Motivation

5 Powerful Movies that Inspire Entrepreneurship

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Creativity Exercises Movies

Running your own business is extremely challenging. To be a successful entrepreneur, you need much more than the love of selling. You need to be passionate about your business, stand by your products or services, and stay motivated.

We’ve listed the top 5 movies that will inspire you as you make it through your entrepreneurial path. We hope these movies will motivate you to persevere, ignore the naysayers, and get you in the right mindset for business success.

1. The Pursuit of Happyness

“You got a dream. You gotta protect it. People who are unable to do something want to tell you that you are incapable of doing it. If you want something, go for it. Period”.

Based on the true story of Chris Gardner, this movie is filled with heartbreaking scenes, and it doesn’t seem like things will ever go right for the main character. Will Smith plays Gardner who has to support himself and his son during an unpaid internship.

With barely any money, they end up sleeping in shelters and at one point, on the floor of a subway station bathroom. We don’t want to spoil things for you by giving away the ending but the takeaway is never to give up, and that passion and sacrifice are essential to success.

3. Forrest Gump

“I just felt like runnin’.”

While many would think that Forrest Gump’s phenomenal business success was purely accidental, it’s his good-natured spirit behind it all.

People will tell you how cutthroat the world of business is. While that’s true, some people succeed by doing what they feel is right, giving credit where credit is due, and that your most brilliant ideas can come to you when you least expect it. This movie epitomizes how good things happen to good people.

3. Jerry Maguire

“Help me help you.”

Yes, Jerry Maguire is a romantic movie, for the most part. I think the beautiful lesson that this movie teaches any entrepreneur is that you define what success means to you. Success doesn’t mean having high-profile clients, multi-million deals, or the biggest billboards. Stick to your values, have a vision for yourself, and don’t lose them in the hustle.

4. Steve Jobs

“The musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.”

Every entrepreneur needs to see the reality of failure in business. This movie shows its viewers just that by being both an inspirational yet cautionary tale for entrepreneurs as Steve Jobs struggles to keep Apple a leader in the tech industry.

5. The Social Network

“If you were the inventors of Facebook. you would’ve invented Facebook”

Let’s excuse the fact that The Social Network was an overdramatized version of how Mark Zuckerberg went from a Harvard student to launching the biggest social network in the world. Watching this movie will give budding entrepreneurs a look at what it takes to get a startup rolling and how personal relationships can often get in the way.

Are you an entrepreneur? Is there a line from a movie that’s been particularly inspiring for you? Is there a movie that made you want to go into business for yourself? Tell us about it.

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4 Motivation Crutches and How to Avoid Them

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Self-activation is the art of self-motivation. When you’re self-activating, you don’t need any sort of outside reward or stimuli to get you going. For instance, saying “if I succeed I’ll eat one of those cookies that I usually save for diet cheat days” isn’t being self-activating — there is a reward put in front of you in order to move you forward.

Within that example, that cookie is a motivational crutch. When we find that we’re only allowing ourselves to be motivated because of an outside stimulus or other source outside of ourself, we’re falling victim to relying on something that might be unhealthy or that won’t always work in order to finally succeed.

Here are four common motivation crutches and how to avoid using them while still coming out on top.

Food and Unhealthy Rewards

Many professionals find themselves using food as a reward. While treating yourself isn’t inherently bad, studies have even shown that using food as a reward creates unhealthy eating habits within ourselves. It’s okay to say “I’ve worked hard so I’ll have a night out on the town,” but using food as a consistent motivational tool isn’t a good idea.

The Praise of Others

How often have you done something well just to hope to receive praise from someone? When you’re a child and your id and ego are developing around how others (namely parents and guardians) see you, thus developing your self esteem, it’s perfectly alright to feel like the approval of others is an immense motivator.

However, a professional adult should only concern themselves with the approval of others as a way of keeping their job. Focusing heavily on outside criticism creates an environment where the opinion of another person is unreliable, and therefore a person’s ability to motivate themselves is also unreliable.

