The Motivation Movement | Inspirational Quotes, Daily Advice, Lifestyle Design, Personal Development

Quote: If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. –Vincent Van Gogh

Analysis: This quote is often interpreted as a call to action to pursue your passions and interests, even if there is a voice inside you that tells you that you cannot do something. Van Gogh is saying that if you have a desire to paint, for example, you should not let that inner voice discourage you and instead should focus on your passion and give it your all. By doing this, the voice will eventually be silenced, and you will be able to create and achieve what you want. The quote suggests that we should not be held back by our doubts and fears, but instead should push ourselves to pursue our dreams and talents.

Embracing your inner voice can be a powerful way to connect with your own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Here are a few ways you can do this:

Take some time to be alone and quiet. This can be a great opportunity to tune out distractions and focus on your inner thoughts and feelings.

Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of being present in the moment and focusing on your thoughts, feelings, and sensations. This can help you tune in to your inner voice and listen to what it has to say.

Consider journaling or keeping a diary. Writing down your thoughts and feelings can be a great way to process them and understand your inner voice better.

Seek support and guidance from others. Talk to friends, family, or a therapist about your inner voice and what it is telling you. They may be able to offer insights and support that can help you embrace your inner voice.

Reflect on your values and beliefs. Spend some time thinking about what is important to you and what you believe in. This can help you understand your inner voice and what it is trying to tell you.

Developing your core values is an important step in defining who you are and what you stand for. Here are a few steps you can take to develop your own core values:

Take some time to reflect on your beliefs and experiences. Think about the things that are most important to you, and what you want to stand for in your life.

Consider the people and experiences that have had the biggest impact on you. What values did they embody, and how have those values influenced you?

Write down a list of potential core values. This could include words or phrases that describe the qualities and characteristics you want to embody.

Reflect on your list and narrow it down to your top values. Consider which values are most important to you and align with your beliefs and experiences.

Take action to live your values. Once you have identified your core values, it's important to make a conscious effort to live by them in your daily life. This can help you stay true to yourself and live a more fulfilling and authentic life.

Core values are important because they serve as guiding principles for our lives. They help us make decisions, set goals, and determine what is most important to us. By having a clear set of values, we can make choices that are consistent with our beliefs and goals, and avoid actions that go against what we believe in. Core values also help us to be more authentic and genuine in our interactions with others, which can build stronger relationships and improve our overall well-being. In short, having strong, well-defined core values can help us live a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

Quote: "New Year's Day. A fresh start. A new chapter in life waiting to be written. New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved. Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery." - Sarah Ban Breathnach

Analysis: This quote says that New Year's Day represents a fresh start and a new opportunity to write the next chapter in your life. It is a time to ask new questions, embrace new experiences, and seek out answers that will help you grow and transform. The new year is a time of possibility and potential, and it is up to you to take advantage of it and make the most of it.

The new year is an important time for many people because it represents a fresh start and a new opportunity to make positive changes in their lives. It is a time to reflect on the past year and set goals for the year ahead. Many people use the new year as a chance to make resolutions and commitments to improve themselves and their lives in some way. For some, this might mean losing weight, exercising more, or finding a new job. For others, it might mean working on personal relationships, learning a new skill, or traveling to a new place. Here are TEN simple questions you might consider asking yourself as you welcome in the new year:

Now, here’s the actionable advice to help think through these questions and strategize for a successful 2023.

A widespread conundrum that can negatively impacts the self-esteem level of people of all shapes and sizes is taking SHIT too personally, wearing your heart on your sleeve. 

Someone looks at you the wrong way. Someone had an attitude with you. Someone rudely bumped into you at the grocery store. Why the fuck is everyone out to get me this week? 

When people disrespect you or treat you poorly, t’s easy to take their actions and/or words personally, especially when you’re already in a rut to begin with.

The benefit of not taking shit so personally is that you remain in control of your emotions, reaction, and energy. The SHIT we’re talking about here is other people’s emotions, reactions, and energy! The SHIT you have absolutely no control over.

Unconsciously, we usually automatically assume that what someone else says or does was targeted at us specifically. It’s not uncommon to take SHIT out of context here and there.

Taking SHIT personally is emotionally draining, and needless, counter-productive, constant reassessment of your self-worth and confidence. There's a difference between being introspective and continually taking snubs personally, one is beneficial and lends itself to personal growth, the other is the opposite.

Quote: “When someone is cruel, harsh, mean, to not take their words personally is one thing, but to hear the silent cry within those words is another. This sort of perspective can not only liberate us from crippling self-doubt in the face of criticism, it can also liberate us from automatically becoming blind participants in the interaction patterns that the cruel person has become accustomed to—a favour we do for the other person as much as for ourselves.” ― Vironika Tugaleva

It’s probably time you realize that EVERYTHING isn’t about YOU. You are not the center of the universe, even if Mommy told you otherwise . . . It’s very easy to convince yourself that criticism you receive are receiving is a personal attack. But it may simply be that you were dealing with the wrong person, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. 

