How to motivate yourself! 10 secrets to keep motivated for a long time.

Even the most motivated people sometimes lose their motivation to do something in life. This is normal, after all, we are humans who get so much affected by negative emotions, bad circumstances or some other negative feelings. But even in these situations, we need to try to find a motivation to continue doing things that we started and move forward.

Many people have their own techniques, rules, secrets, methods… or whatever you may call it. We call them secrets that help people stay motivated.

How to find your motivation? How to keep yourself motivated long enough? or at least until you finish your project?

A lot of us ask these questions, and honestly, everybody goes through some time when they lack the power to carry on. The best motivation is the “self-motivation”. In this article, we will be talking about how to self-motivate yourself the best, and how to maintain your self-motivation for a longer time.

These 10 secrets will help you stay motivated for a long time, or at least until you finish your project.

 1. Split your main goal/project into smaller goals/tasks.

This rule works for some projects, or just for some goals which you want to achieve.  When you think about one big project/goal, you need to have some plan for realizing it. A more detailed plan is always better. Don’t forget to consider some extra time and resources for unpredictable and unexpectable situations that might come up.

Your plan should have a deadline. You should be strict on planning “when to finish your project” or “achieve your goal”. Try to set deadlines for each task of your plan. It should be realistic based on your time and resources. It is hard to become successful in one day, but you can start working on it and have a vision on how you want to achieve it, and what you need for it. When your detailed plan is ready, you know which step you should take and how much time you can spend on it. It will keep you motivated to be in time and not to waste any extra time which can be used productively.

Sometimes in our daily life, we might have so many plans to do, which we don’t even get the motivation to start doing them because we know it will take forever, so we just postpone them for some other time. But if we achieve one task per day from our list, then our to-do list will start getting shorter and shorter until we do it all.

Try it some time, it is very simple, just write your to-do list for a whole week and try to make a daily plan for the tasks of the day, and you will see that you will achieve your goal after one week.

2. Add some fun to your daily tasks.

Not important if your main goal is to start a new business or to lose some weight, just add some fun to it. If you will have more pleasure doing it, you will want to continue. You want to lose weight and you don’t like to go to the gym but you like to dance? Then go take some dancing classes instead. Change your activity to something that you like and enjoy doing. This gives you motivation, and you will want to continue doing it. Life is so wonderful, you can enjoy doing what you like, and receive the same results.

3. Get inspiration from success stories of successful people.

Stories of successful people will give you the motivation to succeed in life. Follow some of their habits and rules to achieve your goal faster or to get better results. Every day, read inspiring stories, books or articles. This will motivate you to achieve the same success as other successful people.

4. Take short breaks.

 Short breaks can increase your productivity. I suggest you follow this easy pattern 45-15-45. That’s 45 minutes of hard work, followed by a 15 minutes break, and then 45 minutes of very active work. Alternate your time between work and rest patterns, it will make you feel better and you will have better results. A bit of rest during the working process is always very important and very essential.

5. Think about the results that you will get at the end.

A lot of goals are very hard to achieve and they take a lot of effort. Most of the time, you need to spend a lot of time before you start seeing some results of your work. Therefore, instead of thinking about how much effort it takes to realize your plan, you should think about the reason why you started it, what motivated you in the beginning, which results you will achieve at the end and how these results will positively affect your life.

6. Reward yourself for achieving every small task of your goal.

Let’s be realistic, it may take years to build a successful business, or to get a perfect body shape, or to buy a new house… To be able to maintain the motivation and the energy to continue, you need to reward yourself every once in a while, when you achieve a certain task of your plan. For example, you’re on a strict diet and you lost 3 kilograms – Congratulations, you can treat yourself with a nice massage. You saved 10% of a new house value – Congratulations, you can reward yourself and go buy yourself some new clothes.

7. Remember your moments of success and triumph.

Your previous successful achievements will always remind you of who you are and why you should realize more success. Always remember when you were successful the most when you achieved great results. Remember these moments and you will always be proud of yourself and have more and more self-confidence. These great moments in life should be your main motivation to continue and perform in the best way to always achieve better outcomes.

8. Compete with yourself.

If you compare yourself with others, you can get discouraged. When you continuously compare your results to somebody else’s results, it can break your enthusiasm. Your best competitor is YOU. Compete with who you were yesterday and try to become better today. Every day, try to achieve a bit more than the day before. This is how you can keep improving.

9. Keep your goal in front of you all the time.

Write down your goal and make sure to keep it somewhere where you can see it. Choose some words that remind you of your goal, such as “Exercising for 30 minutes daily to get a perfect shape”, or choose some picture instead, such as a photo of somebody that has the perfect body which you dream to have. Keep it on your phone or computer screen, in your bedroom, on your fridge, or anywhere where you can repeatedly see it throughout the day so it would remind you every time about your goal. A continuous reminder of your goal will keep you motivated to achieve it faster.

10. Create your affirmation.

It shouldn’t be too long, but it should inspire and motivate you. It can be anything you like, you believe in, which gives you energy when you say it to yourself. For example, it can be as simple as “I will be successful and I will achieve it”, or “I can do it and I will do it”. I am sure you can have a lot of ideas for your affirmation which will work the best for you.

Being motivated is very important. You can achieve almost everything when you feel motivated. It is your life and you put the rules on how you live it. You and only you can feel which things motivate you the most. Try different practices and choose the best for you.

Please share with me what keeps you motivated.

Share this article with your friends, help them to stay motivated too, perhaps some of them really need it now.

Yours,

Yulianna