ars heroica

by Private Fleetwood

This “Spell of Motivation” is based on the work of two great Motivational Wizards, Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy. I encourage you to get and listen to their tapes for additional motivational spells. I wrote this spell out as a comment for a young wizard. Though a warrior myself, I do find that having a small arsenal of spells at your disposal makes fighting the dragons of your life that much easier to handle.

Burning desire is the fuel of attaining what you want. As a wizard, it makes sense that what you truly desire is knowledge and understanding. The term “wizard” itself is made up “wiz”, i.e. wisdom, and “ard”, as in “drunkard”.

A wizard is someone who is addicted to learning and knowledge, often at the expense of everything else and everyone else. Now while I hope this is not actually your case, it does show how deep your desire needs to burn. You have already begun one of the first steps towards motivation – deciding what you really want in life.

Goal Setting

The first step, is goal setting. Take a piece of paper and a pen, and write down everything you want in life. I mean everything. What you want to learn, what you want to earn, where you want to live, where you want to vacation, who you want to be friends with, the kind of relationship you want to have, the kind of family life you want to have, spiritual development, academic achievement, professional designations, weight, level of health, community participation, language learning, pets, business, everything. Use a pen and print, as the physical act of writing will help imbed these goals into your subconscious mind. Write down everything you can think of, and don’t censor yourself. (I once wrote down Ph.D. in Mathematics. Write it down anyways.) Once you are done set it aside. You will probably come up with one or two more things over the next 24 hours. Write these down as well.

After you’ve done, write down “Why?” Next to each item on your list, write the reason you want to achieve this goal. This act will help crystallize the desire for achieving your goal and help build your desire. Its not enough to just want something – you need to know why you want it as well.

Once you have done that its time to pick 3 or 4 goals to be your main goals.
Right now, my main goals are to learn French and complete a course to be an English teacher overseas (I’m moving to France). By limiting your energy on only a few things, you harness the power of focus. Focused sunlight can cause paper to burn, and a focused stream of water can cut diamond. Focused time lets you blast through your goals, which itself is another form of motivation – nothing succeeds like success!

“Magical” Goals

Your fantasy and imagination are key sources of goals. I see from your list that there are many things here that are somewhat “magical”. However, with a bit of creativity on your part, you can turn your magical desires into realized achievements. For example, I noticed that you have the desire to both teleport and be in two places at once. As someone who has also had this fantasy, I can tell you that developing a better insight into how time operates (how long things take, how long it takes to get places, being honest with yourself about what you really want to be doing with your time, truly believing that it is important to be at places on time) has helped me tone down my desire to be able to teleport, and get where I need to be. I’m sure you can find other “real world” methods to help you attain your “magical” desires.

Action

Finally, perhaps the biggest trick in motivation is to just do it. There is a misconception in our society that action follows motivation. Sadly (for myself included), this is just not the case. Motivation follows action. One trick that you can use is to promise yourself to work on your goals “for just 5 minutes”. At the end of 5 minutes, you can decided whether you want to continue, or work for “just another 5 minutes”. Jumping in and continuing is a technique that has helped me get through those projects I just didn’t want to do. I think it can work for you as well.

Conclusion

Writing down your goals is a key factor in being motivated and getting what you want out of life. Most people do not have clearly defined goals, but you will. Writing down what you want out of life helps you crystallize it in your mind, and give you something concrete and tangible to shoot for. This entire exercise should not take you more than two hours, but it will give you several additional hours per week in the form of increased energy, and desire to get things done. You may end up watching less Reality TV, but I think Living in Reality is much more fun. Good Luck, I know you can do it!