat. Put an end to these 15 relationship mistakes in no particular order:

1. Withhold Feeling

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.Benjamin Franklin

Men are more guilty than women in withholding feelings from their partner. We tend to hide our irritation instead of revealing what annoyed us. Women are indirectly guilty of this relationship mistake. While women are more emotional than men, they withhold feelings in the sense that they blame or criticize others to indirectly express emotion. Saying, “I hate you for…!” is not a good way to express feelings. An expression of emotion is, “I feel sad about…” “I’m feeling happy you…” “I am angry!”

2. Reject Emotion

You choose a path; a direction, not an immediate outcome. You don’t choose how to feel or what pops into your head. You can choose a path that leads towards what you value or you can choose avoidance and fusion. Your choice.Steven Hayes

We may withhold feelings from someone because we reject emotion. It is uncomfortable for most people to feel guilt, shame, anger, sadness, and even love so they reject these emotions by thinking positively or generally suppressing them. Your relationships deteriorate if you suppress anger, for example, because you resent and behave bitterly with people. You feel whatever you do for a reason – accept it. The next time you feel something intense, notice if you want run from it or embrace it.

3. Blame

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.Seneca

The failure to healthily express emotion can show itself through blame, a common relationship mistake. Look at an argumentative couple to see each person blaming the other for relationship problems. Neither acknowledges imperfection, preferring to be right. Each person thinks people ought to change instead of taking the responsibility for self-change. Victimization is a relationship mistake unhealthy for either person.

4. Gossip

Live that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.Will Rogers

People gossip about their relationships mainly for self-pity. They seek validation the other is to blame for relationship problems. If you have a relationship problem, talk with the person you share the problem with and stop complaining about it to your friends or coworkers. The other person is not the cause of your suffering; you are because of your ignorance to the problem through gossip. If a gossiper puts the mirror on himself, he would realize the rumors hurt his relationships. A gossiper is no better than the originator of the problem. Neither roles create resolution – both compound it.

5. Negatively Interpret Behaviors

Analyses of others are actually expressions of our own needs and values.Marshall Rosenberg

Give people a margin-for-error because you do not know every detail.

A gossiper is one example of someone who interprets behavior in a negative light. Each little behavior signals a conspiracy against the cynic. If you think your husband is having an affair, anything he does will be filtered through that perspective. If you think a friend is turning against you, you will think him declining an invitation reflects such hatred.

Give people a margin-for-error because you do not know every detail. Each of us hold a piece of truth discoverable through communication. The best way to resolve your worries is to ask the person by showing interest in their life.

6. Show A Lack of Interest

There are two levers for moving men: interest and fear.Napoleon Bonaparte

Do you know what happened to your partner today? When was the last time you watched a friend play their weekly sport? When did you last ask what someone did at work? Get curious about people’s lives by asking a lot of questions and displaying attentive body language. Communication often lacks in relationships because neither person takes the initiative to learn about the other person. Interest in people’s lives makes them feel important, builds the relationship, and teaches you a lot of great stuff in the process. Think of something a person important to you enjoys then go do it with them. You may even want to take up a new hobby together like dancing or yoga.

7. Exert Excessive Control

When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result.Byron Katie

We hate being controlled and told what to do. The worst managers micro-manage to dictate employee behavior. Many angry employees echo similar remarks.

The greatest leaders give team members freedom. The same is true in families and other interpersonal relationships. If you order your teenage daughter to not smoke, research shows she is more likely to smoke. One study looked at how values transmit through families and found that children with authoritarian parents have differing values. When parents are more supportive rather than restrictive, children agree and accept similar values.

8. Try to Change People

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice, and motivated by pride and vanity.Dale Carnegie

Whenever we try to change people, whether it be through manipulation, criticism, orders, threats, or rewards, they take on strange behavior. Do a test over a non-important issue with someone you know well. Intentionally tell the person what they are doing is wrong. The person may not change, become suddenly quiet, resent you, look at you weird, or purposefully do what you said not to do. Changing people is not the issue – what you say and how you come across is the issue.

9. Remain Unchanged

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.George Bernard Shaw

We expect people to change while we remain unchanged. Rigid perspectives on money, family, work, emotion, and the relationship creates severe friction that can destroy a relationship. “If my coworker stopped…then I’d be able to…” “If my son stopped…then I could…” “My partner should…then I’d feel…” I’ll give you an if-statement to remember: if you don’t change, you have no right to expect people to change.

10. Keep One’s Point of View

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.Leonardo da Vinci

It is logically and mathematically irrational to conclude one can be right 95% of the time.

What is your honest estimate of the percentage you think you are right in an argument? 80? 90? 100%? I estimate most people say 95%. That means a fighting couple’s righteousness totals 190%, a formula for conflict. It is logically and mathematically irrational to conclude one can be right 95% of the time. We are not divine beings knowing of truth.

Each of us possess parts of truth that we must be flexible enough to explore. The cure to any couple’s problem is held by each person because their point of view is 50% of the relationship.

11. Deny Flaws

It takes a lot of courage to face up to things you can’t do because we feed ourselves so much denial.Zoe Saldana

Refusal to change and determination to stick to your original point of view is a pursuit of perfection. No one is perfect. We understand that in our head but emotionally do not live it out. We prefer to blame and hate others. A simple sit-down discussion where the two of you each admit three flaws about yourselves helps keep destructive perfection at bay while encouraging growth. You do not fear imperfection when mistakes are encouraged to surface.

12. Do Not Appreciate

I can live for two months on a good compliment.Mark Twain

Relationships are easy to take for granted. We devalue what we have while desiring what is out of our reach. Put effort into the relationship. You can show people you value the relationship with them through admiration. Give a compliment. Send a gift. Thank someone for a task they did. Phone one person now to thank them for something specific.

