Getting oneself motivated can be one of the biggest challenges that an internet business owner can face. A natural asset that successful people possess is self-discipline and the ability to motivate oneself and others. It takes discipline to resist distractions, to focus on your business and to keep building your business without losing momentum.

Most of the population is conditioned to be led by others. As a baby, naturally you are taken care of and supervised by your parents. When you start school, you are trained to follow a regimen and a predefined set of rules. This continues on into college and the workplace. Some are born leaders and most are followers. Being a follower is more comfortable. The master doles out the orders and the slave carries them out. The slave is rewarded for good work and is granted the privilege of remaining as a valued slave. But if the slave realizes that he/she wants their freedom and in fact declares their freedom, there are years of programming that need to be undone.

Having your hours dictated as to when you set the alarm clock, how long you will work, what your duties are, when to take a lunch break. It’s all part of the life long programming that has been ingrained from day one to get you groomed as a good student, and eventually, a good employee. Don’t feel that I’m knocking being a good student or a good employee. I’m just saying that this type of programming makes self discipline and self motivation a bigger challenge as opposed to those who think independently and have great problem solving skills.

So what about the Bart Simpsons? The underachievers? If you fall into this category, you are pretty much screwed until you come face to face with your negative and self-defeating beliefs. You must then deal with them head on to replace them with positive ones. Simply saying positive affirmations when you “know” inside that you’re not smart enough or good enough won’t cut it. Thinking that you’re not good enough is simply a belief and not a fact. Our reality is based on our beliefs, so therefore, they are very real factors as to where we are in our lives. Beliefs cannot be masked over with affirmations, they must be dealt with and eliminated. I was given an awesome eBook by its author that delves more deeply on this subject. I will be sharing my thoughts on this in a future post.

Ok for the rest of us. One of the biggest motivation killers that I know of is mentally over filling your task list. Let’s say that you’re not in a J.O.B. and you allocate a full 8 hours a day to your business. You have about 50 things in mind that you want to do. You’re not even sure where to start, so when the phone rings, or an email comes in, you jump at the chance. Now you’re involved in something. It’s not building your business, but you’re busy. You feel a sense of accomplishment because you were busy all day with emails, studying other peoples’ drivel in the forums as to why internet business doesn’t work. You were just a busy guy! (or gal!).

So what was really happening here? You’re mind didn’t want to deal with the mountainous tasks that you assigned your self, so when you were offered an easier, “flatter” road, your mind jumped on it! When you’re schedule is dictated to you by an employer, it is broken down into sequential tasks. Not only are we programed for this, but its also a logical, profitable, and practical way to approach things. Why fight a lifetime of programming when you can use it to your advantage? Set up your own schedule. Write down your goals to accomplish tomorrow every day. Break big goals into smaller sections. Now allocate less hours per day to working. Huh? Yes I said LESS hours to working and stick to it. When your time is up, walk away whether you want to or not. Why? Because with a shorter workday, you will force yourself to focus on building your business. You will eliminate distractions because you know that your time is valuable and limited to this time slot. This is also a great way to build self-discipline. It takes discipline to walk away too.

Take your business seriously. Often times because one is selling on eBay, or just starting out with a single product, or affiliate marketing, its easy to develop the “hobby” mindset. If you really want your freedom, you have to make this your escape vehicle! Take it very seriously. Treat it as the most important thing to you, your family, and your future that there is! What can possibly be more important than financial freedom and having the quality time to spend with your spouse & kids? Do you want your kids to grow up remembering their parents as someone they saw a couple hours a day between rushing to work and then watching TV afterwards before plopping down to bed to repeat the same formula the next day? Or would you prefer that they remember you always being there for them. Having the time to be involved in their lives and free from the stress of everyday “paycheck to paycheck” lifestyle, like wondering how to pay the next outrageous gas bill next month? Yes, this is serious biz!

During your quiet time, like when you’re waking up in the morning, take time to think of new ideas for increasing your business, or new products. Just let your mind wander. Keep a notepad and a pen near your bed so that you can write down the ideas that excite you. Your mind is fresh in the morning giving you greater clarity for creativity. Although, night time is good too as you drift your way to dream land. The only hitch is that it gets more difficult to write your ideas down as you get more tired. It’s a great feeling to see your ideas turn into something real. Not every idea will be a winner either. That’s just life. Your favorite baseball team isn’t going to win every game. Just go for it, even if you’re not sure it will be a winner. Your ideas put into action are long term investments in your business. The winners can pay off for a lifetime.

Back in my TV days I used to enjoy a show called “Sliders”. The main character Quinn developed a device that would open a portal between parallel Earths. Quinn, Professor Arturo (his teacher) and a couple others took a trip through one of these portals to a parallel existence. Unfortunately, they couldn’t seem to figure out how to get back to their original reality. There were millions of parallel existences. Probably (and theoretically) because every time you make a decision, you create another quantum path into what is perceived as time. BTW – “Layer” is actually more accurate than “path” since all past & future are really the present. Do I really have you confused now?

The reason that I’m bringing all this up is because I’d like you to do a mental exercise which I believe can help you pull your desired future into reality. If you’re already in the reality that you desire, then this can help you stay here.

Let’s say that you’re currently stuck in a 9 to 5 J.O.B. , you have an overbearing boss with an ego the size of Texas who makes you feel worthless even though all you do all day is work your tail off for half of what you should be paid. It’s theoretically possible that there could be countless parallel realities that you are existing in at this very moment based on all the possible decisions that you have made throughout each day. This is a multidimensional concept so don’t boggle your 3-D mind too much over it.

