10 Tips To Stay Motivated

Ever wake up with a hundred things on your to-do list, but after a few hours, you can't find the energy to keep going? It can be difficult to stay motivated when we are overwhelmed or feel that no matter how hard we try, it's never-ending.

We can lose motivation when at home or work, anywhere. Luckily there are some things that you can try to keep yourself motivated and power through any task.

1. Focus on the journey

Constantly focusing on the end results can keep us focused on success or failure. When we are fixated on the outcome, we can end up decreasing our motivation to perform a task. It is helpful to look at your journey, your effort into obtaining whatever goal you set, and completing whatever tasks you need to.

2. Break bigger goals into smaller goals

It can be easy to overwhelm ourselves with huge goals. It's good to have big goals, but it is easy to feel defeated if you don't have smaller goals to build up to it because accomplishing that goal can look like it is out of reach. Cutting your goals into easier steps can keep you motivated because small accomplishments add up.

3. Give yourself small, positive rewards

To keep yourself motivated, give yourself a reward. Working towards goals can be stressful and require a lot of work and effort. While you are making progress on accomplishing a goal at work or home, give yourself a little something. It can be a hot bath, food from your favorite restaurant, or anything that is special to you.

4. Use positive visualization

Visualization is extremely important and often overlooked. Positive visualization is used when we are practicing the law of attraction. It is seeing you accomplish your goal, visualizing what will happen and what that means for you. It is having this belief of accomplishment influence your subconscious mind, which will influence your thoughts and behaviors.

5. Don't get stuck on a schedule

Things sometimes won't happen when we want them to, and that's okay. A schedule is good to keep us organized or plan for our future, but if we fixate on accomplishing a goal or a life milestone by X date, not meeting the deadline can negatively affect us. Having a schedule is nice, but some things will come in their own time, and you are allowed to have a different schedule or timeline than someone else.

6. Use gentle self-talk

Being gentle with yourself, especially when handling a setback, is extremely important. When we are negative about ourselves and constantly put ourselves down, we start to expect failure and can end up reinforcing our own negative thoughts and behaviors.

7. Stay on track

When we have a lot on our plate, it is easy to become distracted. We get so caught up by other things that we never complete our original project. Constantly breaking our concentration slows us down because we have to refocus our train of thought. What can help with handling these distractions is creating a distraction list. When something pops up in your head, write down the details, then go back to working on your project. When you're done, take a look at your list and see if you need to take action on any of those ideas.

8. Create a support network

Support networks make a world of difference, both personal and professional. A support network can include other professionals in your business industry, people in your area, people who share a hobby, mentors, or personal-life professionals such as life coaches and therapists.

9. Hold yourself accountable

It is important to acknowledge when we make mistakes. We can get caught up in why there was a failure and the events leading up to it. It's easy to get caught up in the narrative of how others contributed to this problem and that we are trying as hard as we can. When we constantly focus on other people’s actions, we can begin to feel hopeless and that no matter how hard we try, we fail. But it is important to understand our own role in why we failed. This doesn't mean we should shoulder the entire burden, but to hold ourselves accountable for our role. When we understand what role we played, we can better understand what we can do to avoid these issues in the future.

10. Work on preventing derailment

Some people and situations distract us no matter what we say or do. That there are some situations that bring nothing but negativity into our lives. When we are looking to stay positive and motivated, we need to acknowledge who and what has the power to derail or affect our motivation and mental state. Once we identify certain people or scenarios that affect us, we can learn how to better manage or avoid them altogether.