13. Judge Others

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.Carl Jung

We love to judge people. As described in my Communication Secrets of Powerful People book, there are four judgments: criticism, labeling, diagnosing, and praising. We criticize (“You are no good at helping me”), label (“You are a jerk”), diagnose (“Stop being rude because you don’t get what you want”), and praise (“You are the sweetest person for doing that”). Each judgment has its own problems too deep to described in this article.

14. Send Solutions

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.Marcus Aurelius

It is counterintuitive that solutions kill relationships. After all, don’t solutions cure problems? More often than not in relationships, solutions create problems. We feel inferior being controlled. The problem-solver often overlooks the real issue. Solutions are usually manifestations of other dumb relationship mistakes like blame, gossip, trying to change people, and sticking to one’s point of view.

15. Avoid Other’s Concerns

The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.William Hazlitt

The most frequent dumb mistake people make in a relationship is avoiding their partner’s concerns. Look at any bad relationship and each person will tell you their needs are not being met. They are not being listened to, understood, cared for, loved, whatever. Good communication is the key to overcoming these problems and meeting each other’s needs.

There you have 15 mistakes people frequently make in their relationships. Follow this advice then hopefully the next time you ask someone your mistakes in the relationship, no walls break because no walls exist.

(If you are reading this and want to eliminate the communication mistakes that hurt your relationships, read my Communication Secrets of Powerful People book to discover the 12 barriers of communication. All the dumb relationship mistakes can be avoided when you understand the 12 barriers.)

NLP practitioners have a set of rules known as “NLP presuppositions” that form the foundations for the technology. They are beliefs that govern NLP. The presuppositions give you the foundation to understand how you perceive the world and presents you with the opportunity to change your reality. It is not that the presuppositions have been proven, but rather they give us opportunities and freedom to produce for effective living and better communication.

While few people agree on exact NLP presuppositions, the following presuppositions are ones I frequently stumble upon. They appear to be widely accepted. Though the presuppositions are simple, and hence can appear idealistic, think of how they can be applied to your life to change your reality:

1. The map is not the territory

This could be the most important presupposition to understand. “The map is not the territory” means we are separate from reality. The menu is not the food. The road map is not the city. The map of the world we have in our minds is not the real world.

We short-change ourselves of our full potential when we believe our mental map of the world is the territory we deal with everyday. If you take your assumptions of people’s behaviors, your position in the world, how people perceive you, or anything as reality – when it is merely your mental map painted from abstract understandings – you cheat yourself from what you can become.

Instead of interacting with the world, you interact with your map. How you treat people and yourself is dependent on the map you hold. Your map can be more quickly and easily changed than the world it attempts to describe.

2. Every behavior has its appropriate context

You may get angry in sporadic outbursts because it gives you the space you need from people. You may be a passive person because of its benefits such as the praise you receive from parents. You may be scared of snakes because when you were little a snake-bite hospitalized you for two days.

Unfortunately, the behaviors, phobias, and ways to communicate you learned from experience that served you well then limit your potential now. You let the past dictate your future. Instead of using old ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that served their purpose in old contexts, you need to adapt new thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are most beneficial for the present moment and aligned with who you want to become.

3. People already have their needed resources

If you take your assumptions of people, yourself, or anything as reality – when it is merely your mental map painted from abstract understandings – you cheat yourself out of what you can become.

This is the weakest of the presuppositions. It is has been reinterpreted and misused from its original intention given by Milton Erikson when he said patients in therapy have the resources to handle their present problems, not all problems.

Unfortunately, and fortunately, you are human. While you may have the resources to solve personal problems, it does not mean you are capable of solving them right now. You need to know the resources you have and how to use them. You need to learn the skills, go through the experiences, discover a book, or whatever it may be, to awaken these resources within you.

You already have the ability to visualize, feel, hear sounds, communicate, and experience other sensations. These innate human abilities are the framework for personal change. In this article, and anything I share with you, I hope to give you the ability to use your resources better to create the reality you want in your everyday awakening life by showing you how to put your frameworks to more effective use.

4. Experience has a structure

Sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell create an experience for you. These five senses hold the potential to change your identity and reality. Each habit or skill is birthed from the five senses.

Pleasant-filled and pain-ridden experiences each have a structure that use the five senses. Recurrent painful memories typically are large, bright, and up close. Painless memories of previously painful moments are typically seen in black-and-white, a single frame, and at an objective distance like in a photo – or even possibly combined with humorous music. Knowing the experience you want and understanding the structures that gives the experience, helps you establish an empowering pattern.

5. If one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it

This presupposition is modeling, doing what someone else does. It forms the foundation of NLP where individuals observe successful persons then mimic what makes them successful. Someone who wants similar success to a person they admire are to learn and do what makes the person successful, which leads to their own success. Successful individuals for centuries have modeled successful predecessors.

6. Change what is not working

The old saying, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” is so true. This presupposition encourages people to stop doing what is ineffective. If you want something new, start doing something new.

It is sick to see parents use unhealthy ways of disciplining their children. Every action by the child gets a consequence placed around it. To the parent’s disbelief, the child continues to push those consequences. The parent thinks it’s the child’s problem, but the parent is too ignorant and stuck in habitual behavior to realize that what he or she does is not working.

7. A positive intention exists beneath every behavior

You might yell to be heard. Fight to establish justice. Smoke to feel relaxation. Retreat to feel comfortable. Remain in bed to avoid the pain that awaits you. These are all positive intentions.

A positive intention does not mean the behavior is correct, healthy, or the best option. Rather, knowing a positive intention or fundamental human need exists behind behaviors and communication enables you to resourcefully act. When you see positive intentions, you are more able to separate the problem from the person and update your map.

8. You cannot not communicate

I have come across many people who think it is possible to not communicate. The idea that you cannot communicate is one of the top communication myths.

