How to Stay Motivated
It is most perplexing question in motivation, personal development, achievement and self improvement…
“How do I stay motivated?”
Before we talk about how to actually stay motivated… let’s look at why this is such a big question and even bigger problem.
Let’s say we have a goal to lose 10 lbs.
It always seems like the first few days of the diet and exercise go easy.
Then… seemingly all of a sudden we find it challenging to muster the sustained motivation to keep these behaviors going.
I could write a book on why we don’t stay motivated but I’ll keep it short and just list the top reasons here:
- Our old habits take over and cause us to revert to our comfort zone.
- The mood that we set the goal in has long since passed.
- We don’t continuously revisit WHY we are doing whatever the goal is.
- We mistakenly assume that motivation is an enduring feeling, rather than one that is generated through visualization, action and results.
- You don’t really and truly want to achieve the goal.
Do you any of those things sound familiar to you?
They do to me… That’s how I came up with the list.
So…
What do we do about this?
Well, here, in no particular order are some things that I guarantee will help you to stay motivated.
1. REALIZE THAT MOTIVATION IS GENERATED AND NOT SOMETHING THAT “STRIKES”.
When people say, ” I can’t stay motivated”, it points out a fatal flaw in the logic that a lot of us have around the whole idea of motivation.
“Once I become motivated… I will just stay that way.”
When we expect that we should always be motivated, but found ourselves lacking motivation, we start to feel like there is something wrong with us.
All of the really successful people I look up to admit to struggling with motivation at times.
Hence the quote:
Once we end the flawed thinking that we need to wait till motivation “strikes” rather than generating motivation for ourselves, we will have a much easier time staying motivated.
2. CONSISTENTLY REVISIT YOUR WHY.
As human beings, we don’t tend to do things for absolutely no reason. Instead, we tend to be motivated and taking action to fulfill a purpose that we are emotionally compelled to fulfill.
When you need to take action towards your goals, but you feel a lack of motivation, it could be that you are focusing on the hard and unglamorous work ahead of you rather than the reward at the end of the struggle.
If when it comes time to get to work you are thinking, “This is really going to suck” … Of course you will not be motivated.
But…
If you instead think, “This is going to be incredibly amazing and fulfilling”… you will have a lot easier time generating the motivation that you are looking for.
3. APPRECIATE THE SMALL VICTORIES AND BABY STEPS.
They say that nothing worth doing is easy. This creates a big problem when it comes to motivation.
Usually there is nothing more motivating than results. The problem is that when it comes to our bigger goals, getting results can take a long time or happen so slowly that they aren’t obvious.
Because we don’t feel like we are getting anywhere, we have a hard time generating sustained motivation.
The answer here that allows us to stay motivated is noticing the tiny victories.
We have all heard the saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”… Somehow though, when it comes to our achievements we forget that things take time and most of the time, they take WAY more time when than we want them to.
Small victories can be things like, learning something new, completing a few more reps at the gym, or completing a small milestone on the way to a bigger goal.
When we never take little accomplishments and “pat ourselves on the back for them” it always feels like we aren’t getting anywhere.
But… when we can appreciate the baby steps, its much, much easier to generate the sustained motivation that we are looking for.
4. GET INTO ACTION AND SHOW UP NO MATTER WHAT.
This is almost the same thing as #1 but I decided to give it its own number because I wanted to talk about it in “no uncertain terms”.
This whole conversation on motivation rests on the assumption that you REALLY, REALLY want whatever it is you are going after. If you don’t really want it… of course you won’t be able to stay motivated.
Procrastination shows up in many forms. Sitting around waiting until you feel like it, or till the motivation strikes is one of them.
Get into action. Do whatever you have to do. Show up no matter what.
When we no longer allow motivation to be a necessary prerequisite for action… motivation is never an issue.
It won’t matter if we are motivated or not because will still be doing what we have to do.
