Do you feel like staying in bed all day to watch your favorite series?
We all have those days when we lack motivation – and that’s okay.
But when procrastination becomes the habit over self-motivation, then you have a problem.
Unfortunately, this is the case for most people. Look at New Year’s resolution statistics for example. 23% Give up after the first week, and only 9 achieve success.
Why do we feel motivated, set goals for ourselves, and then give up weeks or months later?
If you feel like you struggle a lot with motivation too, there’s hope!
Think about any successful person you admire – entrepreneurs, athletes, movie stars, you name it – and know that they were once beginners and struggled with motivation too.
When you listen to their stories, they’ve often gone through major setbacks and have failed many times before they achieved success.
You see, it’s not about how often you get down. It’s about how often you get back up again.
Self-motivation is a skill that you can learn and develop.
So if you want to become unstoppable at taking action and defeat procrastination, then you must master the art and science of motivation.
Look, I’ve struggled with motivation too and I know it’s not an easy ride. The matter of fact is that I still suffer from a lack of motivation sometimes.
But throughout my journey, I’ve developed the skill set to create self-motivation. And in this article, you’ll dive deeper into the strategies that I’ve learned to get back on track faster.
First, we dive a little bit into the anatomy of motivation. And then you’ll learn the tools and strategies that I’ve used to get and stay motivated.
Let’s dive in!
Best Guides to Boost Motivation
- Goal-setting: the definitive guide
- Become a massive action taker
- How to overcome any challenge?
- The definitive guide to overcoming procrastination
What is Motivation Anyway?
Before we dive into the strategies on getting and staying motivated, we need to address the meaning of motivation first. Because what does being motivated even mean?
Wikipedia provides a great answer:
In simple terms, there are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Extrinsic motivation is the motivation for a specific result or reward. For example, you may want to work hard in your job to get a salary raise or promotion.
Intrinsic motivation is the motivation that lacks a clear reward, but you do it because it gives you personal satisfaction.
Two internal forces drive your motivation: pleasure and pain.
Pain is often the greatest motivation for people to make a change in their life. Because you’re always deciding between what’s more painful:
- Putting in the effort and making a change
- Or doing other things and not making a change
Though we often know we should make a change, it’s not as easy as it sounds. But when your mind believes that the pain of making a change is less than the pain you experience right now, that’s when you’ll feel motivated to make a change.
Pleasure is the other side of motivation. If you want the pleasurable state bad enough, that’s also a great motivator for change.
In both cases, there’s a desire. And the more emotional leverage you can build to increase your desire, the easier it becomes to motivate yourself.
That’s a vital element to getting and staying motivated.
Why is Motivation Important?
A habit is a great force that drives effortless action. But to build a habit, you first need to take action with effort. The more motivated you are to take action, the easier it becomes to create the habit.
In simpler terms, motivation is the fuel that gets you started to develop a habit.
Motivation is like rocket fuel. Rockets burn through tons of fuel in a short time to speed up and reach enough escape velocity to break through Earth’s gravity.
That’s how motivation relates to building a habit too. You need to put in consistent effort for a little while before the action becomes a habit. Though you might still need some motivation after you’ve developed the habit, you’ll need much less of it.
Now that you understand the basics of motivation, it’s time to address the enemies.
The Triple Threat to Motivation
The 3 enemies to motivation are the counter forces that slow you down from getting momentum.
And you’re most likely familiar with all three of these:
These 3 enemies are always lurking to stop you from taking action.
The interesting part about these three enemies is that they live inside your head. And these aren’t enemies in the same way as you know enemies from movies. These enemies are actually on your team.
These are your defense mechanisms to keep you alive. And a healthy dose of them is very beneficial. So why are these the enemies of motivation?
Well, these defense mechanisms receive too much credit and influence over your decisions. To the extent that these mechanisms drive short-term actions that cause long-term dissatisfaction.
Let’s take control back over your defense mechanisms so that you can become self-disciplined to survive in the short term and thrive over the long run.
Self-Doubt
Self-doubt is the lack of self-confidence in your abilities.
Self-doubt is the result of negative reinforcement over time. As you grow older, your ego develops and protects you from taking risks.
You listen to your parents who believe they know is best for you. You listen to your teachers and friends who tell you what you’re good at and what you suck at. And eventually, you start listening to the opinions of people that don’t even know you.
Self-doubt often comes from the many voices you picked up throughout life. But you can reverse and recondition these internal voices.
Start doing the small things that you’re not sure you can accomplish. Show yourself that you can. That feels a bit scary but you have to show yourself that you can do it. This builds the motivation to take more positive action.
Slowly, you’ll conquer the voice of self-doubt. Don’t expect this to happen overnight, because you developed doubt over a longer period too.
As long as you keep taking action to prove to yourself that you can do it, you’ll destroy self-doubt.