You always communicate and will always continue to communicate. Your nonverbal communication illustrates the thoughts and feelings inside of you. While your thoughts remain hidden, a snicker in your smile, a wink in your eye, or a sigh of relief communicates a message without you needing to verbalize a message.

9. The meaning of communication is the elicited response

You just gave a brilliant presentation to a board of directors about a new project. Or so you thought. They rejected your idea. Why? There could be many reasons, but the underlying concept I’m painting here is the message received differs to the message sent.

A person’s response shows you their meaning of your communication. When you understand the difference between sending communication and receiving communication, you open yourself to intimately understand people. You become aware that people need to verify their understanding of your message, which allows you to adjust future communication with them.

This presupposition encapsulates another NLP presupposition: failure does not exist, only feedback exists. Every piece of feedback you receive is treated as an achievement because it takes you one step closer to what you want. If something does not get you the results you want, it only means you need to correct what you are doing. You eventually create the reality you want by having the flexibility to change.

10. The more choices, the better

The better your map, the more choices you give yourself to create your desired reality.

The fewer options an individual has, the unhealthier the person. Individuals limited in behavior feel victimized by circumstances that “give no options”. You may consider yourself to be absent of any psychosomatic illness, but there will be unhealthy areas in your life where you feel limited and powerless.

People stuck in negotiations are limited by their constraining choice(s) because choice correlates to power, influence, and change. The more choices you have personally, socially, and professionally, the more control you have over your reality. The better your map, the more choices you give yourself to create your desired reality.

11. The mind and body are inseparable

It was previously believed the mind and body are separate entities. Today, researchers, medical experts, and philosophers discover evidence each day about the mind and body influencing one another. Your thoughts and emotions affect your body and vice-a-versa.

Do not underestimate the influence your mind has on your body and the influence your body has on your mind. There is endless amounts of research that proves the strength of the two-way communication between the mind and body. Fields of study now heavily integrate the two entities that once seemed separate.

Body psychotherapy deals with the subconscious mind and body. Your experiences show in parts of your body. One particular example is bottled emotions manifest themselves in pains throughout the body. Emotional pains arise in predictable places over the body. A sore left knee signifies a fear to move forward in life.

Last night, I purged my thoughts and emotions, which remained inside of me for years, to my parents. I woke up the following morning with my worst ever headache. 18 hours later as I write this, I still have a headache – something that has never lasted more than 30 minutes for me. Such a long-lasting headache means I still have stuff to work through.

12. Action develops understanding

Regardless of the number of books you read, people you talk to, or universities you attend, you will not understand what you seek to learn until you “do”. It is only when you “do” can you fully comprehend what you intellectualize.

There you have 12 neuro-linguistic programming presuppositions. These presuppositions are given to you as frameworks. They are rules to change your reality. Live by them and soon you will be in a reality that once seemed a dream.

Sexual arousal has some of the greatest lessons to become self-motivated. Arousal begins by thinking about someone you find attractive. Thoughts create vivid images that lead to a growing intensity of feelings. As your feelings intensify, blood flow increases to certain body parts, breathing heightens, and your skin becomes sensitive. If you continue to immerse yourself in such imagery, eventually you need to act on those feelings.

The enduring desire and process to goal achievement is the same as arousal. Thoughts lead to vivid imagery, which creates intense feelings. Soon enough you must act on those feelings because it becomes too much for you to not chase your goal. You can create an equivalent – if not more intense – desire as physical arousal to achieve what you want by continuing to read below.

All The Keys You Ever Need to Be Self-Motivated

The starting point of all achievement is desire.Napoleon Hill

You can have anything you want – if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.Abraham Lincoln

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emotions play a vital role in goal-attainment. Nelissen, Dijker, and de Vries in their 2007 study titled Emotions and Goals: Assessing Relations Between Values and Emotions emphasize the importance of emotions in achieving goals:

An emotional state is characterized by a motivational tendency to the attainment or maintenance of a particular, emotion-specific end-state. Some [studies] have further proposed that the goal-directed nature of behavioral consequences of emotions is adaptive, thus portraying emotions as solutions to obstacles and opportunities of physical and social survival.

As a basic example of the importance of emotions in goal-attainment, let’s say you are on holidays visiting beautiful landmarks and you drive up a steep mountain. You get to the top and make your way to an eye-grabbing location that borders the mountain’s edge. There is no fences or boundaries placed that control where you can walk. As you approach the mountain’s edge, you see the steep fall and quickly take a few steps back to feel safe.

The emotion in this example is fear. It is a fear of danger to ensure you achieve your goal of safety. If you had zero fear of falling off the cliff, the chances of you falling – and failing your goal of safety – increase because you are closer to danger than if you stepped away from the cliff. Your emotions help you obtain goals.

Behind each goal you have, there exists an emotional void you seek to fulfill. Aristotle said the desire for happiness is the void behind all actions. Happiness is the void every human pursues. Nobody can be happy enough. Knowing you desire happiness, however, is not much help when motivating yourself. There is little benefit in knowing you want to make small talk with anyone to be happy. This is where the pain-pleasure theory of motivation comes in.

Goal achievement is no different to arousal… Soon enough you have to act on those feelings because it becomes too much for you to not chase your goal.

Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within, made famous the pain-pleasure theory of motivation. The theory states that in anything we do we seek to gain pleasure or avoid pain. Pleasure has you in pursuit of something. Pain has you run away from something. “The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you,” says Robbins. “If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.”

By understanding how to use pain and pleasure, instead of having pain and pleasure use you, I believe you give yourself unlimited opportunities to be self-motivated. When you learn to build as much pleasure in something as possible, while building pain in something you do not want, you become self-motivated. Manipulate pain and pleasure to build an intense emotional craving to achieve your desires.