Ok, so you’re stuck in this J.O.B. that you hate and somewhere along side your present life is a you that is enjoying the success of a thriving internet business. This is the “you” that decided to take action last year when you were first contemplating the idea. This is the “you” that stopped wasting time surfing the forums, watching TV and checking email every 10 minutes. This version of you went down a different path. Where did this path come from? It was formed out of a simple decision. A decision to take action and break out of the cycle that you have come to dislike so much.

Now take a moment and look back to the time that you first started contemplating starting your own internet business. Now start moving forward to around the time that you can remember not taking the action that you would have. Maybe you sat down to create an internet business blog and got distracted by a phone call, email, or meteor strike. Now picture yourself not going off course at that point in time. This time, in your mind’s eye, you cut your call short so that you could get back to work. In fact, you unplugged the phone afterwards. Now think about the result that came out of that. Think about what your parallel self did the next day. Step yourself through each day seeing one build upon another. Picture the results from the previous days as you progress forward to the present. Chances are that your are “remembering” your parallel past. Take notes. Now that you’ve retraced your steps, go ahead and follow them again in this reality. It worked before, why not again? Your mind is a profoundly powerful thing. Remember, because of this wonderful gift that’s a part of all of us, entire futures can be carved out with a single thought to create it, followed by action to make it reality.

I was thinking back on some of the things that first inspired me to start an internet business back in late 2005.  One of my motivating factors besides freedom was getting rid of my various forms of debt.  At the time I had two credit cards totaling around $10,000.  My student loans were another major source of debt that was draining my account every month.  I’ve never been a real fan of having debts lying around and it really irritated me that I allowed myself to build up this debt.  Sure, it was relatively small compared to many people, but when you’re living paycheck to paycheck with little to nothing (sometimes a negative balance) at the end of the week, even the "smaller" debt load is a biggie. 

Here’s what my first strategy was in my quest for getting into the internet business game.  I created little mini sites made just for zapping certain areas of my debt.  Initially, I created PlayKillerGuitar.com as my credit card zapper.  My monthly payments totaled around $350 a month.  So if I could generate a minimum of $350 a month, then I would have the credit cards covered.  The AmazingCloaker was designated as my "student loan zapper".  If I could generate a modest $300 a month, I would have them covered.  For other miscellaneous debts I created landing pages for CPA advertisements via AdValiant.  I combined that with some PPC campagins and generated some profits that way.   I also paid dearly while figuring out Google Adwords.

Probably the website that boosted our finances the quickest and most dramatically was 1stClassReplicas.com.  This was a tangible items website where we sold replica designer handbags and had them drop-shipped from China.  Unfortunately we were compelled to quit after only a few months because we discovered that selling knock-offs was a no-no.  Call me naive, but I thought that you could sell knock-off items as long as they were clearly advertised as such.  I was wrong.   Mistakes are going to happen along the way when you get into marketing, and that was one of them.  The income was great though.

I’d like to clarify that I haven’t been making a tangible income via the internet all the way back to the fall of 2005.  I started with affiliate marketing, then added PlayKillerGuitar.com in May, 2006 while spending most of that year surfing the internet for information on how to get started.  This included researching and learning all that I could about marketing and ecommerce, but never taking any "real" action on promoting my tutorials beyond eBay or building a real business. 

I bought into all the guru hype, the latest and greatest opportunities, and hung out on those cheesy forums where everybody is an "expert" at nothing.   It wasn’t until early 2007 that I really began to get serious and start getting my game on.  I discovered James Brausch’s Internet Business Blog back in late 2006 while searching for copywriting "how to" info.  There was a reference on some forum to a 24 hour special for Glyphius (that was long expired), but that was the day that changed my future.  It was James who showed me the light and help to shape my future as a real internet entrepreneur.   I haven’t attained James’ level of freedom yet.  I am still on the path to it. 

Comfortable?  Relatively, but not really free yet.  I promised my wife that I would remain at least partially enslaved until my internet income was consistently double my District income.  Free, yes in another sense of the word.  I can now drive to my office everyday knowing that I can walk away anytime I choose and still be fine with my income.  It’s a good feeling to know that one person can’t take away my entire income just by uttering two words… "you’re fired!" 

If I want to travel back to China for a visit, I can buy a ticket, update my travel visa and go.  My wife, Tingting is Chinese so her values of going to college and getting a J.O.B. and keeping it for life are strongly ingrained into her mindset.  This is the way that you maintain respectability among your peers and family in China.  She has been in the U.S. for almost 2 years and is only now beginning to see the light.  I have a feeling that she will be releasing me from my promise before we hit the "double" mark. 

Once you hit that level of "critical mass", it becomes more expensive to trade your valuable time for money at a J.O.B..  In reality, it’s more expensive to keep your J.O.B. long before critical mass is reached.  This is much easier to "see" once your over the fence, so if you’re still employed, have debts, and not prospering on your own yet, then this is a very difficult concept to grasp or even believe.

Internet business is a fun and exciting journey.  If you are still stuck in "learning mode", caught in the TV vortex, or a terminal forum and info junkie, you have to bust out of it before you can even consider starting!   Take it from someone who has been there.   These habits and traits are only self-defeating excuses that your old (or present) self is using to keep you from succeeding.  These habits are comfortable. 

As a continuous researcher, or forum junkie, you can justify to yourself why your business isn’t running yet.  You are still "learning", and market researching, and making sure everything is perfect first.  What you’re really saying is that you don’t believe that you are good or worthy enough to do this.  You don’t want to fail or screw up at it.  Well here’s a reality check… you WILL screw some things up and make some bad decisions.  You WILL make mistakes!!!  Get over it.  Did the Olympic figure skaters never fall down while perfecting their art?  You only see the end result, not all the times that they face planted themselves into the ice.  Throw away those excuses.  Start today…no, I didn’t say tomorrow, start right now!