“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” They call it willpower for a reason because few things are as powerful as the human mind when it’s fully motivated. Oftentimes the difference between completing a goal or consigning it to the graveyard of unachieved resolutions is a person’s motivation. A motivated person works through hardship, learns from setbacks, stays on the ball until the goal is achieved. That kind of stick-to-it mindset can take time and patience to cultivate, but if you follow these steps you’ll be well on your way to activating your motivation.
What Drives You?
One of the keys to motivating yourself is to understand WHY you want to do what you’re doing. What is driving you? Why is this goal or set of goals so important to you? How will it benefit you and change your life? What sacrifices might they require? Are they realistic? Is this something you can achieve, and if not what can you do to get yourself ready to pursue this goal?
It’s just as important to look forward as inward. Think about your future and what accomplishing these goals will do for you. Where do you want to be? Who do you want to become? How do you want to feel, look, live? Envisioning a future you that you can work toward becoming can be a very effective motivator.
Work SMARTer
If you’re having trouble staying motivated, it may be a clarity issue. How clear are your objectives? Do you see a path toward achieving your goals, or are you kind of winging it? A helpful framework to adopt when setting goals is SMART. The SMART framework is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Break your goals down SMART style and see if any of these steps are unclear to you. The last one in particular is important: a “beat the clock” incentive can be a great motivator. If you feel there’s a window of time or schedule you have to hit in order to complete your goal, that’s added motivation. The opposite can also be true: if you have no deadlines, there’s no urgency to get anything done. “I’ll do that someday,” most often becomes, “I never got around to it.”
Bit By Bit
It can be hard to stay motivated if you feel you don’t have enough time to do what you need to do. If you feel pressed for time, consider how you can break your goals down into smaller, more attainable tasks? Let’s say you want to get more steps in every day: you can use the 3 x 10 rule and do it three times a day for 10 minutes. Doing tasks for a short period of time but on a consistent basis can take you further than you think.
Breaking things down like this can also help prevent procrastination. Instead of putting it all off until the last minute, you’re doing a little bit every day. This can be very effective for studying in particular, as cramming everything you need to know the night before leads to poor memory retention. By studying for a small amount of time several times a week, you’re more likely to be able to recall that important information when you need it most.
Be Accountable
It can be easy to fall behind if you’re not keeping yourself accountable. Track your progress in a journal or app. Mark down and celebrate milestones as you reach them. Few things are as motivating as seeing and feeling tangible progress. That’s part of the value of tracking your goals: you can see, day by day, week by week, how close you are getting to your goal. The tracking also makes it harder to lie to yourself if you fall behind or get stuck in a rut.
Another way to motivate yourself is to have someone you can check in with. Declare your intentions to someone you trust who can check in on you as you work toward accomplishing your goals. Maybe they can even join you as a workout buddy, study group member, or accountability partner. If you don’t already have a mentor, finding someone who’s been through the work you’re doing now, who may themselves have struggled with what you’re struggling with, could really help you get ahead.
Treat Yourself
A great way to motivate yourself is to give yourself a reward when you complete a milestone. It could be anything: a nice meal, celebratory drinks with friends, a new book or video game, a day trip somewhere. The trick is that it has to be something you can look forward to, as the excitement and desire to have that experience will add fuel to the fire of your motivation.
Don’t Talk Yourself Out of It
Few things can demotivate faster than negative thoughts and unsparing self-criticism. Be kind to yourself. You have to believe you’re capable of achieving things in order to actually meet your goals. Negative thoughts whittle away at that self-belief like acid. What you want to cultivate is positive self-reinforcement. You want to develop a growth mindset and see yourself as a person who is evolving; what you don’t want is a fixed mindset where you see your strengths and weaknesses as fixed and immutable.
When you hit a setback, take it in stride. Reframe difficulties as challenges to overcome, failures as learning experiences to make you stronger and wiser for the next project. Remind yourself of your past successes to silence that little voice in your head that says you can’t do anything. Prove that little voice wrong.
Article by Austin Brietta
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