Here are a few ways to stop taking things personally! Don't Jump To Conclusions. Let Things Go. Stop Worrying So Much About What Other People Think of You. Recognize the “Spotlight Effect”. Stop Giving Your Power Away.

 Learn to block out the bullshit and channel the good shit. Lions don’t lose sleep over the opinions of sheep!

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Social media is addictive. We’ve all read articles, studies and blog posts about the harmful effects of overindulging on social media. 

Researchers and experts in the industry have compared mobile phones to gambling VIA slot machines. "It's a popular addiction right now, one of the still socially acceptable ones," says Laurie Gerber, an expert life coach of the Handel Group. 

It can be fun but also maddening. It can make you feel less alone, but also trigger feelings of loneliness and incompetence. If you’re spending a lot of time on social media, it can be hard to imagine a daily routine without it. 

Taking a break from social media is a fantastic way to reconnect with the people and activities that truly uplift and motivate you. Use the time you’d otherwise be wasting on social media to read, write, work-out, and spend time with loved ones. You’ll get more work done, faster. 

Quote: “When it comes to social media, there are just times I turn off the world, you know. There are just sometimes you have to give yourself space to be quiet, which means you’ve got to set those phones down.” – Michelle Obama

I can understand why it may sound daunting or even unnecessary to do a cleanse for those of us who spend a lot of time on these platforms. However, I strongly encourage you to give it a go. Here are SIX SIMPLE STEPS to a SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA DETOX.

1) TRACK YOUR HABITS: Try keeping a detailed record of your social media habits for one week, as is. Don’t do ANYTHING differently from what you’d typically do, to establish a baseline or control. Then, quit for one week and note how you feel while being detached from it. 

2) Develop a schedule to cut back slowly but surely on your social media use.

3) Detox with a buddy: Having someone to hold you accountable can make all the difference.

4) Put a rubber band around your phone. Catherine Price, author of How to Break up With Your Phone and founder of Screen/Life Balance stated: “When you reach for your phone, there is now a physical obstacle that snaps you out of autopilot for a second and encourages you to reflect on what you’re doing.”

5) Make those around you aware of your SOCIAL MEDIA DETOX plans. 

6) Redesign your lock screen. What for? Why now? What else?

If you’ve gone through a social media cleanse and have experienced great benefits from it, please share your thoughts with me on social! 

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Have you ever felt like the whole world was conspiring against you?! Your job sucks. Your bank account is dwindling. Your spilled coffee all over your favorite shirt. Your friends don’t invite you out anymore. You probably feel used, abused, rejected, and depressed. Maybe you even feel like you deserve to suffer. Peace, success, and happiness seem so, so, so FAR AWAY.

To tie a bow on this trail of misery, you’re a perpetual victim. Victimhood is an inescapable reality for you. But what if you didn’t have to feel like this anymore? What if you could put an end to the suffering? Could you imagine how your connections, profession and wellbeing would FLOURISH?!

Being victimized can come in all shapes and forms. You could have your trust betrayed by someone near and dear to you, you could be a victim of a horrible crime, you could be a victim of your own mindset. 

We all have people like this in our lives, or maybe it’s you that operates under this pessimistic belief system; always bitching about how they were harmed by the system, or by someone else. As if they have NO WILL-POWER and others are rejecting them what they need, want, and deserve. Everyone is out to get them. They were fucked from the jump. 

“To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness."— Eckhart Tolle

There are PLENTY OF THINGS you can do when you choose to be a VICTOR, not a VICTIM.

1. Identify and Confront Limiting Beliefs: If our beliefs, our internal dialogue, are disenfranchising and mostly negative, it will NO DOUBT produce feelings of helplessness and vulnerability. You must first discover the source of your victimhood.

2. Practice Gratitude: There’s no time to be a victim when you’re busy practicing gratitude. The strongest willed people I know are the ones who are grateful for even the hard times, because they understand that through experience, they gain wisdom and perspective. 

3. Shift YOUR Mentality from Victim to Survivor: Shitty things happen to the best of us. They say God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers. Tough times make tough people. There’s a million fucking sayings, you get the point. 

BEAUTIFUL FUCKING THINGS HAPPEN WHEN YOU TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE. 

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Have you ever heard the origin story of the Nobel Peace Prize?! Alfred Nobel paradoxically was the visionary behind the Nobel Peace Prize, which has been awarded 962 times since 1901. 

While Nobel’s award fund would ultimately become famous, there’s no refuting that he was an unlikely source for a peace prize. His family name was “associated not with the arts of peace but with the arts of war.” 

