Many people attend motivational talks and seminars to get motivated. All kinds of people attend my motivational events and I always ask them, by a show of hands, "How many of you think I can motivate you today?"

All the hands go up in the air.

Then I tell the participants that they are in the wrong room, because I learned a long time ago that I cannot motivate anybody.

Let's understand that only I can motivate myself and only you can motivate yourself.

As a motivational trainer, all I can do is provide you with the ideas, concepts, and tools you will need, but the final decision of what you do with these things is up to whom?

You! Only you can motivate yourself! Would you agree?

If you do not agree, it is because you are focused on external motivation, which is only a temporary solution. Personally, I do not want to waste my time on temporary solutions.

The same holds true for motivating your team. You cannot motivate them, but you can inspire them and create an environment in which they motivate themselves.

Success is defined as the progressive realization of a worthy goal or idea. It is desire and the envisaging of success that creates self-motivation. When you can see, feel, and hear the outcome of your desire, you create the belief that it will happen. These expectations motivate you toward those images of success.

Motivation is a desire held in the expectation that it will be accomplished. It all starts with desire—having a burning passion for something. Without desire, you cannot be motivated.

Once the desire has set in, you must see, hear, and feel your dream—and be able to visualize it in detail as if it already exists. This is the only true form of motivation because it comes from inside you. This is known as internal or permanent motivation.

Motivation is a motive for action. We are motivated towards images of success, which we expect to provide us with pleasure and gain. At the same time, we are motivated to avoid failure, pain, and loss.

If we keep images of success, pleasure, and gain in our mind, we will be motivated towards them. However, if we keep images of failure, pain, and loss foremost in our mind, we will be motivated merely to stay away from them, or just not be motivated at all.

Unfortunately, so many people rely on external motivators, for example, lottery tickets and incentives. These types of external motivators have a problem—their effect doesn't last. As soon as you acquire an incentive, you'll want a bigger and better one. This is the carrot and stick approach.

As soon as you face up to a threat, the threat will no longer stop you. The only true form of motivation comes from you, for you. This is internal motivation—the only everlasting motivation.

Motivation is the ability to see, in the present, a projection of the future that you want. To do that, you will have to answer the questions in the following exercises.