7 Tips on How to Getting and Staying Motivated

Get­ting moti­vated and stay­ing moti­vated isn’t such an easy task. Even peo­ple who are suc­cess­ful in busi­ness and in per­sonal rela­tion­ships fall into slumps and find it hard to get moti­vated from time to time.

If you’re in a slump right now, you know exactly what I mean. No mat­ter how many suc­cesses you’ve had in the past, it all seems irrel­e­vant now. It seems like no mat­ter how hard you try, no mat­ter what you do, you won’t be able to achieve your goals; and even if you do, you’re not sure that accom­plish­ing them will make
you feel any better.

For­tu­nately for you, no mat­ter how bad it seems right now, it doesn’t have to stay that way. You have a lot of options when it comes to break­ing free of your slump and get­ting motivated.

To help you get and stay moti­vated, I have detailed 7 tips in below that can help you get the tough work done, you can apply these tips to get your­self moti­vated, stay moti­vated, and achieve all of your goals, objec­tives and dreams.

So let’s get started, find the moti­va­tion you need, and break free of your slump!

1. Set a Goal

You may heard this many times, but still, when it comes to the topic of get­ting moti­vated, noth­ing is more impor­tant than set­ting goals. Set­ting goals allows you to fix your atten­tion on a sin­gle idea — some­thing that you truly want to achieve, but will not achieve in the near future.

Above all else, hav­ing goals allows you to visu­al­ize how your life will be dif­fer­ent when you accom­plish them. Per­haps your work­load will be lighter; or your appear­ance will improve; or your busi­ness will per­form bet­ter in the long run.

So start by set­ting some goals today. Decide what it is that you truly want to accom­plish; and then write that thing down on paper.

2. Ignore Obstacles

It’s true that the world is filled with many obsta­cles. And these obsta­cles often make it hard to accom­plish our goals. But what’s also true is that we suf­fer from cog­ni­tive biases that pre­vent us from tak­ing action sim­ply because obsta­cles exist. That is, we place an inor­di­nate amount of weight on the sig­nif­i­cance of obsta­cles, even if they aren’t that challenging.

So, from now on, ignore those obsta­cles. Don’t allow your­self to fix­ate on them; and don’t allow your­self to pro­cras­ti­nate when you think about how dif­fi­cult the chal­lenges will be. Instead, you should stay fixed on your goals; and pre­tend that the obsta­cles don’t exist. When it’s time to con­front them, deal with them then, but before that, sim­ply pre­tend that they don’t exist and push for­ward with your goals.

3. Think in Terms of Benefits

When you think about your goals, try to visu­al­ize the ben­e­fits that will come from them. Focus­ing on ben­e­fits, rather than abstract goals will help you to under­stand how accom­plish­ing your goals will pal­pa­bly improve your life.

For instance, when you think about a goal, you might consider:

1) How accom­plish­ing it will make you feel
2) How accom­plish­ing it will improve your busi­ness
3) How accom­plish­ing it will make you richer
4) How accom­plish­ing it will your sched­ule freer, so that you have more free time to spend with your family

Focus­ing on these ben­e­fits will help you develop a clearer, stronger ratio­nal­ize for accom­plish­ing your goals.

4. Rel­ish Small Victories

Stay­ing moti­vated is often harder than get­ting moti­vated in the first place. This is why it is impor­tant to find daily ways in which you can cel­e­brate your achieve­ments; and use these achieve­ments to gain momen­tum, so that you can stay moti­vated in the long run.

You can start by defin­ing your goals more clearly. Decide exactly what it is that you want to accom­plish; and then break those goals down into a series of objec­tives that you want to achieve along the way.

When each time you achieve one of these objec­tives, you should make it a point to cel­e­brate your suc­cesses. Give your­self a small reward, take a break, or let oth­ers know about what you have accom­plished. This will make you feel bet­ter about your­self; and will rein­force your achieve­ment of addi­tional objectives.

5. Cre­ate a Detailed Plan

Con­fu­sion and dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion often makes it hard to get moti­vated. When we don’t know what’s com­ing next, it’s hard to move from step to the next with­out get­ting lost. Instead, we have to fol­low an entirely ad hoc path. At each point in time, we must make new deci­sions about what we should be doing; and if we haven’t thought it out in advance, there’s a good chance these will be bad decisions.

This is why it is impor­tant to map out a detailed plan before you attempt to achieve some goal. As soon as you have a break in your sched­ule, you can look at the plan to find out what you should do next. This will pre­vent you from sit­ting around for long peri­ods of time with­out any work to occupy you.

Another ben­e­fit of hav­ing a detailed plan in advance is that it will emerge from long-term think­ing and con­sid­er­a­tions. This is much more likely to lead you in the right direc­tion than a plan that emerges from minute-to-minute con­sid­er­a­tions with­out focus­ing on where you should be at the end of the day.

6. Start Small

When­ever you set goals, you should always start small. If you accom­plish your small goal too quickly, you can always set another. But if you get stuck on a “big” goal that you can’t accom­plish, chances are you will give up, and per­haps with­out mak­ing any progress towards the smaller goals.

So start small. If you’re learn­ing to play the gui­tar, learn one chord at time. Get good at that and then move to the next. If you’re learn­ing how to do cal­cu­lus, set a small goal of work­ing through text­book chap­ter every two weeks. Or if you’re plan­ning to boost traf­fic to an Internet-based busi­ness you own, then set a goal to increase your traf­fic by 10% over the course of the next month.

Again, aim small. If the goal turns out to be too easy, then you’ll only be more encour­aged by your progress when you sur­pass your goal eas­ily. But if you start out big, you could find your­self highly discouraged.

7. Think Positively

Think­ing pos­i­tively may sound like generic advice that has no value, but in fact, it is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of suc­cess in our life, our per­sonal rela­tion­ships, and our work. Think­ing pos­i­tively shapes how you see the world, how you make deci­sions, and how you feel about those deci­sions at the end of the day.

So, next time you start think­ing “I can’t do this,” think again, it will be much bet­ter to start with the premise of that YOU CAN DO IT; and then fig­ure out how. For instance, maybe you can’t do the task by your­self, but if you ask for the help of oth­ers, you may find that the task is trivial.

No mat­ter what you do, don’t give in to neg­a­tiv­ity. Think­ing neg­a­tively will drain your moti­va­tion; and make it much harder to achieve your goals.