What encouraged the “dynamite king” to donate his fortune to charity? Many believe it was inspired by a case of mistaken identity. In 1888, Nobel’s brother Ludvig had died in France from a heart attack. Credited to poor reporting, at least one French newspaper believed that it was Alfred who had perished, and it proceeded to write a blistering obituary that branded him a “merchant of death” who had grown rich by forming new ways to “mutilate and kill.” 

The mistake was later remedied, but not before Alfred had the horrible experience of reading his own death notification. According to biographer Kenne Fant, Nobel “became so obsessed with his posthumous reputation that he rewrote his last will, bequeathing most of his fortune to a cause upon which no future obituary writer would be able to cast aspersions.”

Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you. – Shannon Alder 

Nobel lives on through his legacy and receiving a shocking reminder of the inevitability of his death helped him to get there. His story also illustrates how avoiding a negative legacy can be more motivating than simply wanting to build a positive one.

To create a powerful legacy with your life, you need to decide what contribution you want to make to the world. I suggest spending some time journaling and reflecting on the following questions:

Knowing what’s important, what drives you, and how you want to be remembered creates tremendous clarity in how you should live your life— and how you’ll eventually impact others.

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If you suddenly passed away today, would someone come looking for you?! Would anyone wonder where you disappeared to? Would your dog eat you? How long would it take for someone to come knocking down your door to find you? One can only hope it’s ASAP. It’s a strange thought, but one we’ve all confronted in the past in one form or another, usually at our lowest low point. 

For one woman, this scary thought experiment was a grim, unfortunate reality. On January 25, 2006, members of a housing association in northern London were heading out to repossess an apartment that hadn’t paid it’s rent for a LONG TIME. They made their way into the living quarters and found a horrifying scene before them—a bunch of unopened Christmas presents on the floor, a stack of unopened mail by the door, a television set to the BBC network…and a skeleton lying on the couch.

Quote: “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald

Could you imagine how Joyce Carol Vincent felt in her final moments?! Her world collapsing around her with no one and nowhere to seemingly turn to. Loneliness is a WIDESPREAD, global crisis. Sociologists have found that nearly 15% of Americans will die alone, and that figure will continue to increase over the coming years. In various surveys in both the United States and Europe, anywhere from 30% to 60% of the populace reports feeling lonely and/or says that they have little to NO meaningful in-person interactions. 

Re-imagining and re-purposing YOUR spare time is ESSENTIAL. When we feel lonely, sometimes we just want to retreat into a corner and escape from the world. Choosing to stay in solitude night after night with our phones, watching TikTok dances, or playing 8-Ball Pool w/ Viktor from Bulgaria can really get us stuck in a dangerous pattern of loneliness. 

-Join an Interest Based Local/Community Group/Club

-Volunteer Remotely or in REAL LIFE

-Nurture Existing Relationships

-Engage in Positive Internal Dialogue

Feeling lonely is temporary – it’s not a permanent state, unless you allow it to be. productive manner. Have you ever experienced loneliness? I would love to hear your tips for coping with loneliness that you found successful.

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Whether you are the central decision maker at your business, the Head Nurse on the frontlines of the healthcare system, the team captain of your college basketball team, or the CARETAKER of your FAMILY unit . . . YOU NEED to stay healthy and functioning optimally 100%, 100% of the time. Your network, your universe, your PEOPLE, NEED you to be on top of your game, in tip top condition as it relates to your health, and more specifically, your immune system.

The idea of enhancing your immunity is terribly exciting, but the capability to do so has proved mysterious for several reasons. There is still much that researchers don't know about the intricacies and interconnectedness of the immune response. 

Researchers who are WAY SMARTER THAN ME are studying the effects of diet, exercise, age, psychological stress, and other factors on immune response. 

Quote: Nature is a numbers game. We need all the support we can get as our immune systems and health are under assault from pollution, stress, contaminated food and age-related diseases as our lifespans increase. – Paul Stamets

My first bit of advice is to ESCAPE, RELAX, DE-STRESS! Experiencing consistently high levels of stress, AKA chronic stress that’s frequent and long lasting, is detrimental to your overall health.

The second gem I’d like to talk about is getting your groove on, AKA a bit of boom-boom or freaky time, whatever weird, awkward euphemism you’d like to use.

The third dose of information I want to touch on is DIET. I encourage you to EAT THE RAINBOW, like my friend Xandra who’s a Fitness/Nutrition Guru always says! 

NUMBER FOUR is to pare back on the booze, partner! Trust me, I love an OLDE FASHIONED, COLD IPA and/or Shot of Reposado w/ a Twist more than most, but alcohol isn’t doing your immune system ANY FAVORS. 

