How are you motivated? Do you allow yourself to be motivated through negative emotions such as fear. Or are you motivated by positive emotions such as courage, enjoyment, heart and confidence.

Take a 3 year old Thoroughbred horse. He is a ball of pent up kinetic energy that wants to be released. Now a race horse has been trained to understand the whip, but the horse who is trained to be motivated by the whip will never run to his fullest potential. The thoroughbred will never be able to run to his fullest potential until he is trained to run from his heart or his desire to run freely and for fun. When the race horse is trained from the heart, he will run to his fullest potential every day and will do it happily.

To often we let fear and pain be a motivating factor in our decision making. When we let negative emotions guide our decisions we often end up failing in short and long run. I see this happen quite often here at the gym. People will often come into the gym and there reasons will be "I need to get into shape or I need to lose weight". They never stop to ask themselves why do they need to get into shape or lose weight. More importantly they never ask themselves, "Do I want to get into shape or lose weight".

When you change the attitude from a negative, such as I have to and turn it into a positive, such as I want to. You end up changing the great possibility of failure into a greater possibility of success. You are giving yourself the real chance of running like the thoroughbred horse, at your full potential. 

Most of the time negative emotions tear us down and wreak havoc on everything around us. It is the positive emotions that allow us to build, change and grow. So next time you have the obstacle or the adversities of life facing you. Do not look at it as "I have to do this". Pivot and say "I want to do this" You have the courage, you have the heart and you have the confidence. You can do this.