Fear
Fear is the second enemy to motivation and a companion of self-doubt. Fear arises when your mind is considering the possible outcomes in the future.
Even if these outcomes have an almost 0% likelihood of happening.
Fear is a great survival mechanism that helped us survive as a species. Yet, fear has gotten way too much power in most people’s minds.
So powerful that it leads people to steer away from the action and look for their comfort zone. And when this happens, your motivation fades away and the quality of your life begins to suffer.
Breaking fear is pretty simple in concept: do the things you’re fearful about.
In reality, it’s a bit harder than that. The trick then is to overcome the small fears in your life fears. That way, you learn that the fear in your head is much bigger than the reality of life.
When you break through the boundaries of fear, you’ll get super motivated.
Procrastination
The final enemy of motivation is procrastination. Procrastination is that great ability (sarcasm applied) that helps you to avoid doing a task or activity that you know you should be doing.
Everyone procrastinates from time to time. We delay short-term pain – the pain of making the effort to take action – at the cost of long-term satisfaction.
Sometimes, procrastination is beneficial. For example, when you focus on doing more important tasks first.
But more likely, you procrastinate in a way that’s not beneficial.
And when procrastination becomes a habit, that’s when you start to lose momentum. You’ll experience lower levels of self-confidence, guilt, and even depression.
So what’s the point of procrastination?
Research shows that your mind makes many calculations to make the right decisions. One of which is to bring pleasurable activities forward and avoid doing the activities that demand effort.
After all, thousands of years ago, we needed to decide where to spend our efforts to maximize our chances of survival. You needed the energy to collect food but also to run for predators for example.
Those survival instincts are still hardwired in your DNA. And your brain has a tough time conceptualizing future satisfaction versus short-term sacrifices. That’s why your mind chooses pleasure today over satisfaction tomorrow.
What helps to defeat procrastination are habits.
And what helps to build habits is motivation.
So let’s start to get motivated to defeat procrastination, build habits, and create your destiny.
How You Can Get Motivated
When you feel motivated, you have a more positive attitude in general. And when you feel more positive, you’ll make more positive decisions and get into a can-do attitude.
Just do it
– Nike
To get motivated, you have to understand the game you’re playing. And the game of motivation plays between your ears.
That’s why the majority of the following tips to get you motivated, will help you to get your mind in the right place.
Keep in mind though, that the following tips should become habits that help you to create new habits. So take your favorite tips and practice these often. Spend a short amount of time every day. That way, you recondition your mind to get motivated every single day.
Let’s dive into the tips.
Tip 1: Create a Burning Desire
Napoleon Hill speaks about a desire for being the starting point of all achievements in his famous book: Think and Grow Rich.
And he’s not only talking about money. He means any type of richness, from job satisfaction to your relationships, health, and more.
With a burning desire, you feel alive and very motivated to take action.
What is something you desire? If you could make a wish, what would you wish for?
Most people wish for a better life, but don’t experience enough emotions to get the leverage to take action. So answer these questions to turn your desire into a burning desire:
- Why is it necessary that you go after this desire?
- What is the price you’ve to pay if you don’t follow through?
- How will you feel if you go after it versus not doing anything?
- What will you lose by not going after your desire?
Go over your answers again but now add some emotional intensity to it. Imagine what happens if you go after your desires versus what happens if you don’t.
Feel your motivation grow as you keep reinforcing this with high emotional intensity.
Tip 2: Question Yourself “What If”
Let’s stay with the emotional intensity for a second. Though pain is a negative emotion, it’s the most powerful leverage for people to make a change.
Do you know some stories about people who almost die, survive, and then make a 180 degrees turnaround in their lifestyle?
That’s because they’ve experienced enough pain to finally make the change. To finally quit smoking, stay off sugar, or start living their purpose.
Imagine that you are lying on your deathbed, looking back at your life and this moment especially.
How would you feel if you didn’t make the change today? How you always told yourself that you’ll start tomorrow, knowing that day never came.
If you live through this image and feel the experiences, don’t you feel motivated to take action right away?
The worst question to ask yourself when you’re older is this: “what if”?
Start making your decisions as if you’ve got a limited time on earth. Stop habitually putting things off until tomorrow. Start making a small step every day. No matter how small, every little thing helps you to build momentum.
If you feel motivation drifting away, ask yourself the question “what if”?
Tip 3: Affirm Your Why
Let’s move back to positive reinforcement and amplify some positive emotions. What would your life look like if you take action and make a change?
Now ask yourself the question: why do you want this to happen? For example, if you want to work for yourself, why is that?
Do you want it to have more freedom in your working hours? Or do you want to have full control over your business?
The reason why you want it is important.
When you know your “why”, imagine yourself in this scenario.
What would your life look like? How would you design your day? And how would you feel as a result of it?