We associate so much pleasure with physical arousal that it strongly drives our behavior to fulfill the emotional void whenever possible. Likewise, you can associate extreme amounts of pleasure with your goal, in becoming confident, for example, that you work towards better confidence under any circumstance. In fearful situations you normally avoid, extreme amounts of pleasure can be associated with fighting fear so it becomes exhilarating to be courageous and act in the face of fear. (This is a core secret of how you can become confident in social situations that I reveal in my conversation skills program Big Talk.)

The Four Emotions to Self-Motivation

Well-known motivational speaker Jim Rohn expands on the pain-pleasure theory. Rohn summarizes the primary emotions and desires that bring about change, like the pain-pleasure theory of motivation, into four categories:

1. Disgust – This is the pain component of the pain-pleasure theory. Disgust can occur when you have had enough. You’re sick of something from occurring, which motivates you to not let it occur again. Your pain leads to change.
2. Decision – There comes times in our lives that make or break us. These are fork roads where we need to choose the path on which to travel. Fork roads often arise from external circumstances that force us to make a decision, such as a partner questioning whether you want to continue in the relationship. Make a decision and move forward in life. A wrong choice can be corrected at a later time.
3. Desire – We’re influenced by outside circumstances, but we must have an internal desire – a purpose that originates from within. You are shown throughout this article how to build a desire and increase pleasure with your desired pursuits.
4. Resolve – This state is defined by the decision to commit to a circumstance no matter what. “When confronted with such iron-will determination,” says Rohn, “I can see Time, Fate and Circumstance calling a hasty conference and deciding, ‘We might as well let him have his dream. He’s said he’s going to get there or die trying.’” Nothing can replace commitment. When you know what it is you clearly want, resolve will make it happen.

Pain, pleasure, disgust, decision, desire, and resolve – these are all powerful states you need to control or they will control you. The question remains: How do you control these mental and emotional states to become self-motivated? How do you build the emotional strength for endurance through the complete journey to attain your goals?

A Simple Exercise to Get You Self-Motivated

I believe an awareness of either pain, pleasure, disgust, decision, desire, and resolve is sometimes enough to create the respective emotion. Knowing about disgust, for example, can help you create disgust to change your behavior and achieve a goal. Even so, there is one technique I am about to share with you that’s amazing for building a burning desire to achieve your goals. With this technique you will remove lack luster efforts and reluctance to pursue what you want. It is one of the best goal-setting techniques you will ever use. The technique is simple, but very powerful.

On the piece of paper you started the exercise from the first article, you will now fill in the second column. Label the second column as “Why I Want It”. In this column, list 20 reasons why you want what you do to trigger, spark, and amplify your emotional desires to hunger for what you want. Come up with 20 or more reasons why you want what you listed in the first column.

Take your time in coming up with the list. 20 reasons or benefits is a lot of work, but the list created from the hours of work in this exercise will be your psychological fuel for achieving your communication and personal development goals in the weeks, months, and years to come. For me, it is my source of inspiration. If there is one method that I frequently depend upon for stimulating a hot passion so that I can pursue my goals with vigor, it is this technique. No other technique injects so much enthusiasm into me.

If you have troubles coming up with good reasons for your goals, expand on ideas and ask other people for ideas. You can also try to think in themes like: feelings you will experience, how others will see you, physical outcomes, reducing pain, and increasing resolve.

Let’s say your goal is to avoid destructively erupting in anger at family members during family conflict. Here are 10 starter points you could use in the “Why I Want It” column:

1. I want to be a good role model for my children.
2. I want my family to feel safe.
3. I want to ensure we have open communication and that no one is scared of talking about certain issues because of my anger. (Prevent other people being demotivated to talk to me because of the pain they will experience.)
4. I am sick of fighting with my family.
5. I want my family to love me as much as possible.
6. I want my family to be relaxed and calm when talking to me; instead of being provoked by my anger.
7. I hate feeling the shame when people in public see my anger.
8. I want to increase intimacy with my partner.
9. I want other parents to look up to me with how I manage my emotions towards my children.
10. I want my children to think back 10 years from now and be grateful about my emotional management towards their difficult behaviors.

The above is a great example of a list of reasons to achieve the goal of anger management. Once you have listed at least 20 reasons, I guarantee you’ll be filled with fiery emotions to help you achieve what you want. I encourage you to look at your list on a daily basis because of its emotional power in hooking you to achieve your communication and personal development goals. Look at the list frequently and you’ll remain focused and persistent with your goals.

The exercise works because you create a list that summarizes the sale points to make you “buy into” pursuing your goals. It taps into the four emotions of self-motivation. The list builds your pleasure and intensifies pain to make you persist until your goals arrive. The exercise builds the amount of pleasure you get by changing and builds the amount of pain you get by not changing.

I believe this one technique by itself is enough to create a burning desire.

8 Bonus Tips to Be Self-Motivated

I really want you to achieve your goals. I know what it is like to have a down-day where you don’t feel motivated. Don’t beat yourself up over down-days thinking you will never achieve what you want. Down-days are natural. Here are some quick-fire pieces of advice to help you stimulate an emotional craving for your goals:

