How many times have you started a project and never followed it through to its end? How many times have you taken another jab at a previously failed endeavour? For most of us its quite a few. What do you do if you find yourself in such a situation? How do you stay motivated to attain your goal?
At its heart, the answer to that question is yourself, or rather self-motivation. This isn’t necessarily as easy as it sounds. There are however things that you can do that can help in a big way. Here are few steps you can take to get yourself motivated again.
Build a Business Around Your Passion
If you try and work in an industry that bores you, it will be hard for you to find the motivation you need to succeed. This is because you aren’t passionate about what you are doing. Therefore, it is vital to build your career and business around something you genuinely love. By doing so, you can literally wake up every
morning motivated simply because you love what you do and you get to share it with like-minded people, be it fellow colleague or customers. While you still run a risk of eventual burnout, especially if what you do is repetitive, you won’t really have to dig too far to get your motivation back.
Always Establish Short-Term and Long-Term Goals Together with a Personal Reward System
The key to success and staying motivated are clearly defined and manageable goals. Not only do they give you something to work towards, defined goals give your ideas a focused direction and serves as a vital step between planning and execution.
A good practice is to purchase a whiteboard and place it in a prominent location in your office. List down each of your short and long-term goals; crossing out each one as you complete them. This way, your goals literally stare you in the face on a daily basis. This constant visualization will keep you focused on your goals as well as provides a broad view of your progress so far.
Another great way to stay motivated is to set up a reward scheme for yourself. Tie up each of your goals to a reward proportional to the task at hand and add them to your list. These can be as simple as a treating yourself to meal you really like or maybe even a holiday you always wanted to take or the car of your dreams at one of the larger milestones. Setting clearly defined goals will help you monitor your progress and the rewards at each milestone will provide you with constant motivation.
Lay Out a Plan
A vision without a plan is nothing but a dream. Once you have your goals and rewards in place, a plan is what will help take your targets and overall vision and break it down into the steps you need to get it done. Set a clearly defined, yet achievable, time limit for each activity, together with the time required to assemble your resources and materials required. This will give you a direction to focus on, a clearly defined path and time frame, and a goal. Another important factor is distractions. Avoid these at all costs. Keep your workplace uncluttered and stay organised. Create a calming environment to give yourself the best chance of success.
Stay Optimistic and Committed to the End Goal
If you want to succeed, you must create a clear compelling vision, something that you can relate to and resonate with. Creating a mental image of you succeeding is a powerful phycological technique that can make even the worst of tasks feel like part of achieving something grander.
Things won’t always go your way and there are chances a task or goal can fail. However, remember that failure can be your best teacher. Some of the greatest discoveries in history have been made on the backs of previously failed attempts. Furthermore, staying optimistic at all times keeps your focus on just the positive aspects of your endeavour and helps you stay motivated towards achieving your ultimate goal. Positive thoughts always lead to positive actions, and self-affirming statements will help you to achieve your best. The minute you start to bring negative thoughts in, you will see your forward momentum immediately come to a screeching halt.
Take control of how you think, how you feel, how you act. Never let emotions and negativity cloud your judgment. And if you ever fail, just pick yourself back up and look at your task with a fresh perspective and renewed energy. Remember, all that’s happened is you found an approach that does not work, and all you need is a new approach that does.
Get in the zone
One of the most important things you need to do once you set out on a task is to starve yourself of all distractions. Rid yourself of everything you know that gets you distracted. Create an environment that will help you maximise your efficiency and productivity and get “in the zone”. And once you get started, don’t stop until your task is done. Also, avoid multitasking. Doing so forces you to divide your attention. Just stay focused on one task till it is done to maximise your chances of success