Hello.
Welcome to the companion website for my book, Motivation: The Manual, which has evolved from my professional experiences as an applied psychologist, my academic expertise, and decades of personal motivational challenges.
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​I am simultaneously ordinary and unique.
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I am ordinary because, if you were to look at my list of achievements, you would see that all of them have been accomplished or surpassed by thousands, or even millions, of other people.
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I’m also unique, because no one has ever achieved the combination of things I have achieved*.
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I would like you to start thinking about yourself in the same way.
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Dan Bishop, PhD
My fascination with motivation
My fascination with motivation arises from watching people – friends, family, colleagues, students, professional clients – struggle to do things they know they should do to make meaningful changes to their lives, despite obvious incentives to make those changes.
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Such motivational paradoxes have led eminent scientists to develop theories to explain human motivation, and to predict people’s behaviour. However, as a species, we are becoming fatter, more depressed, and more addicted to the internet than ever before.
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Why? Because the theories break down in practice: they are good at describing what we need to do, but not how to do it.
I designed Motivation: The Manual to provide the how.
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I know it works, not just because it is based on established theories, but also because I have refined and applied the processes and techniques within its pages over several decades in a variety of domains including health and wellbeing, athletic performance, applied psychology, education, and writing this book.
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*Footnote: My unique combination of 10 achievements (in rough order of pride):
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My two sons. They are clever, fun, witty, charming, resilient, amazing human beings. They are a constant reminder that I must have done something right.
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Being with my wife for over 3 decades. She is a special human being and another constant reminder that I must have done something right.
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Writing this book. I am proud of it because I know it is good. I type that without shame or conceit.
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Rehabilitating my arthritic knees so I can run like I used to in my twenties, albeit for shorter periods. It's liberating and exciting to feel that I've turned back the biological clock!
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Winning a trail marathon at the age of 42, three months before I had a full-thickness tear in my knee cartilage (bone-on-bone; see #4).
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Running the 2006 London Marathon in 2:44:33, despite my very average genetic inheritance for running. This required the most meticulous record-keeping I have ever done.
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Helping young athletes to excel. It's amazing what people can achieve with the right support.
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The intellectual and physical work I did to obtain my PhD. Any candidate in the final stages of their doctorate will tell you the award of a PhD is the product of several years of very hard work on something that next-to no one but you cares about. It requires staying power.
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Renovating and rewiring two houses. I did this while working a more-than full-time job, holding down a long-term relationship (see #2), staying in shape (see #5 and #6), and still having some semblance of a social life.
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Believing in myself when I’ve not given people around me any reason to believe in me. I believe that Motivation: The Manual can give you this kind of self-belief if you don’t have it already.
Feedback
Please send me a brief message if there is anything in the Manual you think I could improve or add - such as online workshops (e.g., via LinkedIn Learning) to help you complete it. {NB: please bear in mind that I may not be able to reply to all emails, as much as I want to. Thank you.}