1. Dress for Success – How often do you see yourself in a mirror or reflection, or look down at what you’re wearing that day? Let’s say 5 times a day. 5 times a day is 1825 times a year. That’s a lot of subtle mental programming. The power of clothing on your mood is amazing. Wear clothing that makes you feel confident and other areas of your life will improve accordingly.
2. Be Aggressive – An important goal should stimulate aggression because you badly want it. If you want to be a public speaker, you must be assertive at the time allocated to improve your public speaking. Should something interfere with your practice, you stamped down on what happened to keep on track. Do not create another problem with your aggression. Channel your aggression towards a productive goal – what it is intended for – and watch the steam condense into hard results.
3. Relive Past Success – Think to past successes and relive the experiences in your mind. Past successes are not only stored in your mind, but at the cellular level in your body. Linked to the successes are winning feelings you can tap into for success. On the contrary, think of past failures and you stimulate feelings of failure. The technique builds the pleasure of getting what you want. For a more in-depth teaching of this method and other mental reprogramming techniques, I highly recommend Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s The New Psycho-cybernetics.
4. Here and Now – Focus on what you can do in the present to allow your creative imagination the potential to develop solutions. When you are obsessed with the past and the future, anxiety rids you of your ability to achieve results in the present moment.
5. Details – Defining what you want pulls you in the right direction with specific details. Visualize, feel, smell, taste, and hear the intrinsic details of your desired state to put yourself in that winning state. Just as it is with the process of arousal, you can become aroused by experiencing the details of your goals. This technique is similar to reliving your past successes except you are free from the past to create what you want.
6. Feed Your Mind – You’ll be surprised at how uplifted you get by reading about other people’s passions and successes. Consume at least 15-minutes a day of motivational material from the likes of Zig Ziglar, Jack Canfield, and Anthony Robbins. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last,” said Ziglar. “Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
7. Create an Ultimatum – Use the desire of resolve that Rohn explains to create change in your life. Make an absolute condition that if something doesn’t happen, so-and-so consequences will occur. Tell others about this to hold yourself accountable. Sun Tzu in the Art of War knew soldiers fought their hardest when it was a matter of life or death. Soldiers with an escape route had an option to winning or dying so they did not fight their hardest. Alternatives and exit strategies make it okay to fail. Do everything in your power to create an ultimatum such that you must succeed or suffer severe consequences. This technique increases the pain of not changing.
8. Teamwork – Team up with someone who wants a similar goal as you. This technique is frequently used in exercising where trainers encourage newcomers to workout with a friend. When you make your goals known to others – and when they have the same goals – the two of you work towards a common cause. You become more accountable for your actions because you don’t want to let the other person down. It’s vital the person is supportive or they could demotivate you from setting and achieving your goal.

…if you must rely on techniques to provide you with motivation, question whether you want the goal.

A word of warning though, if you must rely on these techniques to provide motivation, question whether you want the goal. You can stimulate passion using the various techniques provided above, but your goal must be what you want (what you defined in the first stage of the article). An intense desire to pursue your goal will come naturally if it is what you truly want.

You pursue goals with a passion by learning how to create a desire for what you clearly define. Once you are passionate and persistent towards a goal, zero events can stop you from achieving it. Outside circumstances may delay achievement, but passion with action guarantees your desires ultimately manifest into the results you want.

Be careful with what you wish for because you can get it by following the advice shared in this article. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how to stimulate a passion to get it. This is the mysterious state of success philosophers have described for centuries. (If you are yet to do the exercise, you are only cheating yourself. Go back to do it now.)

How to Make Nothing Stop You – Ever

For centuries, mankind has explored this mysterious emotional state that gets him want he wants. This power is not the law of attraction. It is a power within you. The power is your power. It is self-motivation. You control if your self-motivated. Self-motivation gives you anything you damn well want if you want it bad enough.

Think of something you once wanted so badly that nothing stopped you from getting it. This is the passionate desire you need to achieve what you want. Contrast this passion to something you thought “would be nice”. Maybe you wanted to learn the guitar because you thought it would be a nice skill. Maybe you wanted to learn a new language to explore cultures. Maybe you wanted to go scuba diving for an adventure. Whatever nice thing you wanted, you did not achieve it because your hunger for it was deficient.

When trying to motivate yourself to learn a new language, perhaps you purchased some books and CDs, but never progressed further because you lacked the emotional desire (it happened to me when I tried to learn Spanish). You can take steps forward to achieve what you want, but you fall short without the self-motivation required to carry you through your full journey.

To achieve your communication and personal development desires, goals, and dreams, I believe two characteristics need emphasis. Both deal with passion and having a fire-in-the-belly attitude. Firstly, you need to define exactly what you want. The second characteristic is revealed in the second part of this article.

How to Figure Out What You Want

You will suddenly realize that the reason you never changed before was because you didn’t want to.Robert H. Schuller

When you know what you want, and want it bad enough, you will find a way to get it.Jim Rohn

Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.Erich Fromm

The first step to achieve what you want in your personal development journey is to know exactly what you want. You probably already think you know what you want, but I am pretty confident you do not truthfully know. What you think you want could be someone else’s wants; a facade to get another want; a vague desire which creates a slow, unenergized pursuit.

You can take steps forward to achieve what you want, but you fall short without the self-motivation required to carry you through your full journey.

When you do not define what you want with pure precision, you wonder through life’s jungle waiting for signs that validate your success. You lack proof of forward movement because you don’t know what you’re moving towards. Eventually, you get devoured by obstacles that demotivate you from trying to reach your mysterious destination.

Let’s say you want to be good at making small talk with anyone because you would love to have the skill of being able to approach someone and start a conversation. Wanting to make small talk with anyone, however, is not what you really want. What you really want is a host of outcomes small talk fulfills. What I mean by this is that you don’t want the skill of being able to talk to anyone for the sake of being able to talk to anyone – your desire to talk with anyone has hidden motives. Successfully being able to approach someone and start a conversation fulfills that want.

One reason you could want to make small talk with anyone is to control your fears when you meet new people. Another reason is to network more effectively so you can grow your business. Another is to feel secure around people. All these are emotional motives that drive your desire to make small talk. When you define your wants in the correct light, you become self-motivated to pursue that goal because it holds importance to you.

Do you want to raise happy children? Do you want what is best for your family? If you want what is best for your family, you’re probably lying to yourself. I’m not saying you don’t want what is best for your family; what I’m saying is the underlying motives behind “I want what’s best for my family” deals with your desires.

