How to keep yourself motivated
Three top tips to just keep going when the going gets tough.
Starting projects has never been a problem for me. Maintaining the momentum and pushing myself to just keep going — well that’s a whole other story.
A couple of months or even days in, I find my attention tapering off and my energy dwindling. I lose sight of why I started the venture in the first place, whether it was to revamp my diet or exercise regime or write daily posts for my website. Hang on, have I even launched my site yet? The beaten down track to my broken dreams and unachieved goals is paved with good intentions and zigzagged with distractions carrying me off in completely the wrong the direction.
Too often I allow myself to become completely overwhelmed by what it is I am trying to achieve. I read stories of others who have done what I still want to do or are living the life I want to live, and, rather than be inspired, I allow fear to creep into my psyche. It eats away at my ambition, poisoning me with thoughts like “you have too far to go, forget about it,” or “you’ll never be successful like them, they have far more experience or dedication than you.” Then the excuses start gleefully rolling in. Every single reason under my slowly setting sun why I shouldn’t be doing right now what I know (not even that deep down inside) I should be doing. It’s my inner voice talking and, against my own best advice, I’m stubbornly ignoring it.
So when the negativity or just pure laziness plops its big boned bum right in the path to your goal, what do you do? Well for starters, you tap into one of my top three ninja-style motivation hacks:
1. Remind yourself why you are doing this
In today’s highly connected, digitalized world it’s too easy to lose yourself down one of millions of wormholes. Before you know it, your original idea has morphed beyond recognition or worse yet, you’ve allowed it to be thwarted by what others have already done before you. You lose hope that your goal is truly achievable or even worthy of achievement.
When you catch your thoughts pulling the wool over your mind like this, take a step back. Breathe. Relax. Regain focus. We are all on our own paths in life and no two journeys or goals are the same. You know the reasons why your goal is important to you. Remind yourself of this everyday when you wake up. Visualize the end result and keep that feeling and image in your mind. If that’s not enough, carry a physical reminder with you of how you will feel once you have achieved your goal or completed your task.
2. Keep your eyes on the prize
The name of this motivation hack immediately inserts the Rocky theme song into my head. Yeah I know that’s Eye of The Tiger but it sounds similar so just go with me here. About a year ago I saw an awesome pin on Pinterest that has stuck with me ever since:
You have to keep your eyes on the prize, on your long term goals and fulfillments.
Trust me, that double cheese burger will taste a whole lot better after you lose the 5 kgs you’ve been promising yourself to shed since Christmas… the year before last. Instant gratification has become the way of the world with convenience foods, communication and transportation placing every tantalizing tidbit of whatever our hearts desires right at our finger tips. But what our hearts truly need, where our biggest fulfillment and contentment actually comes from, are found in those goods placed way up high at the back of the tallest shelves. We have to reach up, we have to stretch, we have to get up on those tippy toes to try and grab it. These are the goals that mean the most to us. Yes they are challenging, yes they are scary but they are also a whole lot more satisfying once you can say, “yes I actually did it!”
On a completely related note, here’s another inspiring message I saw on Pinterest:
“If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.”
Truth.
3. Rope in an accountability buddy
It’s easy to lie to yourself but it’s not so easy to lie to your spouse, your best friend or your mother in law. Achieving your dreams and goals need not be a solo venture. Noble as that is, you can get a lot further with a little help from your friends. Froddo had Samwise, Batman had Robin, Harry Potter had Ron and Hermoine, you get what I am saying. Yeah they were the heros but their friends helped them to even higher heights.
Let someone close to you in on your plans and dreams. Telling someone about your goals makes them a lot more real and will put a little bit of extra oomph behind your commitment to achieving them. For me it was logging on to Medium this morning and seeing that Dreamer Do has 2K followers! I hadn’t posted for 2 weeks and this was just the motivation I needed to get back on it! There are people out there reading my posts and I owe it to them to keep writing and helping them in any way that I can.
Thank you to all of you dreamers.
So what’s your motivation? What are your real reasons for pursuing what it is that you are pursuing? And what will you do to keep yourself going? These are my top three tips but I would love to learn from you and add more ninja-style motivation hacks to our list.
❤ Dime for a Dream ❤
