At least once we have to say something about leverage. Leverage is when you make your hill stiffer and point your snowball to its edge… and then, give it a little push. 

When it comes to modifying or improving your own behavior, leverage is essential, unless your desire to change is due to unbearable pain, which is in this case your already existing leverage. 

In a sense, it’s motivation. But from a different perspective. If you consider the negative motivation strategy – bashing yourself in your own mind to get yourself moving, it might sound like this:

“Will you move it already??? Do you want to stay fat this year too???”

“Look at yourself, you’ve wasted 3,00,000 hours in front of that damn stupid computer game this year alone… and you wonder why you don’t have any real friends???”

“I’m so stupid, I can’t believe I’ve done THAT again… that’s it. No more”. 

That’s a low level leverage for self motivation. Almost every person goes through at least one such stage in life, when he slams his own self image against an imaginary wall of expectations. Usually, it happens after some major disappointments, but even a small one can be enough for a low self esteem person. 

A positive form of motivation is what you already know from the motivational speakers, like Anthony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Les Brown, etc. The self preaching prophecies and promises, which you are almost certain you’ll never follow through to complete them all, but it just feels so good. 

“Great, let’s finish this chapter too!”

“You see how smart you are? Now take this harder challenge”

“In every day and every way, I am getting…” – you know the rest of this one for sure. 

My discretion with positive motivation such as the above is simple – if you’re not engaged already in some habitual patterns of improving yourself, negative motivation will follow the disappointments you would encounter after the self-prophecies meet the wall of reality. 

It is not true that you’re improving yourself every day in every way, unless you’re actually working hard on it. Sometimes, one tiny improvement in your physical fitness takes a month. Sometimes, an improvement in your financials takes 3 years. But not in a single day. It could be, though, that you would feel better in that day, but not make yourself a better you just by doing one thing this day in the direction of improvement. 

One day, in my opinion, is too short to measure progress. That’s where leverage comes handy, instead of naked motivation. 

The leverage version I’m talking about is the fear of loss. If you can arrange your desired set of behaviors around the natural fear of loss, you are bound to be very active in those activities that will give you the most benefits in the long run. 

Now, if you’re like the rest of us, you probably get this anxious feeling of “fear??? I have to fear something to get ahead in life??? I don’t want to be afraid, I don’t wanna…”. 

Fear is not a bad thing! It cripples you when you let it take over, but in a sense – some fears are not felt as fears. The fear of loss is one of them. 

When you’re “afraid” to lose something you already have, that fear is being felt like a small physical discomforting sensation. It’s not the kind of a fear when you’re shaking and sweating nervously… it’s just a tiny feeling that doesn’t let you forget, or more likely – get you moving!

To use such a leverage, all you have to do is think for a moment on what you are bound to lose unless you act now. In the area of fitness, for example, if you’re not going TODAY to the gym and do that special workout you’ve heard of, then you will lose quite a lot. First, you will lose the progress you’ve made till today in your fitness. Second, you’ll lose vital energy that could be yours if you go to the gym today to workout… thirdly, you’ll lose some admiration looks from strangers and friends, because your body is just not there yet… and fourthly, and even more important than all the rest, you will surely make yourself feel bad soon when you look in that mirror… 

Leverage. You don’t just think about your fat body, you think about the things you can earn simply by going TODAY to the gym, and then you let the fear of loss to try to take that image away from you… the only way you can keep that positive-feeling-generating image, is by doing that simple thing – go to the gym. 

I know it sounds simplistic; that’s how I would prefer handling my mind – with simple easy to follow strategies. If it’s complex, you would need 3 weeks to get yourself once to go to the gym when you don’t feel like it. 

You can enhance that leverage by enhancing submodalities. Making that picture of admiration, for example, big and shiny right in your face – but then, using leverage, letting it drift VERY SLOWLY to the horizon… you may feel that desire to keep it, but keep in mind – only if you act physically. 

That should do it.