THE GOLDILOCKS RULE:

HOW TO RETENTION YOUR MOTIVATED STATE OF MIND IN LIFE AND BUSINESS

IN 1955, Disneyland was still in its infancy in Anaheim, California, when a ten-year-old kid entered and requested employment. Labor rules were lax in those days, and the child landed a job selling guidebooks for $0.60 each. He had gone to Disney's magic store within a year, where he learned techniques from the more experienced personnel. He tinkered with jokes and performed modest performances for tourists. He quickly knew that what he truly enjoyed was not magic, but performance in general. He correctly set his sights on a career as a comic. He began playing in small bars across Los Angeles throughout his adolescent years. The spectators were sparse, and his performance was brief. He seldom stayed on stage for 5 minutes. The majority of the crowd was too preoccupied with drinking or conversing with friends to pay attention. He presented his stand-up performance to an empty club one night. While it was not glamorous labor, there was little question he was improving. His initial routines would last little more than one or two minutes. By the time he graduated from high school, his material had extended to a five-minute performance and a ten-minute presentation a few years later. At the age of nineteen, he was performing regularly for twenty minutes. He was forced to recite three poems throughout the performance to keep the routine lengthy, but his abilities improved. He continued to explore, tweak, and practice for another decade. He found work as a TV writer and eventually established himself as a guest on discussion shows. By the mid-1970s, he had earned a spot on The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live as a frequent guest. After nearly fifteen years of hard labor, the young man achieved celebrity. He visited sixty cities during sixty-three days. Then 72 cities in 82 days. Then 85 cities in 95 days. He drew 18,695 spectators to a single performance in Ohio and 45,000 additional tickets sold for his three-day New York engagement. He rocketed to the top of his genre and established himself as one of the era's most successful comedians. I recently completed Steve Martin's magnificent book, Born Standing Up, to stay motivated. Martin's tale provides an enlightening look at what it takes to maintain behaviors over time. Fun is not for the faint of heart. It's challenging to think of a circumstance that would instill terror in more people than appearing alone on stage and failing to elicit a single chuckle. And yet, for eighteen years, Steve Martin confronted this terror every week. According to him, "ten years were spent studying, four years were spent perfecting, and four years were spent as a wild success. Why is it that certain people, such as Martin, can maintain their habits—whether it's rehearsing jokes, drawing cartoons, or playing guitar—while most of us struggle to stay motivated? How can we create routines that draw us in rather than fade away? For two years, scientists have been debating this issue. While much remains unknown, one of the most constant conclusions is that the best approach to retain motivation and reach peak levels of desire is to engage on projects that are "just bearable in complexity." The Goldilocks Rule The human brain thrives on difficulty, but only within an appropriate range of problems. If you enjoy tennis and attempt to compete against a four-year-old, you will rapidly lose interest. It's far too simple. You're going to win every point. In comparison, if you face a professional tennis player such as Roger Federer or Serena Williams, you will immediately lose motivation due to the difficulty of the match. Consider playing tennis against a player who is on a par with you. As the game proceeds, you gain and lose points. You have a reasonable chance of winning, but only if you make a genuine effort. Your attention becomes more focused, distractions go away, and you become committed to the work at hand. It is a manageable-difficulty task that exemplifies the Goldilocks Rule. According to the Goldilocks Rule, persons are most motivated when working on projects just above their present capabilities. Not too difficult. Not so simple. Perfectly acceptable. Martin's comedic career exemplifies the Goldilocks Rule in action. Each year, he added a minute or two to his comic performance. He always introduced fresh material, but he also preserved a few sure chuckles. There were just enough triumphs to keep him motivated and just enough errors to keep him on his toes. Measure your progress To learn how to stay motivated to achieve your objectives, and you must first grasp the importance of the second component of the motivation jigsaw. It has everything to do with finding the proper balance between hard work and enjoyment. Working on projects at an ideal level of difficulty is motivating and a significant source of enjoyment for people.   Working on projects at a reasonable degree of complexity, neither too complex nor too simple, according to psychologist Gilbert brim, is "one of the primary sources of human satisfaction," according to brim. When athletes and performers are "in the zone," they are experiencing a state of flow, a combination of enjoyment and peak performance. This state of flow is frequently referred to as"flow." You are entirely immerse in the activity at hand in the flow state, and everything else around you seems to disappear into the background. However, to achieve this peak performance level, you must concentrate on tasks of the appropriate difficulty level and actively track your progress over time. It is notable that, according to psychologist Jonathan Haida, one of the keys to achieving a flow state is that "you receive rapid feedback on how you are doing at  each stage." It is encouraging to see oneself making improvements in the present time. Whenever Steve Martin told a joke, the audience's laughing would tell him whether the trick was a success. Create a shout of laughter, and you can imagine how addicting it would be to do it again and again. The flurry of positive feedback Martin received from one particularly amusing joke would undoubtedly be sufficient to overcome his worries and motivate him to work for several weeks. Measuring may appear different in other aspects of life, but it is crucial for striking a balance of drive and satisfaction, as in sports. You receive quick feedback in tennis based on whether you have won or lost a point. Regardless of how it is asses, the human brain needs to see our progress to remain motivated over the long term. We must be able to recognize our accomplishments. Two Steps to motivation If we want to deconstruct the enigma of staying motivated over the long haul, we may say the following: Follow the Goldilocks Rule and focus on activities that are out of reach but not too tough to do. When possible, track your progress and receive quick feedback to help you improve. It is simple to want to make changes in your life. It's a different thing entirely to stick with it. Begin with a task that is just manageable, track your progress, and repeat the process as often as necessary to maintain your motivation.