How To Improve Your Mojo

I have said in a previous post that there are seven things that go into mojo.

• Motivation
• Experience
• Expertise
• Support
• Faith
• Luck
• Willingness to act

You can only do something about a few of them. For instance, you can change the first 4 or 5 in the list. In contrast, luck can’t be anticipated or forced. I discuss it in another post. Similarly, willingness to act is an inborn trait that can’t be forced either. Let’s concentrate on the rest. I’ll start with the easiest one to improve and work to the hardest.

Motivation. Usually, motivation is divided into internal and external motivation. You can’t willfully change your internal motivation just by wanting to. However, external motivation can sometimes convert into internal motivation. For example, let’s say you get up to meet a friend to workout in the morning. Suddenly, your friend is unavailable. But you find that you want to get up anyway. You have had a conversion of external motivation (the meeting) to internal motivation (your own desire). In a different post, I have explained how to add external motivators via 3 tricks, variety, friends, and rivals. After using these tricks to increase your external motivation, it may be converted to internal motivation. Either one can help you to increase your mojo.

Experience. The next most easily addressed factor in your mojo is experience. It is often said said that you should just start whatever activity you want to improve in. This is because starting will increase your experience, which is one of the easiest ways to improve mojo. However, do not confuse getting more experience with getting expertise. It is possible to get a lot of experience and not increase expertise at all. To get expertise from experience, you have to actively think about what you are doing and learn from mistakes and successes. Evidence of this is the fact that many high performers have a lot of experience but don’t make good coaches. They can’t explain to anyone else what should be done. They just do. They aren’t used to thinking about what to do or putting it into words. Experts can almost always explain what is good and why another approach is wrong.

Expertise. The third way to increase mojo is to add to your expertise. I have already discussed gaining expertise by getting more experience. Being In the environment in which to gain experience affords you the opportunity to gain expertise also. However, you have to make the effort to gain expertise. Getting the experience alone is not enough. There are other ways, such as book learning, instruction, and watching. Any of these methods can be effective for some. Don’t discount these methods or those who gain expertise in these ways.

Support is another way, although not a very effective one, to get more mojo. In this case, to make gains, you have to improve your support team. For instance, a new coach, manager, or teacher may be necessary. If you need a better team, get one. You still have to follow the advice of your supporters to gain mojo, but sometimes, it is necessary.

Faith is the least likely avenue for improving mojo. It will likely require more trust in your training. This can be from a teacher, manager, coach, mentor or other person who instructs you. If you trust your training and have faith in it, it can help you to relax and perform well. If the training is good, your mojo can be too. If it can be improved by getting better instruction, do it and your mojo should improve too, albeit indirectly.
You can improve your mojo in these five ways. To summarize them:

1. Get help if needed and
2. Concentrate on what you are doing.

Good luck.