Perhaps seeing your family safe and secure makes you feel happy and comforted. Knowing your children are happy validates your parenting skills. When other parents see your successful children, you feel proud. Maybe you want successful children to make up for the failures in your life or you do not want to be frowned upon and humiliated by other parents. These outcomes are probably what you really want when desiring the best for your family.

Only when you accurately define what you want can you get what you want. You will aim with precision when focusing on a target clear to you.

Exercise to See What You Want

I want you to do an exercise now. This exercise forms the framework for this article so you will greatly benefit from doing it. The exercise is a mental and emotional catapult successful people use to define what they want, become self-motivated, and achieve their goals.

Get out a paper and pen, and draw two columns. Make the second column twice the size of the first. This exercise is large and will take several hours. You may want to do it in two sittings, but the process should be energizing so you might be able to get it done in a one sitting.

Success is not what you know or who you know; it is how you think.

In the first column on the left, label it “What I Want”. Obviously, under this you will write down what you want. Some people would write down goals as the heading for this column, but I don’t like using the word “goals” in combination with words that signify a deep desire because you don’t need to set goals when you want something bad enough. Your desires automatically become something you want without you sitting down and writing them as goals.

To help you determine what you want, remove all constraints around your desires. Forget about what you know or have. Stop letting the past limit your future. Remove financial, intellectual, and relationship constraints. Success is not what you know or who you know; it is how you think. You can overcome any constraint if you know how to think in an empowering manner.

It is absolutely necessary you do not reason to yourself what you want. The analytical part of your mind can hurt the emotional part. The most common form of reasoning contains “buts”. For example, “I want to work as a public speaker. But I am not good at speaking. But I don’t know how to get started. But I won’t be able to make money.” All these stupid constraints trick you into avoiding your true desires.

Rather than ask yourself, ‘What are my goals?’ ask yourself, ‘What would excite me and why?’

When we reason with “buts”, we rarely have tried to find a solution. I’ve heard people who want to become public speakers say they are not good at public speaking, yet they have not looked into how they can speak better in public. These people reason they don’t know how to get started in public speaking, but they never once looked into how they can get started. We have limiting thoughts from limiting knowledge. It is crazy how we remove ourselves from our desires through this silly (ir)rationalizing process.

In determining your ultimate career, ask yourself what you would do if money was not a consideration. Ask yourself what you would do if you had the necessary training. Ask yourself what you would do if you knew the right people. Remove all constraints and find what greatly turns you on.

Another thought to help you accurately define what you want is to not fall in the illusion of wanting what other people want. Society has norms and expectations that can mold your desires. I understand that everyone will not want to be married. Think deeply about what your goals really mean to you. Passion is more about caring than finding the right thing. You will be surprised at the many things you can be passionate about once you start caring.

The Secret to Get What You Want

As a verification step to knowing what you want, you can test to see if this is truly what you want by running a mental theater of what it will look, feel, smell, hear, and taste like when you achieve the goal. Rather than ask yourself, “What are my goals?” ask yourself, “What would excite me and why?” See what excites you by running through intense visualizations.

The experiences that excite you (I am talking about a desire of 100 on a scale from 1 to 100 where 100 is the most intense) are what you want. They are your goal. When you want them, you will get them.

If you still struggle to determine your desires, remember to remove all constraints. You can stop the exercise for a few hours to allow your subconscious to work and define what you want. Additionally, I recommend you get Jack Zufelt’s program How To Use The Conquering Force Within You to learn more about defining what you truly want. (I earn nothing from referring you to Jack’s program. I have two copies of it and encourage you to get your copy.)

Passion is more about caring than finding the right thing.

Once you define what you want, write these desires down on the piece of paper under the heading “What I Want”. In the same column (this is optional), you can go one step further by using the SMART method. Rephrase your want in a specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and tangible form. Write less than five goals for now unless you have the time and desire to do more.

Finished? Well done. You have defined what you want. That completes the first part of the exercise. Few people will ever do what you just did, which sets you apart from the masses.

The next step after defining what you want is to stimulate an intense hunger to get your desire. Why do you need this when you already want your desire? You will have your **** days. You will want to stay in bed. If you did not hunger, you would hardly eat. Consume the advice in part two here and you will devour your passions.

Let’s say the problem is being overweight. You have 20 pounds you want to drop. The extra weight makes you feel bad and not look your best. This motivates you to lose weight. You build the willpower and determination to drop a few pounds to feel good again and improve your looks.

Through determination to solve your weight problem, two weeks later you jump on the scales to discover you are nine pounds lighter. You are ecstatic! The mental tension about your weight eases. You feel more comfortable with your body. Your willpower drained a lot from you so you return to old habits.

One month passes since your weight loss accomplishment. The nine pounds finds itself back on your stomach. It feels too difficult to maintain a strict diet and exercise regime. You call yourself “weak” and “pathetic” and feel guilty about your inability to change. You feel helpless in forever creating a permanent solution to your weight loss problem.

Dynamics in the weight loss scenario are everywhere in your life. Common examples include: managing anger, but we still blow up; quitting smoking, but we still smoke; getting a new job, but we remain in the old one; starting a new healthy relationship, but we remain in a destructive relationship; communicating more effectively, but we don’t communicate effectively and remain true to our ourselves. Why is this?

The Problem: The Tension-Resolution Model

Robert Fritz in his book The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life says we fail to change ourselves when we problem solve. That’s right! Problem solving is responsible for, well, not solving the problem.

Problem solvers feel victimized for not receiving what they want. They feel miserable and depressed, blaming circumstances for their reality. Circumstances clinch them by the throat to direct what they do.

