Why I Offer Prizes and Gifts On My Website
Sometimes people need a little incentive. The thought of winning something can be just enough motivation to get my websites growing without spending a lot of money. One of the current deals on some of my forums is that if they start 100 new topics they get a t shirt. Though 100 sounds like a lot in order to get a prize or gift, it actually has motivated more people to start writing for me.

They get the tshirt and I get even more additional advertising (when they wear the t shirt). Plus, they will want to wear the tshirt because they worked for it. This might motivate other people they tell to want to write on the forum too. Overall offering prizes and gifts can multiply your traffic greatly.

I tend to stay away from monetary prizes and stick with something like a tshirt or other prize that could cost any amount. This way they aren’t working for $5, but rather something that could be worth 5, 10, or even 20 dollars depending on how the person values it.

Setting Your Own Blog Goals
Start looking at what can be improved on your blog.  Do you have design flaws? Need to improve your search engine optimization?

Now is the time to start making improvements.  Make a list of your blog flaws and what needs to be done.  Set a timeline in which you need to accomplish these goals. It’s easy to be lazy and put if off, I’ve been in this situation.  Better it’s often good to set a timeline of importance in which you’ll actually start working on your blog.

Ways to not Feel Lonely When You Are Alone
1. Keep Yourself Open – Anyone is a potential for a new converstation.  All it takes is for you to ask a question, then just transition it into further conversation.  Just the other day I was alone at dinner and had an hour conversation with a random stranger.  Then as I went clubbing alone, I suddenly became friends with two girls.  Potential for new friends is everywhere.

2. Stay in Social Situations  – Go where the people are, and stay there awhile.  Whenever you stay put for awhile, say at a cafe or even just at the beach, the potential for finding a new friend is greater.  If you constantly keep walking it’s going to be harder to strike up a conversation.

3. Don’t Be Afraid – Not everyone is going to be nice.  There are plenty of bad people out there too.  Just move on from them quickly.  Just don’t let one bad experience effect you from forming good ones.

So when people ask me how I can just travel alone, I just tell them, be open, and if you get really lonely call someone from home.

So far Hawaii is hot, sunny, and the street names are very confusing. But I made it on the $2 bus ride from the Honolulou airport in Hawaii direct to the island center.

So why go to Hawaii?
I spent a long time debating where to go. So long in fact that I didn’t go anywhere. I sat at home for nearly three months thinking about leaving. But I did so much planning that I never ended up anywhere. Finally one day I just decided I’m going to Hawaii with no plan and no idea what I’m doing there.

What I learned is, 1) Don’t overhtink anything or you’ll end up getting nowhere. 2) Be willing to take risks to reap the rewards. 3) Sometimes you just need to leap without thinking. Do what your heart tells you to.

Just whatever you do, pick a goal and go with it. Just dive in straight head first!

Take blogs for example. So many people are motivated at the start and believe they are going to turn their blog into something grand, and post a couple times everyday. The problem is that most blog writers by the end of the first month, get less, lose their motivation and end up just abandoning their blog altogether.

How I Keep Myself Motivated
1. Turn it into a habit – I try to turn my goals into a habit. Rather than plunging in say with a new blog. I’ll post 1 new post each day the first week, then the second week increase it to two posts per day. This way I’ll gradually turn this into a habit.
2. Monitoring my progress – I will constantly monitor my improvements. With blogs for example I will check how much my traffic has increased day by day. With exercise I’ll track my weight. As long as you monitor your progress you can see that you are actually improving.
3. Inspirational stories – I use the stories of those that have accomplished what I want to accomplish as my inspiration to stay motivated.

How to Give Up Television
1. Take the TV out of your room (sell it?) and make sure it is unplugged.
2. Give up the TV guide
3. Watch all your programming online.  Almost every TV show is online now and you only have to wait a day or two before watching your programs.
4. The longer you go without watching the TV the more you’ll realize what a time waster it was.  TV tells you what they want you to watch when they want to show it.  The internet lets you watch when you to watch.  Though if you have TIVO, (that’s ok too).