Amplify the positive emotions that you’re feeling as you visualize your future. Practice this every day to experience a daily uplift in your motivation.
Tip 4: Discover Your Purpose
A purpose boosts motivation because it focuses on two important aspects:
- What you find important in this world;
- Your bigger contribution to the whole.
A purpose also serves as your beacon of light in moments where you get off track. This also helps you to make the best decisions.
Having a purpose is also a great way to stay motivated. Because people are often willing to walk the extra mile when they know that others depend on them – where they would give up if their goal focused only on themselves.
Tip 5: Set Goals
A plan molds your desires and dreams into a step-by-step framework that motivates you to take action.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
– Benjamin Franklin
The best way to get motivated is by having that bigger purpose we talked about. Also, you may have many other big goals that you want to achieve.
Besides your big goals, it’s also important to break these up into smaller goals. These bitesize goals should motivate you to take action straight away.
These smaller goals should focus on progress, not achieving results. For example, instead of focusing on having 50 people to read your blog, focus on reaching out to 50 people.
These process-oriented goals are 100% in your control, which motivates you to keep taking action.
Also, goal setting in general helps you to stay motivated because;
- Goals provide clarity;
- Goals provide actionable steps;
- Goals have a deadline, which reduces the temptation to procrastinate.
If you haven’t set goals yet, I recommend you to read this guide on goal setting.
Tip 6: Start Small to Build Prove
If you’ve followed along on the first 5 steps, it’s time to start taking action.
Look, if you don’t feel ready that’s normal. And creating an action plan is a great idea. But don’t let overplanning, researching, or visualizing become a strategy for procrastination.
You are ready!
If you feel motivated but still a bit too worried about taking your first steps, start small. It’s better to start small and take baby steps than never starting at all.
Make up your bed for example.
Though this may not align with your bigger goals or purpose, making your bed is the first step to show yourself that you can put yourself to action.
And though it’s a small task to do, you’ll feel greater afterward.
Another great way that I use a lot is to start my day with 10 to 15 minutes of yoga. Not only does this help me to achieve something else that day, but it also loosens up the muscles.
I like to do these small things early in my day so that I can already feel good about myself.
Then use that momentum to do a bigger task. If you can set yourself to work on your dreams every day – especially in the morning – that’s a great boost to your motivation.
Tip 7: Connect with Like-Minded People
The great motivational speaker Jim Rohn said this about the importance of your social circle:
You’re the average of the five people spend the most time with
Although this quote is somewhat exaggerated, there’s a truth behind the statement. The mindset and attitudes of those you spend the most time with rub off on you.
So if you want to get motivated, find positive people with a can-do attitude. Also, connect with like-minded people or those who are on the same journey as you.
It’s important to audit who you allow to influence your mind. You want to protect your headspace from people who negatively influence you – even if they do so unintentionally.
You don’t have to cut them out, instead, become aware of this so you can navigate yourself better.
How You Can Stay Motivated
You get motivated and feel pumped to take action. You’ve got motivating goals that drive you to take action. You’re even already making some good steps towards your dreams.
But then something happens.
You start to feel that your progress is slowing down. Challenges seem to become more difficult and you find yourself staying in bed more often.
Your motivation is decreasing.
Adversity, setbacks, and plateauing happen to everyone sooner or later – no matter how much experience you got. You will feel unmotivated sometimes.
Progress in life isn’t a linear line.
So what can you do to stay motivated even when that happens?
Let’s dive into the methods for unbreakable motivation.
Tip 1: Visualize Your Success
In how to get motivated you learned about purpose, burning desires, and affirming your “why”.
And to stay motivated it’s a great idea to condition yourself with a daily practice. To remind yourself why you do this through a conscious exercise to experience the pleasurable states as if you’ve already achieved it.
Visualizing is a great exercise to achieve this. Think about the following questions and imagine the answers in your mind:
- Why did you get started in the first place?
- How would you feel if you succeed?
- How would your life change as a result?
- What would happen if you would quit now?
- How would you feel if you would quit now?
- On your deathbed, would you regret not persisting?
These questions are powerful because they cover the whole spectrum of emotions. And when you can attach enough pain to staying the same and pleasure to change, that increases your leverage.
This is the leverage that keeps your desire burning, which we discussed earlier. And it’s the big difference between those who give up and those who succeed.
So if you want to stay motivated, start visualizing.
Tip 2: Focus on Your Actions – Not the Results
People often lose in life when they start to worry about things that are outside of their control in the short-term.
How often do we look at numbers to determine how we feel?
The number of likes on your most recent Instagram picture is a great example.
Why attach your feelings to results that you do not control?
It’s not strange that we do this though. Businesses are built around increasing profits today with bonuses for key figures if they hit their short-term targets.
The whole world seems to focus on short-term gratification.
We buy clothes that we never wear. We listen to the news of today that seems urgent, while we already forgot about the news of yesterday. And we speak about success when the price of Bitcoin went up 10% overnight.