Fritz says we fail to change when we try to solve our problems because mental and emotional oscillation occurs between tension and resolution. One moment the pain creates tension. You could be sick of loneliness and really want a hot chick who has a great personality. The tension pushes you to improve your dating skills and better your life to attract such a girl. You may get a phone number or even a girlfriend. The tension dissipates – as does your efforts to improve your life. Eventually, you stop doing what worked to attract her. The attraction disappears and you fight with each other more, which causes the two of you to break up.

We try to make something go away rather than create what we want.

The tension-resolution model describes tension as the problem. As the tension builds, you feel compelled to solve the problem. The intensity of the problem lessens as does the tension when you problem solve. You have less motivation to keep the problem at bay. The end result: the unwanted behavior returns!

Old habits reenter our lives because we problem solve instead of changing the underlying structure. Fritz says to solve a problem means to remove something – the problem. We try to remove anger, smoking, swearing, complaining, blaming, loneliness, and laziness. Weight is regained because you did not want the 20 pounds. You lost your girlfriend because you feared loneliness. You try make something go away rather than create what you want. Your reactive nature to problems keeps you stuck in trouble. Problem solving can only make something go away – and it does a poor job at that.

Problem Solving Hurts Your Relationships

Problem solving does not create what you want in relationship communication and persuasion. We try to change people by expressing our frustration or “having a talk” to build tension. They temporarily change to reduce the tension but quickly revert to old patterns. Sending people solutions makes them resist what you try to create!

One third of my Communication Secrets of Powerful People program is about effectively creating solutions in others. We desperately try to change people by criticizing, ordering, threatening, questioning, or advising, but this creates a tension-resolution dynamic to prevent change. You can pain someone into changing, but if they don’t have the underlying structure to change, they will not change. (If you are interested in being a charismatic individual that changes people’s minds, I encourage you to get the program by clicking here.)

The Path of Least Resistance

If you have visited Boston, the crazy road structure probably befuddled you. It appears Boston had no planning in their road infrastructure. Rumors say that Boston’s road structure is based on seventeenth-century cow paths. When cows walked the land, they walked paths that provided the least resistance. Step-by-step the cows choose what was easiest to them.

Dirt paths developed overtime, reaffirming these paths to be the easiest direction of travel. When humans populated the lands and began constructing roads, they followed the cows. Settlers paved the dirt roads because it was easiest to work with paths created by cows. The problem though is the cows followed their path of least resistance rather than create paths optimal for human travel. Boston’s roads are now meandering structures confusing to its travelers.

William Fowler, director of the Massachusetts Historical Society, says Boston’s road paths were not founded on cow paths. The example, nonetheless, serves its purpose to explain human behavior: energy flows along the path of least resistance.

In physics, objects travel through a system following the path of least resistance. Like water in the Amazon river, our energy flows along the easiest path. Like wind blowing through the Grand Canyon, our energy flows along the easiest path. Like pedestrians walking along a busy New York street, our energy flows along the easiest path.

Energy flows along the path of least resistance.

Laziness is human nature. Our innate desire pushes for easier ways to do activities. Does this mean we secretly desire to sloth in front of the television while eating a bag of Doritos and sipping our favorite beer? Of course not. What it means is we take the easiest path to get where we want to go. Our energy flows along the path that provides minimal resistance. Fritz says, “You got to where you are in your life right now by moving along the path of least resistance.”

Why Self-Help and the Law of Attraction Suck

We fight the path of least resistance by using techniques like willpower, affirmations, and positive-thinking. We use these self-help techniques to motivate change, but attempts to problem-solve fail to create a solution.

The problem with traditional self-help does not stop there. The messages sent through affirmations, willpower, and positive-thinking create the opposite effect to your desired outcome! The techniques create a paradoxical effect of no change. The subtle messages communicated from traditional self-help skills is that “I lie to myself because I find it difficult to change”.

You can see this by analyzing intention manifestation, the law of attraction, metaphysics, and similar principles that publicly took off when The Secret hit Oprah. According to these areas of study, if you continually reaffirm what you want and stay true to the universe, the universe manifests your dreams.

The structure of new age fields of thought ironically cause people to not change. If you truly believe something, you do not reaffirm it to yourself. You do not rise in the morning to spend 15-minutes chanting affirmations that the universe will create want you want if you believe you’ll get it. The unconscious messages sent through willpower and positive-thinking say you will not change or find it difficult to change because you need the techniques to manipulate your subconscious mind.

Dr. Maxwell Maltz in The New Psycho-cybernetics emphasizes that willpower does not create change. Techniques that consume willpower stem from internal friction burning limited energy on fruitless efforts. Energy that could get your goals is wasted. You need to channel valuable willpower and determination into choices and decisions that get your desired future.

How to Create a Permanent Solution – The Secret to Lasting Change

A radical shift in choice towards fulfilling what you want leads to permanent change. In terms of managing anger, for example, if you make the fundamental choice that governs your behavior to be a calm person by safely expressing anger, you do not fight your anger by trying to resolve it; rather, you change the structure of your anger to create a new behavior that brings what you want. Situations that test your anger lead you to create results and processes aligned with your fundamental choice and desired outcome.

People subject themselves to their circumstances by living in a respond-react environment. Fritz put it nicely when he said problem solving “subjects you to the whims of circumstances” (seen in situations where people expect things to be a certain way in order to make them happy). In problem solving, you wander (and wonder) through life’s maze where your environment is the walls. Your environment dictates where you go.

Permanent change in human behavior does not arise from problem solving where you rest at the helm of life’s circumstances. Lasting change comes from a new underlying structure of your being that guides life. Instead of fighting change, you become the change because it is your new path of least resistance. It becomes easier for you to do what you want and move towards your goals than doing otherwise.

Lasting change comes from a new underlying structure of your being that guides life.