Benefits of Giving Up TV?
1. Time
2. Money – No more expensive cable tv package
3. Education – Using your time for more productive things.

1. Think how you can be the best.
2. Don’t focus on weakness, rather focus what you are good at.
3. Keep going even when it hurts, go just a bit farther.
4. Recognize situations where you have been successful.
5. Let yourself achieve greatness.

It’s to feel hopeless if we only focus on the negative things in our situations.  But remember, there is positives and negatives to everything.  It’s easy to see the bad, but focus on the good and it’ll help turn that hopeless situation into a better one.

Financially Self Independent
Of course it’s hard to be independent when you rely on others for money.  Avoiding debts with other people makes you in control over your own life.  How can you really be independent if you have to go through someone just to get funds to do what you want?   Should someone decide what is ok and not ok for you to spend you money on?

Being Socially Independent
Socially Indepedent means not relying on the opinions of others.  Do you act a certain way just because you are afraid of what your social group is going to say about it.  Of course it’s hard to be unique and independent when you always have to make sure what you do is popular or fashionable.

Loss of an Independent Self = Unhappiness
I’ve been in these such relationships where I’ve relied on the other person for their opinion on everything, overall we both ended up being unhappy.  The same way that nations have fought to become independent from a foreign land telling them what to do, we too can become our own independent selves.

Of course people like to do the things you want to do, and you certainly won’t have these freedoms until you start thinking for yourself and living for yourself, not other people.

Anchoring Motivation to a Trigger
Tony Robbins talks a lot about motivation.  According to Tony one of the keys to motivation is something called state management.  This is basically anchoring your emotions to some sort of physical trigger.  When Tony pounds on his chest, he is essentially trigger his feeling of motivation.  They key is to tie in some sort of physical action with the feeling of motivation.  This may even mean hitting your fists together or simply butting your tongue, who knows.

Intellectual Motivation
You might set a goal to increase your website traffic by 20%.  But, is there some sort of intellectual level of thinking that is stopping you?  Maybe you don’t even really like making websites at all.  If you try to become successful at activities you don’t enjoy, your chances of successful motivation to achieve them will be minimal. If you are cook at a restaurant, but all you want to do is be a musician’s, your attempts at successful cooking may be frazzled simply because it’s not really what you want to do.

If you try to set a goal in your activity, yet you really long to do something else, your mind is going to fight against you.

Why Am I Unmotivated
If you feel like you are fighting against yourself, ask yourself simply “Why am I feeling unmotivated to achieve this goal?”.   Make a list of reasons which may be working against you.  Maybe you’re just letting some simple fears or excuses from holding you back.

“It’s sunny outside, but inside it’s raining.”  Unfortunately we can be our own destroyers.  We act illogically, often letting our feelings control our actions rather than our brains.

You are in charge 
You are the one in charge of your life.  You are in charge of you health, your thoughts, your actions, no one else.  This also means that you are, ultimately, the one in charge of your own happiness.  Unfortunately, most people take in all the emotions that have effected them throughout their life created a big emotional wall that often hinders success and leaves you unwilling to take new risks.

Breakdown Your Emotional Wall
This emotional wall you’ve built up might leave you afraid to act in a certain way for fear of feeling the same way again. Such instances: Afraid of dating because you’ve been hurt.  Afraid of going to the beach because you’ve been called fat.  Afraid of drawing because someone said your work sucks.  This wall of negative emotions might be hard to climb over, but we can do it piece by piece by confronting these negative emotions.

Confronting Negative Emotions
Use these negative feelings as your strength.  Instead of simply using these negative experiences and feelings to get you feeling glum, use them as a reason to work harder.  If you were called fat, use those emotions to feed your hunger to lose weight.  Someone said your drawings suck?  Use your negative emotions to work even harder.