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So in Motivation Tip #1, I talked about determining your innate motivational strategy when it comes to weight loss.  Specifically, I helped you determine if you are more naturally motivated Towards Pleasure or  Away From Pain.

So now I want to focus on how you effectively apply this valuable little nugget of information.

In the simplest of terms, your motivational strategy tells you how you have to think about your weight loss goals in order to consistently take action.

Let me repeat that in a slightly different way: in order to consistently take positive, forward-moving action to lose weight, you need to think about it in the right language and with the right pictures in your mind.

What To Do If You’re More Motivated Towards Pleasure

If you’re Motivated Towards Pleasure, then really spend some time thinking about what you want in rich and colorful detail. Find pictures (of yourself or from a magazine) that inspire you and make a vision board (this can be as simple as a few pictures in your journal or a complex mural on your bedroom wall- whatever works best for you).

What To Do If You’re Motivated Away From Pain

What I have found is that most people who are struggling with their weight are more motivated away from pain when it comes to their health.

(Side note: I’m not going into this much here, but it is possible to be have a different strategy in different areas of your life; for example ‘away from’ with your weight and ‘towards’ with your career.  Obviously here we’re just focusing on the weight issue.)

As a result, you need a slightly more sophisticated motivational strategy because somebody trying to inspire you by how great you will feel when you lose 30 pounds is going to fall on deaf ears.

However, thinking about how you’re going to feel 5 years from now if you don’t make a change is likely to make your ears perk up.

They key is to go in your mind to the place where the consequences lie  so you don’t have to go there in reality.

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Warning: I’m going to begin this post by being presumptuous and saying that above all else:

We all want happiness in life.

It really doesn’t matter where you come from…

It really doesn’t matter  how much money you have…

It really doesn’t matter what neighborhood you live in…

What you ultimately want in life is happiness.

You want to feel good about yourself, the people around you and you want to feel positive and optimistic about what life has to offer.

If you’re reading this, then it’s also likely that at some level you believe that losing weight will help you get closer to your happiness.

Happiness can be a bit of a tricky topic, though, for 2 reasons:

1.  It’s such an individual thing, and means something different to everybody.

2. Because very often the things that we think will bring up happiness in reality will not.  They might even bring us greater frustration and unhappiness.

When it comes to understanding and mastering the connection between weight loss and happiness, I have found that there are three different things you need to look at that can really make the difference.

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