Until a fundamental choice of good health is made, one cannot be truly healthy. Individuals in psychotherapy who fail to make an authentic fundamental choice of good health remain the way they are. They stick to old patterns of unhealthy behavior. Some are even addicted to their challenges – without their problems, their identity is void. They may say they want to change, but deep down they want their challenges because they fulfill a need. They fail to choose an empowering vision or try to solve a problem instead of changing the underlying structure of their life.

Fritz emphasizes that the real solution to change is knowing your present reality and possessing a clear vision of what you want. This means knowing exactly where you are and where you want to go without delusion. Once you define what you want and understand your present reality, you feel freedom. You become at ease with yourself. A new structure directs your energy to effortlessly create what you want.

The greatest problem people have when defining what they want is they define what they do not want. “I don’t want to be lonely”, “I don’t want to blow up at my kids”, “I don’t want to lose my temper”, “I don’t want to be fat”, and “I don’t want to be unhealthy”. Knowing you do not want to travel to New York for a holiday does not help you go on holidays. How are you suppose to arrive at your destination if it is unknown?

An awareness of what you want allows your creative mind to compose processes that manifest your desired solution.

Artists are excellent models to follow because they create a solution and know the end result. An artist stares at a blank canvas ready to start a new project. If he paints without a vision of the end result, he will not know when the painting is complete. He will feel unfilled and demotivated as the painting continues because he responds and reacts to the present moment of painting. If he knows what he wants, he will paint to achieve his vision. He will create a painting that fulfills his desires and know when the painting is complete. He does not seek external validation for his painting because the satisfaction is internal knowing the painting matches his vision.

Artists are not all spontaneous. Creativity is not always analogous with spontaneity. The best way to create comes through knowing what you want. An awareness of what you want allows your creative mind to compose processes that manifest your desired solution.

Putting It All Together

Here is an example of something I struggled with that touches on everything discussed. Though I learned communication skills for years and used bits here and there, I never fully changed my behavior. I tried so desperately to communicate well by using willpower, positive-thinking, and determination, yet I reverted to old habits. My energy flowed along the path of least resistance of poor communication. It was harder for me to effectively communicate than poorly communicate.

Sometimes I would solve the problem, but I was merely making something go away; I was not creating what I wanted. What I wanted was being ignored in favor of removing what I did not want. Other times, the “change” was temporary. I tried to solve my problem of poor communication instead of changing my underlying structure that would create permanent change.

As I discuss in my communication secrets program, I was resisting what I did not want, which created a persistent problem. There was the tension-resolution dynamic. Sometimes I changed. This decreased the intensity of the problem, but then so did the tension and my effort to communicate well. My willpower was burned so I let problems be – after all, interpersonal problems began to resolve. Tension would eventually increase again as the cycle started over.

I solved this by analyzing my current reality, where I was in my communication, and its affects on me. Next, I developed a crystal clear vision of what I wanted then made the choice to have it. When I made the fundamental choice to be true to myself, to communicate effectively (not “to avoid bad communication”), permanent change took place. My identity and life orientation changed to be one who uses effective communication.

Today I do not exert willpower to communicate effectively – though I need to remember my vision and remind myself what I want. I effectively communicate with minimal effort. My new structure has changed my life orientation.

You and I always gravitate to the processes aligned with our fundamental choices. You still need to learn the “how” of what you want, but that comes naturally once you follow this decision path.

Analyze your current reality. Next, think of what you exactly want. Have a pure vision of your desired reality. Write it down on several sheets of paper. You can make what you want clear by writing it in detail on several pages (I have a 10-page document that describes my perfect day). Lastly, make the fundamental choice to get what you want – and mean it. These are the foundations of lasting change.

When you follow this plan to change your structure, you create permanent change. People, information, and other processes seem to magically drop into place. It becomes easy for you to create what you want. Your energy flows along this new path of least resistance.

You are the creative force in your life. It’s time to live how you want.

Why do you do what you do and how can you change it? It’s more complex than habits. There are patterns that take you to where you want to go or avoid what you want to dodge. Author Robert Fritz, developer of the Technologies for Creating, has developed a field of study called “Macrostructural Patterns” explained in his book that demystifies habitual behavior to help you create what you want in life.

Fritz teaches that human behavior, like physics, flows along the path of least resistance. Just as water flows down the easiest path, so does human energy. Though the path of least resistance can carry you in unruly directions – as it so often does – it can empower you to effortlessly flow towards your goals.

We fail to change according to Fritz because we fight habits with willpower, positive-thinking, affirmations, and other similar self-help techniques. We try to remove what we do not want instead of creating what we do want. We get stuck in problem solving instead of creation.

Many golden gems in the book will change how you approach problem solving in general. When you change the structure of your behavior by making primary and fundamental choices to behave in a way that is consistent with your vision – while acknowledging your present reality – you create lasting change.

…human behavior, like physics, flows along the path of least resistance.

The book is not about creativity, painting, and similar artistic works; it is about harnessing your innate human potential to create the life you want. You were born to create. From feeling great to eliminating destructive health patterns, The Path of Least Resistance provides you with simple methods to create your desired life.

Though Fritz’s book is simple and the concepts are few, when you read the book I advise you to let the italicized sentences sink in your mind as you pause to think about what is written. Many “higher-level concepts” shared leave you to ponder their application in your life. These concepts are by no means New Age or based on pop psychology, but based on the “tradition of the arts and sciences”.

Once you make a fundamental choice aligned with your vision, while knowing your present reality, you create what you want with less effort. Your new path of least resistance leads you to your desired destination so you cannot but get the future you envision. People, processes, and circumstances align themselves once you decide to become the creative force in your life.

If you feel circumstances mold your life; if you have tried to change yourself, but reverted to your old way of behaving; if you have ever wanted to create a life you want The Path of Least Resistance is for you. You can grab your copy of the book now from Amazon by clicking here.