Let’s face it. We never achieve anything in life until we are motivated enough.
Without motivation, achieving our goals is next to impossible.
Just imagine trying to lose weight when you’re unmotivated. Without having any motivation, you can’t just start losing it (unless you chant some magical mantra that automatically makes you lose weight).
And do you know what the worst part is?
The feeling of being unmotivated gives a boost to unpleasant feelings such as guilt, procrastination, and stagnation. On the other hand, feeling motivated makes you feel full of energy, alive, and more focused on your goals in life.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that motivation is the factor that can make or break you in your professional life, too.
If you don’t have the motivation to excel at work, your work will always turn out to be mediocre, and you will never stand out from your colleagues.
As the title of this post suggests, the best way to get motivated is to do it yourself. Don’t wait for others to push you hard or to motivate you.
You alone have the power to motivate yourself. It’s your life, take ownership of it, don’t take a backseat, as no amount of motivation coming from others can be half as effective as you motivating yourself. You know yourself better than others, so you’re capable of motivating yourself better than others can.
Compiled below are a few helpful pointers to help you stay motivated.
1. Focus on Yourself, Don’t Compare Yourself to Others
Do you know the best way to give up hope? Just compare yourself to others; this will work as the quickest way to de-motivate you.
When you compare yourself to others, it means you don’t accept yourself or see any goodness in you, and making a comparison of yourself to others is an insult that can completely make you lose confidence in yourself, thereby giving up hope completely. Rather, you need to keep your focus on yourself ONLY.
You need to focus more on how you can improve yourself as a person than focusing more on others, and wasting your precious time and energy only to get de-motivated in the end.
As Judy Garland puts it,“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”
2. Live in the Present, Not in the Past
You must have often heard the phrase, “Live in the moment.” But what does it mean?
It means that you should live and enjoy the present moment, rather than dwelling on the past.
You won’t gain anything from looking back at the past, what has happened, has happened. What is done can’t be undone. Because according to Kay Lyons Stockham,
“Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have – so spend it wisely.”
We indeed tend to live more in the past than in the present. We focus too much on what has happened or might happen that we stop living in thepresent moment. While you can’t control your past or future, you can certainly take control of your present.
As Steve Maraboli rightly said,“Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness.”
3. Replace Negatives with Positives
Don’t let negativity get into your head.
It’s okay to allow yourself to express your emotions, but don’t spend a lot of time on them.
As we all know, negative thinking is unproductive and makes it almost impossible for you to let go of your past and focus on positives in your life.
Negative thoughts are the cause of self-sabotaging thoughts in your mind, which never let you live a happy, fulfilling life.
That’s why it’s extremely important to guard your thoughts, when a negative thought crosses your mind, push it away, or replace it with a positive one. Think of an accomplishment or the positives you have gained from experiences in life.
According to Willie Nelson, “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.”
4. Be more Organized, Create To-Do-Lists
Being organized can pay off in more ways than you can possibly think of. Initially, getting organized may appear tedious, but trust me, once you are more organized, things will start falling in place naturally.
And honestly speaking, when your workplace is more organized and clutter-free, not only will it greatly increases your productivity, it will also help you stay on the right track and help you stay motivated.
You can do the following things to be more organized.
· You can maintain a manual to-do-list.
· Set yourself reminders.
· Use online apps such as Trello, Google keep and Cortona
· Divide your work into smaller chunks with a dedicated deadline
· Categorize your tasks into “Urgent” and “Most Urgent.”
· Create long and short term goals.
5.Don’t Sit Idle, Take Action Every day
Believe it or not, sitting idle is the greatest source of de-motivation. An idle mind is said to be the devil’s workshop, so, make sure that you never sit idle. It can lead you to the road to de-motivation. A daily step towards your goals makes a real difference and accomplishment of your goals easier.
6. Take out Time to Reflect
While it’s extremely important for you not to dwell on the past, taking out time to reflect upon what has already been achieved will give you a sense of accomplishment and make you go on in perfect harmony. Often, we are too hard on ourselves, always criticizing ourselves, always looking at what’s left undone than noticing and admiring how much we have already achieved.
So, to motivate ourselves, we need to stop the negative self-talk and take out time to celebrate our accomplishments, appreciate our great efforts with a big pat on our back saying this aloud, “You made it, I am so proud of you.”
7. Embrace Your Failures as Much as You Embrace Your Success
Now, there’s one thing with failures – we don’t embrace them. Now, I know this one can be a tough nut to crack. We all feel like giving up when things are not going as planned or when we end up making a mess of things.
So, it’s important to keep in mind, while failure is inevitable, how we deal with it mainly depends on us. We have to make a smart choice here: should we see failure as a setback? Or can we learn from it, and do even better afterwards?
8. Don’t Worry, Work on the Solution
Honestly, we worry too much.
Perhaps, deep inside, we unconsciously believe that if we “worry enough,” we can prevent bad things from happening to us. Little do we realize the fact that worrying can affect our bodies in more ways than we can possibly think of. Worrying excessively can lead to high levels of anxiety and can even cause a person to be physically ill.
Worrying doesn’t solve any problem in the world. Instead of just worrying, it would be wiser to come up with an action plan, figure out what can be changed, and go ahead and change it. Once you are done with the solution, practice calmness, and carry on with your life.
9. Be Thankful for Criticism
To be honest, very few people dare to face criticism, especially when it comes to work or something that they worked hard at.
We might hate to receive criticism, but we can’t deny the fact that criticism allows us to grow so much.
What is criticism? It’s feedback. Without feedback, you can never learn or grow. Criticism opens our eyes to a new perspective or ideas that we may have otherwise overlooked or would never have considered.
Constructive criticism is crucial, whether it’s a thorough review of our work or a performance review, the feedback can give a boost to our performance (provided you take it positive), and help us grow a great deal by shedding light at every aspect of our work, and thereby giving us the opportunity for improvement.
So instead of making a great deal out of criticism or getting demotivated, we should rather be thankful for it as there’s no better way to improve than listening to people’s feedback.
If you ask me, being a writer, I am always ready for criticism. I always ask people to be honest with their feedback and rate my work accordingly. I even encourage them to go ahead and criticize my work. This is because I believe, for a person who wants to grow professionally, criticism serves as golden nuggets which help him/her improve a great deal.
Come to think of it, without criticism and feedback, how would you know what’s wrong with your work or what areas of your work can be improved upon?
10. Find Your Inspiration
Don’t expect others to motivate you. Let me break it to you, “You will have to find your own inspiration.” Nobody cares about the shit you are going through; everyone is busy fighting their own battles.
So, stop feeling pity for yourself or stop expecting someone else to inspire or motivate you.
You would have to do the hard work yourself. You have to somehow find ways to motivate yourself.
You need to find out what works best for you, and you have a number of options to pick from. You could try watching TED talk videos, enrolling in a self-development course, joining support groups, or traveling and exploring the world by yourself. You can also click here to get the full list of 12 Ways to Stay Motivated for extra tips to try out.
The bottom line is you just have to figure out ways to re-energize yourself and keep going.
“It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.” — Confucius