But focusing on the short-term comes at a price.
Your emotions fluctuate more. Good results today? Happiness. Bad results? Depression.
But the more important question is this: do short-term results matter?
Or does it matter more what you do every day? Exercising daily. The amount of money you habitually invest. And putting in consistent action to get closer to your goals.
When you make this subtle shift, you’ll find it much easier to stay motivated.
Tip 3: Manage Your Expectations
The reason why many people lose motivation is that they have the wrong expectations.
A great example is when people decide to lose weight. Without the help of a coach, many set weight goals that are difficult to reach.
Rather than slowly changing their lifestyle, most people dive into an unsustainable diet.
And when the numbers on the scale don’t match the expectation, people get upset.
This is a deadly cocktail that causes people to lose motivation and self-confidence. And it can even cause people to feel worse than before they started.
It’s important to have the right expectations.
If your expectations aren’t met, try to understand why. Were your expectations unreasonable? Did something happen in the process that you could improve upon?
Instead of judging yourself, try to learn from your experience. That’s a much better attitude to maintain your motivation.
Tip 4: Face Fears and Obstacles
Do you shy away from big opportunities to grow? Most people do. The reason is that these opportunities always come with a degree of discomfort.
But stepping outside your comfort zone is the fastest way of self-improvement.
And when you take these leaps, your motivation gets a boost too. Because when you finished doing something that scared the living hell out of you, that’s very exciting.
You’ll feel fired up and your confidence reaches new heights.
So if you have the chance to get outside your comfort zone, accept these opportunities before you can think about them. Because once you start thinking, fear gets a chance to kick in.
If someone at work asks you if you want to give the presentation, accept immediately. Because once you commit, you’ve got no way out. That’s when you force yourself to push through fear and expand your comfort zone.
Showing yourself that you can take personal risks and survive is a great way to boost your motivation and confidence.
Tip 5: Accept & Appreciate Boredom
When you want to become seriously good at specific skills, you’ll have to practice relentlessly. And this may cause you to become bored with the process.
When this happens, you’ll just have to trust the process and keep grinding.
Mastering any skill takes effort, patience, and hard work. That’s why it’s important to keep in mind why you do this, something we went over in many of the tips throughout this article.
You simply won’t always feel motivated.
But when you take action despite a lack of motivation, that’s when you’ve established the habit. And habits are powerful tools to achieve your goals and dreams.
When you learn to appreciate boredom, you allow yourself to stay consistent, increase personal power, and achieve success.
Tip 6: Self-reflecting
Self-reflection is a great way to boost motivation and improve performance.
Researchers looked at the difference between people who started a self-reflection exercise for 15 minutes every day versus those who did not. And those who did increase their performance by 23% within the first 10 days.
This group of people also felt more productive and happier. Both of which are great for maintaining motivation over the long term.
Here’s what you can focus on when practicing self-reflection:
- The decisions you made;
- The actions you took;
- And how you reacted to situations.
If you need more help, check out this list of questions to ask yourself. It’s a great way to improve self-awareness, productivity, and motivation, at the same time.
Tip 7: Develop Strong Relationships
You can’t underestimate the impact of strong relationships to maintain your motivation.
And once you connect with positive and like-minded people, it’s important to develop and nurture these relationships.
Because it’s these relationships that give you a sense of belonging. And it’s those types of friendships that increase your happiness.
Develop a genuine interest to help these people succeed with their goals.
And they’ll be rooting for you on your journey too.
The more you focus your energy on nurturing those important relationships, the more you’ll get introduced to new people and opportunities.
And that’s an amazing way to keep your motivation up.
Tip 8: Trust the Process
To get success in life, you need to stay consistent and persistent over a very long time.
Most days, you’ll feel like you’re not making much progress or feel bored.
Some days, you’ll experience breakthroughs.
Days will come that you feel super motivated and excited to start your day. And there will be days where you feel like staying in bed. You’ll have days with results and days with “failures”.
It’s all part of the process.
That’s why it’s super important to get motivated at the beginning and start working on creating the habit. Because the habit will help you in mastering the skill even in times where you feel less motivated.
It’s all part of the process.
Motivation Is What Gets You Started
What do you do if motivation wears off and you stayed in bed all day?
This happens to everyone, so it’s a very valid question.
First of all, don’t beat yourself up. Because doing so is a recipe for disaster.
Secondly, take some time to reflect on your day. Why didn’t you feel motivated today? Can you find a cause for this effect? Increasing self-awareness is a great way to stay motivated.
When you get up and get back on track, that’s what makes the difference in your life. And ultimately, that’s how you achieve personal success.
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Best Book List to Become More Motivated
- Best books about motivation in general
- Best books about fear and overcoming it
- Best books on discipline, willpower, and self-control