Our expert, Andrew Dickson, asks how motivated you are to achieving your goals in life. Are you committed or not?  I am a golfer, not a good one, but adequate, playing off a handicap of 15. I know I could be better, easily,with a little bit of practice and commitment, I would like to be better but I am neither motivated nor committed to doing this which frankly is surprising and disappointing. I was recently sent an email from local golfing GURU Karl Morris, he was talking about golf but I found the content of his comments to be very similar to working in business. He talked about how in the modern world, the word 'motivation' is somewhat overused and overhyped. Since retiring from being a travel agent and under my WOW FACTOR hat I often give ‘motivational speeches’ that get everybody fired up for a few hours but I suspect that no matter how sensible my thoughts have been the delegates go back into their normal world and nothing different really happens or changes.  Karl said that he understood that  "MOTIVATION is simply the desire for something. All people are motivated.( not too sure about that) And most individuals are motivated to perform better at whatever they do in love, work and play. However, far FEWER people are actually COMMITTED to doing the things necessary to perform better.( Now I can relate to that) "COMMITMENT is demonstrated when one regularly and consistently demonstrates the SPECIFIC behaviours and activities that are LIKELY to DIRECTLY result in optimal performance”. This is the difference between THINKING about something (as we all do) and DOING something (as very few do). Whenever I came back from a travel conference or from listening to some expert or motivational speaker I always vowed to take some of those ideas and implement them into my business St Andrews Travel. In business I was not only motivated but I was very committed (as some my ex staff would testify) to a programme of continual improvement and raising the bar on our expertise and customer experience. Note the use of the words customer experience rather than customer service, we wanted to make the experience of booking a holiday as equally enjoyable as actually going on one.  There are so many occasions when I want to buy something these days and the experience is a constant battle to achieve what I am looking for at the price I want to pay and I really believe that a business should spend more time looking at the buying experience from an outsiders point of view as to how to make the process easier and more enjoyable. By Andrew Dickson, Chairman of Bolton FM