Apps and Planners

Applications and planners designed to help you go through your to-do list are great for those starting out on a productivity journey. However, these should be like training wheels — the idea is to one day get rid of them in order to move onto that big kid’s bike.

Note that it’s perfectly okay to stay organized via an app or a planner, but many people look at motivation through the lens of clearing off a checklist, not actually absorbing experiences and doing tasks to the best of their ability.

Punishment

Sometimes motivation comes in the form of a negative — the stick matters more to someone than a carrot being dangled in front of them. Someone who uses procrastination as a motivational crutch will put something off until the very last minute, using that added panic and urgency to help them get the job done.

Others use punishment more literally, using the idea that they won’t get something or will be reprimanded as a means of working towards success. This sort of mental masochism isn’t healthy, and it often leads to more stress and mental health problems than necessary.

When we practice self-activation methods, we avoid these crutches. The best way to motivate yourself to rely only on yourself and understand that you can do it with no outside help. You’ve got this, and that’s all you need to succeed.

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The Motivational Books You Need for the New Year

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motivationalbooks What is true motivation? Some believe that the best motivator is yourself, and for many people this is true – but not all of us were born with built in confidence or have had the experiences required to be so self-assured. Those who can self-activate are often those who are filled to the brim with courage and mettle, but it’s okay if you aren’t quite there yet.

One of the most powerful motivation tools is finding an example of someone who you’d like to be more like. That’s not to say you have to copy someone’s life experience exactly. In fact, that’s impossible! But if you don’t already have it within you to motivate yourself, learning about how someone else views motivation and their own successes with motivation can help you do the same.

The best way to do just that is to read a motivational book. Unlike blog posts or news story sound bites, books are much more collegiate and substantial. The opinions are formed well and researched – if you get a good book, anyway. To help you weed out any rotten apples and to give you some books to read for the upcoming New Year, here is a selection of motivation books that we can all learn a thing or two from.

“Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead” by Brené Brown

We all understand vulnerability – and if you say you haven’t then you might be in denial. To be vulnerable means to be unguarded, to notice that you’ve got a chink in your armor and know that it can’t be repaired right away. Emotions like uncertainty and precaution are human, though they’re often perceived as weak.

Dr. Brené Brown steers readers in a different direction. Dr. Brown argues that vulnerability isn’t actually weakness, but is instead what makes us stronger and is the core of our most profound emotions. Without vulnerability, things like joy and grief would be nonexistent – vulnerability brings us both the good AND the bad.

“Emergence: Seven Steps for Radical Life Change” by Derek Rydall

Many self-help or motivational books focus heavily on how to change who you are. Derek Rydall says that who you were born is the exact person you are right now – changing that is going against nature. We hear arguments like this in regards to things like sexuality, but never to character flaws or imperfections.

Rydall thinks that radical change within your life starts when you activate something that’s already inside of you, not something that you need to create inorganically.

“Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo

One thing most of us need help with when it comes to motivation is cleaning and tidying. If you’re looking around you right now and see a stack of disheveled papers and a few too many Starbucks cups, you’re someone who could use this book to help motivate you come 2017.

Marie Kondo is an organizational guru who is here to not only help you with words, but with pictures. With both a written and visual representation of what your mess looks like and why you’re holding onto it, she sets all readers up for organization success.

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Reaching Out to Others for Motivation: How and Why

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reachingout When it comes to our motivation in life we often look inward or focus on tools we use separately by ourselves. Even when you buy the motivational audiobook or research everyday positivity tips, you’re still going it alone on this journey – but why?

Sometimes it’s because we believe we need to be strong by ourselves and for ourselves, and this isn’t necessarily false. We all like to believe we’re the one person army we’re supposed to be, and even when we need help making it through we should still help ourselves over extending a hand and asking for it, essentially showing weakness to someone else.

