Part of the guide: Personal Brand
Sometimes when you’re building your business, you lose motivation.
Maybe you don’t feel like working.
You’re overwhelmed by the sheer size of the journey ahead…
…and sometimes you run into walls, the walls of frustration and discouragement.
Now before you pay close attention and read the entire post, there’s something you’ve got to realize NOW:
Frustration and discouragement aren’t always a bad thing.
Becoming an influential leader or a great entrepreneur means learning how to manage frustration and using it to empower yourself. To empower yourself to take action every day towards your goals.
You cannot be motivated to do MORE without being a little frustrated with your current reality.
The answer to dealing with frustration and discouragement is to be completely motivated.
To have a big enough WHY.
If you have a big enough why, you’ll always find a how & what. In times of frustration; the solution is always to focus on the dream & vision ahead.
Most of the time, people don’t really need to know what to do. They say they do and they’ll always complain about it.
Maybe they’ll whine about not having enough ‘how to‘ information…
When the reality is they already know EXACTLY what to do, they simply need to gain more leverage – WHY. Creating leverage is about creating goals and maintaining your hunger. Maintaining and taking care of your motivation.
Motivation isn’t static folks, it’s ever-changing and needs to be carefully balanced.
If you don’t pay close attention to the three levels of motivation; you can quickly find yourself hitting the wall of discouragement or the arm of comfort. Maybe just frustration and anger; or that state where you constantly blame others.
Really what you need to do is work on why you’re doing this. Work on your motivation, work on your reason for success in what you’re doing.
Now there are three fundamental levels of motivation, each one more important than the last.
Before you can take massive action that lasts more than a couple of days; you need to make a list for each level. You need to maintain each level carefully & closely.
Do this and you’ll quickly find yourself making new decisions, taking action towards your dreams and getting stuff done (Quick & Easy).
1. Level One: Material Success
The first level is material success. This is the most basic, common level of motivation people use to stay hungry wanting more and taking action in their business and life.
People always want more stuff, or they think they do. Whether you need more material stuff or not, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is you want something enough to take massive action to get it.
Material success is anything physical that motivates us to take action towards our goals. It can be anything that stimulates our senses that’s a direct result of financial gain.
Fast cars, a nice home, vacations…
…maybe a yacht. Whatever your thing is, write it down. Now I want you to realize; you can have whatever you want. There’s no limitation because money grows on trees.
Material possessions are important, whether you realize it or not. For our own sense of accomplishment, sensory stimulation or even the core reason of motivation.
There’s not much you can do without money; which is why it’s such a POWERFUL motivator in most people. Maybe it’s fast cars and luxury homes for you, or the idea of early retirement or taking an extra vacation each year.
Perhaps there’s a product you want to buy, an event you want to attend, or a place you want to visit. Physical things are mentally stimulating, and there’s an ever-growing list of things to experience or own.
Write down what you want. From the things you want to own, the places you want to travel and experiences you want to have.
2. Level Two: Respect
The next level of motivation is respect.
Respect is an extremely powerful motivator. Being respected by those you respect. Gaining recognition and being accepted, all can be classed under respect.
Who’s respect do you want?
What’s important to note is this can sometimes be a useless goal. Some people’s respect you’ll never gain. Perhaps your parents don’t approve of what you’re doing.
Maybe they don’t believe you’ll ever succeed.
You were never meant to do this alone
Reading this changes nothing. Doing it with people who show up changes everything. That is the whole difference between the people who transform and the people who keep starting over.
Start free →Respect from people who don’t understand you or what you do is a useless pursuit. Something that will only serve to push you towards the walls of discouragement and frustration. Respect from people you know, like, and trust, people in your field – that’s a powerful motivator.
Maybe you want to be recognized as a leader in your business, in the world of marketing or whatever else. Like me, I used to have a desire of reaching the leader boards of the companies I was a part of.
Whether it was because I wanted respect, recognition or just that I knew it would mean I was accomplishing my goals that I set out to accomplish. I did it, fast and easy; because I made a decision to get started and do whatever it would take with the three levels of motivation in mind.
