Finding the thing that motivates you is one thing, (for me it’s XPPS, a home base business) but it is quite another to stick with it, to stay motivated. And even while you have already succeeded in identifying what motivates you, the temptation to accede to more powerful, more convenient, easier things like procrastination can sometimes seem overwhelming.
The key that’s lacking motivation or deliberately making yourself feel de-motivated, is that it’s a bad habit. You know something isn’t quite right when you resist or put off the things you know you need to be doing. Or, when you allow yourself to be overwhelmed by the power of procrastination when you have deadlines to meet. You know that something is going wrong inside you when the task you have to finish several days ago sits idly on your desk, untouched. You lack even the motivation to accept that you are not motivated. So how do you build your motivation from the ground up? Start with…
Identifying the things that zap out your motivation. It usually starts with very simple things in a very natural manner. Then it starts to affect the other aspects of your life, which are not entirely connected with the thing that triggered your lack of motivation. Maybe you just didn’t feel like getting up after your alarm went off one morning. The next day, you did the same thing and on and on until you developed the bad habit of not feeling motivated to do anything.
The first effective step to gaining back your sense of motivation is to figure out the thing or things that zap the energy out of you. It could be a small thing like not waking up in time or a really serious thing like hating everything about your job.
No matter what the form, you can identify the things that zap out your energy by their power to make you feel discouraged. Start with this simple exercise of listing down when you feel unmotivated and the particular things which you think makes you feel disheartened. This will help you gain some perspective on the entire issue. You can even derive solutions in simply knowing the cause. This will shed clarity on your issues with motivation.
Then you can move on to evaluating the risks and benefits of not feeling motivated. Believe me, there are benefits to having no motivation – immediate self-gratification in the form of rest, for one. And there are risks, for sure, plenty of them. And the risks oftentimes outweigh the benefits. Discovering the risks and benefits of not feeling motivated could be very enlightening. In general, you would realize that it is never worth it to procrastinate, to give in to the temptation of having to move a finger to finish your tasks, or to deliberately believe that it is much more gratifying to lie around and do nothing.
Finally, commit yourself to change. This is not easy, it never was. But try to set the date for mustering your sense of motivation.
Some things to help you stay motivated:
- Before you go to bed list the goals you plan for yourself for the following day.
- Find a motivational quote that you not only like but fits your situation, and read it several times to start your new day on the right footing.
- Surround yourself with like minded positive people and avoid as mush as possible negative people.
- Spend at least 60 minutes a day, doesn’t need to be all at one time, you could do four 15 minutes intervals reading Self Help books.
- Anything repeated over and over again becomes a habit. The choice is yours, whether it’s a GOOD habit or a BAD habit.