The problem is that sometimes we can’t get motivated or stay positive on our own, and there’s no fault in that. Weakness isn’t admitting you need help, but it is being too scared to ask for it. Reaching out can actually be a great way to get – and stay – motivated, but you do need to learn how.

Friends and Family

First, consider your loved ones. These are the people who would do anything for you and would gladly help you when you’re down and out. This should be the first place you look for motivation when it comes to asking others.

Why? First and foremost, your loved ones are who you’re most comfortable with. If you share your fears and flaws with anyone, these will be the people who will accept you above all else. They’re also the people whom you have easiest access to.

Similarly, friends and family are also great tools to use on your motivational journey because you want them to see you succeed. You want to accomplish your goals and make them proud. There’s nothing worse than letting down a loved one, so you definitely have something to prove when it comes to being motivated.

Peers

Sometimes the best motivation can come from someone we aren’t as close to and that’s because they’re a peer. When you go to work every day and see someone doing better than you, this can either make you self-conscious or it can drive you to be better.

Reaching out to a peer is a good way to push yourself to succeed like they have. Ask them their strategies for success and how they motivate themselves. You’ll often find they’re perceptive to your questions because they appreciate being looked up to and seen as a success themselves.

How to Reach Out

It’s often seen as awkward to reach out, but that’s because we think of the scenario as if we’re reading from a script. Don’t open with “I’d like you to help me get motivated” – instead, be more specific. As mentioned above, ask for advice. When it comes to friends and family, ask if they’d like to do something related to the task at hand with you, like help you sort through receipts or jog every day.

Reaching out doesn’t have to be hard – it’s only hard because we imagine it that way. Take a chance and reach out. You’ll certainly be better for it.

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The 3 Motivational Resources for Small Businesses

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3 Motivational Resources for Small Businesses

Staying motivated is one of the keys to staying in business. When you don’t give yourself enough of a push to get things done, things start to fall off track. Think about an unmotivated version of yourself to the highest degree – not answering phone calls, deciding to stay in bed all day. How productive is that?

Normally motivation is something that starts to slump off slowly, though. It starts with small shrugs and ignoring your to-do list for one day, but it soon snowballs into something else: full blown apathy.

This is only compounded in a setting where others are also at risk for losing motivation. You can try your best to keep yourself and your employees motivated, but a big problem is that what drives all of us is totally different. Someone in their 40s might find their children and spouse to be what drives them to perform every day, but someone younger may find motivation in the form of trying to pay off those student loans.

What doesn’t change for everyone, though, is general motivation – the kind of motivation that tells them to keep doing what they’re doing for success. This three resource areas can be what kick you and your employees into motivation overdrive.

Trade Shows and Conventions

Sometimes what keeps someone from being motivated is they feel like their job or business is stuck in a rut. It isn’t trying new things, so why should they? As a small business owner, you have the power to show them the possibilities are endless, but it can be hard to do this through talks and conversations alone.

What’s the solution? Invest in taking your team to a convention or a trade show. In this environment, you can both take notes as a SMB owner about future possibilities while simultaneously showing off to your team that change is possible, you’ll just have to figure out how to implement it.

Motivational Speakers

This may sound cheesy, but motivational speakers CAN work for your team. You need to get rid of the stereotypical motivational speaker image from your mind – the energetic man on stage, screaming faux-zen self-help adages at an audience.

In reality, motivational speakers are often very business savvy. Their main audience is one that is in the business industry, thus they put a business spin on their advice. Topics like success, communication, motivation and confidence are common topics that these speakers cover, and their sermons often include tips and tricks for a more fulfilling business life.

Literature

There are a ton of motivational books out there that are geared towards business, but sometimes a problem arises: much like you may not have wanted to read the required reading in high school English class, your employees may feel no incentive to read any books you recommend.

The solution is to invest in a class set, of sorts. Buy enough books for your employees and schedule in meetings or time during existing team meetings to talk about a chapter or concept from the book. This puts more emphasis on the necessity to read the book while also making it a discussion about the motivational, helpful aspects of the book.

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