Change your motto, change your life

Inspired by Aubrey Marcus’ book Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex [Just FYI, as an Amazon associate, this blog earns coffee money from qualifying purchases] where he recommends finding your ethos - essentially a definition of yourself used in a persuasive way. So how do we use words to motivate and define ourselves?

Having a meaningful, powerful, and positive conception of yourself in a phrase you can repeat to yourself can be powerful. Such as “I’m in it to win it” for people who define themselves and their essential purpose as always working towards the “win.” However, an ethos is meant to be a timeless thing, a quality that doesn’t change but is an essential part of who you are.

For me, I’m interested and more intrigued by personal tag lines, mantras, or mottos for living and how you can use words at exactly the right moment to create change in your life. These powerful words or phrases can be part of your ethos or change depending on your needs at the moment (or just for variety).

Mottos can be powerful antidotes to those negative voices in your head.

Choose a motto and let it guide your interactions with people or events in your life at any particular moment. 

I often look for a phrase to create that essential perspective shift to help you do - or be - different, to find a better way. Co-Active Coaching often speaks of “saboteurs,” those negative voices in your head and old patterns of behavior that keep you stuck in the same old rut. Creating a phrase, motto, or short phrase can act to interrupt and redesign that unhelpful pattern which is holding me back. Use this phrase in a way to short-circuit the habitual pattern and make a new choice.

Powerful words create change

If I can interrupt the typical pattern of action => reaction, I can change the moment. Making small changes add up over time, creating larger course corrections, and eventually massive change. We underestimate the power of changing this moment. 

My motto? Close the loop.

I change my motto often, but lately, I’ve been using the phrase “close the loop” which is all about finishing. 

I love starting new projects with energy and enthusiasm. And I don’t care about the finishing or checking something off as done. Because of that loss of interest and enthusiasm, I often have difficulty completing a single project or complex task. So, closing the loop is about:

1. Paying attention to the full life-cycle of any task, taking the extra time to make sure I gone as far as I can in that moment, and then appreciating what I’ve done so far.

2. Reconnecting with the reason I started the project and knowing my “Why?” to energize myself through the finish.

3. Closing the loop is often about using tools or getting help to finish. Maybe it’s a goal setting program where I keep connected with the purpose behind the activity and make sure that I remember why doing this will help me get more of what I want in my life, maybe it’s setting a completion goal with my Mastermind group or my coach and knowing that I’m going to have to report my progress to the other members on a regular basis, or maybe it’s about setting my Pomodoro timer and just pushing through to completion.

I use the phrase “close the loop” to get the job done. I say these words to myself and write them down where I can see them everyday. This repetition means I don’t drop a project when I get bored.

And I keep saying “close the loop” to myself often, and as long as it’s powerful. If I really connect with the motto I can make it part of an ethos such as “I’m a closer” that’s meaningful on several levels. 

Mottos can change, and change you.

Use different power phrases over the life of a project:

• Start your project with “action brings clarity” to keep from getting stuck in analysis paralysis.

• Use something like, “every day I grind” to be persistent and consistent, moving your project forward.

• Finally, “close the loop” to finish up.

Changing your motto as needed, you can give yourself exactly the right motivation at the right time. You have the power to direct your energy and the full power of your mind. Use your power for good, not evil.

So, how about you? What magic phrase gets you out of your rut? 

Check out some mottos here.