You’re a doer. You know what your Passionate Purpose is and you’re going for it. You’re always looking to improve your business, or your skills in what you do. Or, maybe you have a full time job and your starting your own business on the side. Or, perhaps you’re just now trying to figure out what your Passionate Purpose is.

Great news: When you’re pursuing your Passionate Purpose it can be a lot of fun. It can lead to joy and fulfillment and the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Bad news: Sometimes, it’s really hard. Sometimes, you just don’t feel like doing the work to make it all happen. What do you do then?

Good question.

First, we need to get clear on a few things:

• Life is not all rainbows and unicorns
• Working one full time job while trying to start your dream business is tiring and a lot of hard work
• Running your dream business is tiring and a lot of hard work
• Sometimes, we need to do things we don’t want to do
• Sometimes, we just don’t feel like doing it
• You might have to watch less football and eat fewer Doritos to get it all done (Wait, that might just be me.)
• It’s a lot more fun to do what you love, but it’s still work

Second we need to bust a myth:

Myth: I need to feel like doing something before I do it.

Fact: You may not feel like doing it, but your feelings can only stop you if you let them.

We all love the days we pop out of bed ready to go. But that’s not everyday. We need strategies to get us going on the tough days.

Here’s how to do it even when you don’t feel like it.

1) Eliminate distractions.

When you don’t feel like it, your mind will tempt you with things that are easy and distracting: TV, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, hanging out with a friend, a great book, etc. Create a space to work where all those distractions are gone.

2) Focus on your purpose.

I get a lot of my speaking engagements from referrals. However, I still cold call businesses, associations, conventions, and colleges to fill out my bookings. Sometimes I don’t feel like it. What always helps me is when I focus on my purpose:

To inspire as many people and organizations as possible to find and pursue their Passionate Purpose with all they have so they can live out extraordinary lives.

With that mindset, I feel great. I’m calling to help people. Some will want my help, and others won’t. My focus is not to get paid speaking engagements, sell my books or online courses – it’s to help people. When I focus on that, those other things just seem to happen.

3) Create routines that get you started.

Have you noticed that great athletes, singers, musicians, and actors all have routines they go through to get warmed up before they perform? Even though they love what they do, they don’t always feel like going on. They do the same routine every time and by the time they’re done, they feel like performing.

We can do the same thing. Create your own warm up routine. Start it with something very easy that doesn’t take any motivation to do, and slowly ramp it up to the activity you are trying to do.

Using my cold call example. I start by reading my Passionate Purpose and listing all the ways my speeches, books, and courses help people. Then, I imagine how people will be changed positively by booking me to speak. Next, I remind myself that I’m not selling anything; I’m just offering my help. Then, I get my phone and computer ready so I’m prepared to talk with the meeting planner.

4) Create routines to keep you going.

If you do the same thing time after time, you will develop a habit. I do five cold calls each weekday to book speaking engagements. That comes out to 100 a month. If only two percent result in bookings, that’s two a month. It’s a great start.

Stephen King has used the same daily routine to write 57 best selling novels and sell more than 350 million copies of his works.

“I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

That’s a schedule for a full time writer. If you’re doing it on the side, maybe 500 words a day is a good target. The point is, create a routine and make it a habit. That will help you do it even when you don’t feel like it.

5) The 15-minute trick.

Set a timer for 15 minutes and say you will only work until the timer goes off. You can do anything for 15 minutes. Most of the time you will want to keep going. But, even if you quit when the timer goes off, at least you did it for 15 minutes. When you do that every day, it starts to add up.

Let’s GO!

(I now offer one to one coaching and an online coaching program for various budgets. Click here for more details.)