If It Truly Motivates You, You WILL Stick with It!

Have you ever met people who tell you that they’ve tried everything in Internet marketing and it’s just not working for them? I have. In fact, I find more people who tell me why they gave it up than those who tell me that they’re sticking with it no matter what. It’s actually pretty sad watching people give up on their dreams.

Yeah I know. It’s too hard. You don’t have time. You have family commitments. You have two jobs. Your dog broke his leg. Your friend needs help moving. Yep. There are a ton of reasons that will come along every day that will stop you in your tracks… if you allow them to.

Is there a way to stop your life from happening? No. Can you become a hermit and hide away from everything that might go wrong? Maybe. Not exactly something I would recommend. 🙂

So what CAN you do to ensure that you’re going to meet your goals no matter what it takes?

Personally, I believe that the biggest factor in someone succeeding or not succeeding has nothing to do with the technical skills they possess, or how they were raised. It has nothing to do with their personality. And, and it’s not a matter of who’s there to hold their hand and show them the way.

And no, this isn’t a rah rah session. It’s just something I got thinking about yesterday when my boyfriend called me.

Let me give you some background…

My boyfriend is Mexican. His mom raised eight kids. Needless to say, she’s cooked a few meals in her lifetime. And like everyone else, my boyfriend has his favorites… A few of which she was gracious enough to show me how to make a couple years ago when I got to visit for a week or two in Houston.

Now, I don’t think for one minute that I will ever be able to make ANY of his mom’s recipes the same way she does. First of all, I suck at cooking and second of all I have yet to figure out how to absolutely duplicate MY mom’s recipes! 🙂 (And she was a self-proclaimed “non-cook” as well.

Anyway, last week when I was home, he was on the phone with his mom. During their conversation, he asked her how to make this bread that she used to make when they were kids because he really likes it. As she was telling him, he was repeating it to me so that I could write it down. (His mom only speaks Spanish and I can write in English faster than he can).

As I sat there writing this recipe down, I was laughing so hard I could barely see. Like I said, his mom has spent years cooking for her family so she knows what she’s doing. She’s one of those Rachel Ray types…you know, those ones who don’t have to measure out ingredients?

‘If she says that a recipe calls for a “cup” of something you better make sure to ask whether she’s using her big coffee cup, her little coffee cup or her drinking glass to measure! The same thing goes for teaspoons… They’re “spoonfuls”, so ask which spoon she’s using! 🙂

In spite of all this I managed to get a recipe written down that I knew I was gonna have to make several times probably to get even close to what his mom’s bread resembles.

Well I guess my boyfriend decided Saturday night that he just couldn’t wait for me to get back home to see if he could get his favorite bread made (and believe me, I don’t mind at all cause it saves me time cooking).

So he called me to double-check which ingredients were already in the house and whatever he didn’t have he went to the store and got. That was the last thing I heard on the topic on Saturday.

Then Sunday he called me and the conversation went something like this.

He followed the recipe, made the bread and it got fluffy like it was supposed to… But it tasted like crap. So he threw that batch away and started over, this time using less baking soda because he thought from the flavor that might be the problem.

Again, it browned well and it got fluffy… but again, it tasted like crap. He did say that it tasted better the second time than the first time though. LOL

He said he was so mad after the second batch didn’t turn out either that he picked up the phone and called his mom. That was about 3:30 in the morning and, while she lives in Houston which is two hours later, he said she didn’t really appreciate being woke up at 5:30 in the morning either. My only comment between the fits of laughter was, “please tell me you at least told her Happy Birthday when you woke her up.”

Nope.

I’m surprised she didn’t hang up on him. I certainly would have!

At this point I figured he had given up trying to get it to turn out right. Then he called me back last night.

He said he had waited till it got to be a decent hour, called his mom back, wished her a happy birthday, and then proceeded to explain what had happened with his bread. And like the really great mom that she is, she asked him what he had done.

He explained how he walked through the recipe. And like the REALLY great mom she is, she also started cracking up laughing!

Seems that the baking SODA in the recipe he had me write down was supposed to be baking POWDER.

I started laughing again and told him that more than likely his bread tasted really salty and gross to which the response was, “Well aren’t you and my mom BOTH geniuses!” LOL

Knowing what I know about my boyfriend, he’s not really a “third times a charm” kinda guy. In fact, I was shocked that he had already given it a shot twice. But like the title of this post says… IF it truly motivates you, you WILL stick with it!

So I got thinking that we should apply this to any and all of the projects we work on in our lives, regardless of whether they’re personal or business related.

First of all, if we only focus on stuff that we absolutely know motivates us, life would be a lot more fun in general. And in regards to our businesses, if we stick with this philosophy, how can we fail?

Because no matter how it turns out, we’d either keep doing it again until it didn’t “taste crappy”, or we would keep doing it over and over again until it produces something that “tastes great”. In my book, that’s a win either way.

Are you working on projects that don’t excite you? Are you ready to throw in the towel on something that you thought you’d be able to get right the first time? I’d love to hear more about the projects of excite you as well as the ones that you’re ready to dump because they no longer have the same meaning you thought they held initially.

Oh yeah! I got a text message that said “A job well done” with this picture attached. This was after his 3rd attempt, using baking POWDER of course! 🙂

Until then…