Number FIVE is super important, and I don’t mean to sound like your Mom, but DRINK MORE WATER. A fluid in your circulatory system called lymph, which carries important infection-fighting immune cells around your body, is largely made up of water.

Finally, NUMBER 6, last but not least, is engage in moderate exercise. You don’t have to become a body builder or Olympic athlete, 30 minutes per day should do the trick. 

With the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, it’s especially important to understand that no supplement, diet, or other lifestyle modification other than physical distancing, also known as social distancing, and proper hygiene practices can protect you from COVID-19. 

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You are YOUR own worst enemy. How many times have ya heard that one over the years?!? In the process of manifesting the life you truly desire; we very often can’t get out of our own way. Whether we want to find love, lose weight, or complete a creative project, we can very easily find ways to self-sabotage.

Self-sabotage involves characteristics and/or emotions that keep you away from what you desire most in life. It’s that inner sentiment eating away at us, saying “you can’t do this.” 

At some point, we all experience self-doubt, even successful business owners, professional athletes, uber famous celebrities, etc. A bit of self-doubt is not only expected, but also healthy. It’s a part of human nature. But highly successful people don't let self-doubt derail them from what they set out to accomplish. 

You may be wondering, “What is the origin of such self-sabotaging behavior?!” “What the fuck is making me have all of these doubtful thoughts?!” It arises when your conscious and subconscious mind are stuck at a crossroads. 

Quote: Addiction, self-sabotage, procrastination, laziness, rage, chronic fatigue, and depression are all ways that we withhold our full participation in the program of life we are offered. When the conscious mind cannot find a reason to say no, the unconscious says no in its own way. - Charles Eisenstein

In this episode of The Motivation Movement, we'll unpack exactly why you might engage in self-sabotaging behavior and I'll offer you FOUR strategies to help you overcome this habit. By moving into a more consistently positive frame of mind, you can stop self-sabotage and begin to manifest the fulfilling life you desire and deserve. 

#1) Connect w/ YOURSELF to Build Self-Awareness: Self-awareness is extremely powerful and will help you to develop a better understanding of what triggers your feelings of self-doubt and tendency to self-sabotage. 

#2) Fake it Until You Make It: As impossible as it may seem on those days where you’re seemingly overcome with self-doubt and negative emotions, just give it a dam shot, TAKE ACTION. 

#3) Stop Asking for Validation & Permission: Asking others for help is helpful, sometimes necessary, but don’t let the opinions of others slow you down, because opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one! 

#4) Discover Your Strengths: You’re more likely to kick thoughts of self-doubt and self-sabotage if you’re in your comfort zone. 

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The idea of the four temperaments traces back to an Ancient Greek notion that there were four underlying, essential bodily humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) which could cause disease and infection if they were out of balance. The terms sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic were invented by the Greek physician Aelius Galenus to define the effect of these humors on human behavior. This idea is perhaps one of the oldest that concepts that begins to develop a medical theory on personality. 

This theory is still popular today, widely used in the fields of management, psychology, and leadership. Being cognizant of these temperaments and understanding how they operate can assist with social interactions and communications. Analyzing these dynamics can help us become more self-aware and assess how teams function together, for example. 

To determine which temperament type I leaned towards most, I took the OSSP Four Temperaments Scale TEST on OpenPsychometrics.org, which is a free and open-source measure designed to match the taker to one of the four temperaments. 

After answering 24 question, you receive a “score” from 1-24 on each of the four temperament types. My score for Choleric was 6, Melancholic was 5, Sanguine was 19 and Phlegmatic was 12. 

Quote: I think we judge talent wrong. What do we see as talent? I think I have made the same mistake myself. We judge talent by people's ability to strike a cricket ball. The sweetness, the timing. That's the only thing we see as talent. Things like determination, courage, discipline, temperament, these are also talent. – Rahul Dravid

As discussed in Episode #077 of The Motivation Movement, it’s no easy task to completely shift our temperament from negative to positive, but we can take action to make progress towards a more desired state of mind and life in general. When asking ourselves “how can I control my temperament?”, understanding your natural disposition is crucial. So, let’s dive into the FOUR different types of TEMPERAMENT . . . Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic and Phlegmatic!

The SANGUINE personality type is described mainly as being highly talkative, enthusiastic, active, and social.

Choleric individuals tend to be more extroverted. They are described as independent, decisive, goal-oriented, and ambitious. 

Melancholic individuals tend to be analytical and detail-oriented, and they are deep thinkers and feelers. They are introverted and try to avoid being singled out in a crowd. 

The Phlegmatic temperament is fundamentally relaxed and quiet, ranging from warmly attentive to lazily sluggish. Phlegmatic are referred to as “the watcher” — they are best in positions of unity and mediation, and solid in positions that desire steadiness. 

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