5 Tips for Increasing motivation.

Motivation or lack of can be the single most deterrent to following and achieving a person's goals and dreams. Here are five tips for adding motivation to your well to keep your eyes on the prize.

Setting Deadlines – By using deadlines you have a concrete date to focus on. Knowing that the clock is ticking can help you to get started working toward your goals everyday. This also gives you a guideline to set a schedule that can hold you accountable. Very effective for those that are unorganized.

Regrets – Think about your life five years or more into the future, and how you will feel if you have not completed that goal. Will you have regrets? Will you hate yourself? Will your life still be the same as it is presently?

Incentives – Determine what are some things that you enjoy in life. Not necessarily the day to day pleasures but things that you may only get once in awhile, a vacation, shopping spree, a day to the spa. Promise yourself that if you reach a specific milestone in the attainment of your goal you will treat yourself to that ------!

Set short term goals – How do you eat an elephant? It doesn't matter as long as you take one bite at a time. Our goals are usually the size of an elephant and requires that you cut it into small pieces. You can use this to increase your motivation by the completion of the smaller goals. Each time you complete a smaller goal you can see the progress you've made and this will in turn motivate you to keep going.

Find a coach - Finding a person that you can trust and hold you accountable is a great way to stay motivated. When the chips are down and your feeling lazy a coach can push you to reach your full potential.

Find the way to make it possible.

My son expressed his goal to play professional hockey the other day. As cool as I thought it was I couldn't sleep the following night. I was thinking about the reality of it. We live in Denver and he's nine years old and just started ice skating a month ago. The chances of him even playing semi-pro at this rate is, almost impossible. I lie awake thinking and wondering how I could help him go after his dream even if impossible. Then I started focusing on the possible instead of the impossible. I asked myself what is the main skill required in hockey. Skating. He has rollerblades so he can skate everyday (barring weather). So I got out of bed and started a plan.

1. We have to improve his skating. So I decided to schedule him to skate 40 minutes everyday. 20 minutes in the morning before school and 20-40 minutes after school. This will increase his skating skill level as well as see if he really wants to work for it.

2. We have to improve his hockey skills. I felt that skating was more important now but he can watch games and videos now to see the proper way to do things so when he can practice hockey skills he will have a visual reference.

3. Lay down the rules and expectations. I'm an avid hockey fan and would love nothing more than to see my son play pro hockey. However, I let him know the rules. He is in charge no matter what. When it comes to playing hockey he could never let me down and that I was a friend and not daddy. I wanted him to remember to have fun and not do it to impress me.

All of this happened last Sunday. So this week we hit the park every morning at 7:00 am for 20 minutes. After five days I see dramatic improvement and the hard work and dedication he has gained during it. He has taken my instruction, and the videos and really improved.

Seeing him work hard this week before and after school has really inspired me. The point I'm trying to make is that many times we want to achieve something that could be impossible. Our goal and duty to ourselves is to first determine how to make it possible, and then find a support system to help us make it happen and go after it with all we have.

Only time will tell if he makes it to the pros. Regardless this week has taught him that whatever he wants in life can be achieved by setting a goal and going for it.

Slow progress is not failure!

Don't mistake slow progress for failure!

I started this blog with the purpose of inspiring and motivating action while helping people to live life to the fullest each and every moment we are given the opportunity. Born from a twice failed magazine by the same name, I will write Grow To Be with the intention of providing a voice and source of inspiration from a point of view of understanding the difficulty in following ones dreams on a daily basis. Know that I to will be on the same beautiful struggle to reaching my potential minute by minute, hour by hour that you face daily.

After failing to reach my goal of starting a magazine twice I will accomplish what I set out to do with this blog. My goal was, and after failure, remains simple to inspire. I believe that we all were put here for a purpose and once we determine what our destiny is we have to "Grow to be" that person. The journey will be filled with many success and failures but the key is to never stop. With this blog I will feature interviews, stories, quotes, feature guest writers Monday through Friday. I want to showcase information of success as well as failure and how we use both to reach our potential to grow and be.

I believe that my purpose for being here is to use my talents of writing, art and speaking to motivate. With Grow To Be I will provide a daily spark that can be used anyway necessary to assist you with continuing your daily routine, getting started, or the support of someone else who works daily to achieve life's purpose.

With that said please enjoy the blog and your feedback and ideas are appreciated!