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How to motivate yourself – four powerful ways to better motivate yourself
Submitted by RagsToRich on Wed, 2010-01-06 14:15
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To achieve your goals you must know how to motivate yourself. You have a strong dream, you create enough motivation, and then you act and make that dream happen. This article will offer you some great advice on how to do that.
Motivation is something which causes a person to act. Every action you have taken in your life you would have had motivation for. Even actions which seem unpleasant or even something you didn’t want to do; if you look closely at them you will see that you had some motivation for doing them. It is that motivation or the sum of your motivations which caused you to act.
The stronger that your motivation is towards something, the more eager you pursue it with action. Typically the goals which you are most strongly motivated to achieve you will act towards with the most vigour.
In addition, sometimes there may be things which you believe you wish yourself to do, yet you have trouble making yourself do them. The cause of this problem is that your motivation is not strong enough – in this case how do better motivate yourself?
Four major ways to better motivate yourself
1. Change what you’re doing – do something else.
Many people struggle to motivate themselves to work or to study. In-fact almost everyone at some point in their life can relate to having some difficult in making themselves crack down to study or work.
The truth is there can be one very simple answer to this problem.
Do something else instead
I think it's completely insane the number of people who believe that their career or study should be at all something unlikable.
This is your craft. It should not only be something you thoroughly enjoy, but you should aim for it to be the thing which you are most passionate about out of everything.
If you’re in college or university, maybe it’s time to seriously consider changing to another course.
It’s ridiculous the number of people I know who in their second or third year of university had an inclination that they were doing the wrong course, but decided to plough through anyway rather than change.
Of course two years later they were awarded with a poorly graded university degree which they didn’t really want anyway.
Whereas almost everyone I know who has ever began a university degree and then changed their course to something else at some point have not only almost exclusively been happy with their choice many years later, but in addition some of those people, myself included, count that decision as one of the best ones they ever made!
If you’re at work and you are struggling to do the things you think you should be doing, or if you believe the quality of your work is suffering, then, as is very often discussed in self-improvement circles, perhaps it’s time to think about changing your job.
Or even better, to begin working towards self-employment.
Think about what it is that you’re struggling to motivate yourself to do, and then think about doing something different instead. If you’re struggling for motivation at university, think about taking another course for a moment. If you’re struggling for motivation in your job, think about doing another job or starting your own business for a moment.
Do those alternatives fill you with a greater sense of value? Would you enjoy the alternatives better? Do you feel as if you would be more powerfully motivated for working at a higher rate of quality and productivity if you were doing those alternatives?
Well then maybe it’s time you took a look into really doing those alternatives.
2) Change your attitude towards what you are doing.
An alternative to the above is to change not what you are doing, but to change your attitude towards that thing.
If you believe that what you’re having to do is a necessary part of your true goal, or that for one reason or another finding an alternative it just not an option for you right now, then this is a better approach for you to take.
In order to change your attitude into something more positive will be attempting to do two things…
First, to eliminate or diminish all of the major causes of displeasure you have against taking said action.
One way of achieving this is to look at those actual real things, and to act to remove those things. I’ll provide an example of this in a minute.
Another way is to change the negative conceptions you may have of them. For more information of this it would be a good idea to read my article on Seeing the Best in Situations to learn some more about some techniques you can use to change your perspective towards some of the more negative aspects.
Second, to recognise new, or increase current positive motivations towards taking said action.
By focusing vividly on the rewards which you know you will have at some point from taking action you can powerfully positively motivate yourself.
Spend some time visualising those motivations, and then look into ways of reminding yourself of the rushing positive feelings which you associate with those rewards which you are doing the work/study/action which you are motivating yourself towards.
I used to have trouble getting out of bed in the mornings, particularly in winter. I no longer have that problem, and there are two major things which I did in order to overcome the problem.
A real example from my life
One of my major problems with getting up in the morning was how cold it was outside my bed. So I made sure that my heating came on earlier, and placed my dressing gown closer to my bed. I made it so that as much as possible I decreased the physical problem of it being cold outside my bed in the morning.
The other primary catalyst to fixing this problem was that around this time I had just begun to discover deep desires to visualising about the kind of future I really wanted to have.
All I had to do in the morning to get myself to leap to my feet was to send myself a quick flash of that image. That would cause the determination to rush through my body and send me into motion.
3) Keep yourself healthy emotionally.
It can be troublesome to get a poorly treated engine to start. Likewise someone who is ill or depressed is most likely to have a great deal more problems motivating themselves.
A sure sign of emotional malnutrition is an excessive feeling of stiltedness, stress or strain.
During intensive goal-pursuit the most common cause of emotional dysfunction is a lack of happiness and comfort.
Hitting the hammer harder on yourself or pushing yourself harder towards your goals is NOT the solution.
Taking exceptional care of yourself and ensuring your happiness
You must remember to take care of yourself, if you push yourself too hard without paying attention to your own emotional requirements then you may only end up causing set-backs for yourself.
People need to be comfortable and happy. The human body requires it for efficient operation. It’s as simple as that. If you’re not paying some attention to giving your own pleasure and contentment then things can begin to fall apart.
Take time to sit-back and relax with nothing on your mind, and then accept all the things you have and the way things are. Become completely comfortable with everything as it is.
Perhaps you need to take a few days or a week away from working towards your goals. Just take a few days to make yourself feel happy.
Surround yourself with your favourite people, fill your mind with the images of the things you love, feel the pleasure of having your own skin all over your body protecting you from the world around you, and develop towards yourself a great feeling of love and acceptance.
This would be an excellent time for you to look into taking up meditation as a habit, if you have not already.
4) Keep yourself healthy physically.
Likewise with the above, if the body is not in good shape then it will certainly cause motivational problems. As much as I’m sceptical of so-called traditional wisdom I have come to fully accept the saying healthy body, healthy mind.
I do not want to go into great detail of the things required to get the human body in good shape – not only is that a highly subjective and contestable topic but it’s also something which deserves a great deal of attention.
Needless to say that a good diet, good exercise, sufficient contact with sunlight, and eliminating bad habits which can cause damage to the body are some of the areas you may wish to investigate if you believe that physical health could be a cause of motivational problems for you.
Which option do you choose?
First and foremost, is the thing which you are motivating yourself towards really something that you genuinely want?
And by genuinely want, I don’t just mean some weak hairy-fairy basic idea of something which you think you should be doing or working towards.
I mean something which you really deeply truly desire to achieve! For a greater understanding of what I mean you can read my article on discovering deep desire.
If you discover that what you are struggling to work towards is not actually something you truly desire at all, then 1 is the option for you.
It is necessary to be very careful in how you examine your situation here. If you are considering 1 as an option you must be completely certain that the thing you are currently doing, be it work or study or some other task you are having difficulty doing, is not conductive towards the goal you ultimately desire.
If what you are struggling to motivate yourself towards is something you really do desire but you are still struggling to propel yourself into action for then you should look into all the suggestions made in 3, 4 and 5 above.
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It is really good for a
It is really good for a person to motivate yourself.
Re: How to motivate yourself – four powerful ways to better ...
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Re: How to motivate yourself – four powerful ways to better ...
Hi SJF,
There's no such thing as a person who is "not cut out" for anything. It's simple - do what you want to do.
I understand what you mean about online business, I have a few on the go myself and some have turned out to be quite limp - but it's all an experience which you can take and move on to the next.
Lottie,
I've sent you an e-mail, if you want my help let me know.
Rich
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