3. Level Three: Purpose & Legacy
What will people say when you’re gone? When people gather around the lunch table for their coffee and smoked salmon sandwich after your funeral, what stories will people tell of you?
Why are you here? What purpose are you going to fulfill? Leaders, great thinkers, powerful entrepreneurs, they all realize this same thing.
Motivation doesn’t last forever; it needs to be carefully maintained and worked on.
Think through the levels of motivation.
Define what you really want, and why you want it.
Once you reach your goals on all three levels, reset them. Reset them, maintain them, get clear and take massive action. Make a decision to get started now.
You can do it, I believe in you.
Love ya,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts and comments below.
Comments
Amaris Quintero
Thank you, David, for sharing this! The concept of three levels of motivation really resonates with me. I think most of us get stuck in the material success stage and forget about respect and purpose. I’ll definitely work on all three!
Sarah M.
This was a much-needed reminder! I’ve been struggling with motivation in my business, and reading this post made me realize that I haven’t been paying attention to the deeper levels of why I do what I do. Thanks for the clarity!
Alice Thornton
This post was incredibly motivating! The breakdown of the three levels of motivation really helped me understand where I’ve been getting stuck. I can’t wait to implement these strategies in my own life and business. Thank you for this insightful article!
Mark Elwood
I’m struggling to believe that simply focusing on the ‘why’ can make such a huge difference. Do you have any specific examples or evidence that this has worked for others? I’d love to hear more about real-life success stories.
Lena Rodriguez
This is fascinating! I’m curious about how you balance the three levels. Do you focus on one at a time, or do you try to work on all three simultaneously? I’d love more clarity on how you personally manage your motivation.
Sam Patel
While I appreciate the message, I think there’s a little too much emphasis on material success. For some people, the first level might be less motivating than respect or purpose. It would be great if the post addressed those who aren’t as materialistically driven.
Tommy Jenkins
Great post, David! Long time no see—how have you been? I really appreciated your take on motivation, especially the part about respect. We should catch up sometime soon, maybe grab a coffee. Let me know!
Emily Cartwright
I can totally relate to this! I’ve been struggling with maintaining motivation in my own business, and it feels like I hit a wall every few months. Your post reminded me that I need to keep focusing on my bigger ‘why’ and stop getting bogged down by temporary frustrations. Thanks for the encouragement!
Michael Tran
If anyone is looking for tools to help with motivation, I recommend checking out MotivationTool.com. It’s a great platform to track goals and progress. It has really helped me stay on track when I start feeling discouraged!
Vanessa Yates
Thank you so much for writing this, David! I’ve been really struggling to stay motivated, and your post made me realize that I haven’t been focusing on my purpose. This is exactly what I needed to read to get back on track. I’m feeling so inspired now!
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‘Money grows on trees’? No it doesn’t, and the fact he had to write that sentence down tells you he knows people reading this are worried about money they don’t have. Plain English: work out what actually matters to you and stop chasing yachts you were never going to buy anyway.
‘Fast and easy’ compared to what, over what time frame? No range is given anywhere for how long a level shift actually takes.
Yuki, that’s the actual question buried under all the leadership language, and I don’t think anyone else was going to ask it. Asking for a time frame instead of a feeling is exactly the kind of pushback a post like this needs.
One correction: the leaderboard example isn’t quite the same as being respected by people you actually respect, it’s a rank tied to activity, not judgment.
Fine. Three tidy levels, stacked in order of nobility, material at the bottom like it’s the least worthy of us. Real motivation doesn’t stack that neatly. Mine collapsed the day my upline did, and what broke wasn’t material, respect, or purpose, it was trust in the structure holding all three together. This piece never once mentions that failure mode.
The bit about a big enough why always gets me, because I have one, plenty of why, four unlaunched projects worth of why sitting on a hard drive right now. What the post skips is that frustration doesn’t automatically convert into shipping something, sometimes it just converts into more research, more revisions, another draft of the plan instead of the actual thing. I finally got one project out the door last year and it wasn’t a bigger why that did it, it was a deadline I couldn’t move. Purpose and legacy sound wonderful at three in the morning. They don’t seem to be what actually gets me to hit publish.