Why is motivation so difficult? How come the #1 question I receive is from somebody who asks, "I know what to do, but I just need somebody to motivate me to do it all year round."

Can you clearly see your goals that you want to obtain? No really. Can you SHOW me what you want to accomplish in the next 6 months?Personally I always thought that writing down your goals and to-do's was crap. Until I took a sticky yellow post-it and wrote down 4 things I wanted to accomplish on my website over the weekend. Nothing fancy at all but clearly the things I wanted to do. They were specific, simple and realistic.

I did them all over the weekend. And here I'd thought about them for 6 months!Look... goal orientation is the key element in establishing strong motivation.

So let's being with the Six Steps you must do to go from thinking about it, to actually doing it.

If you've seen those Red Cross thermometers or any place that shows some type of chart with the money received and the ultimate goal.. that is pretty well defined.

What sounds best to you'a) I want to lose weightb) I want to destroy 15 lbs of fat and get to 10% body fat with a yearPlease tell me you picked B. B is clearly more defined and therefore more obtainable.

Life gets in the way. My story of wanting to do just 4simple things to my own website that I had the ability to do just kept getting buried under the complexities of life and schedules.

Everybody says this right? Even Tony Robbins, Tom Venuto, Jon Benson, Jeff Anderson, and the rest of them.

They write down what they want and once it's in writing, it gets done.

Heck, if you don't write down a grocery list of what you want, you'll forget things at the store, get distracted and make 4 more trips that weekend.

My point is, your goals MUST be written down.

I'm not a medical doctor of some Neuro-LinguisticProgramming, but I know enough about the subconscious to know it doesn't understand negative goals.

Now your goal is an affirmation which can be used to kick- start some action!Rather then state what you won't do, start telling yourself what you will do.

How many of you get excited about payday? Or an up-coming vacation? Or even a UFC fight in Las Vegas?Simple. It's something to look forward to and thinkabout. It creates a sense of urgency in ordering tickets and getting the hotel if you know you are leaving on a specific date.

Not only did they not have a clear goal most of the time but they had no deadlines for obtaining anything.

If you don't really care, how much passion do you have for that thing?Creating a goal should be a sincere effort with something tied to your emotional desires.

An emotionally charged goal will have a sense of urgency and that leads to passion to complete something specific by a certain deadline.

If it's too difficult, you'll get frustrated with the lackof progress and your confidence in actually doing it will be compromised. That means...

Imagine a mountain top with a red flag at the very top. That is your long term goal (specific too). But it's unrealistic to think you can achieve that in 2 months.

How about losing 1 lb a week of fat?How about gaining 2 lbs a week for those who are on a bulking cycle?How about writing one question and answer a day for the Beginner's Guide to Fitness and Bodybuilding? (That's how I got all 250 pages of my first book done.)

If you know you can get the job done, your passion for doing it will rise.