The importance of Motivation

When dealing with goals and getting things done motivation surely plays a very important role. It’s motivation that makes you do things you have never imagined possible and it’s motivation that keeps you from doing easy and more pleasing actions. When you are highly motivated you can reach almost every goal, nothing can stop you, you can see clearly where you are going and what you want to get and so you keep moving toward it.

When you lack motivation instead you will most likely fail. Every little problem will look like the hardest one, every step will seem huge to take. And so, since the path to your goal will get harder and harder you will slowly forget about your dreams  and settle to the easier status quo.

It might seem that when talking about motivation we talk about our future, about things that we will possibly get, but in reality talking about motivation means talking about the present moment. When you are really motivated you see yourself in the future, you have already achieved your goal, but at the same time you are aware of the present moment and therefore you try to get the best out of your time in order to get closer and closer to what you want to achieve. Motivation is like an input that gives shape to your life and thoughts, it helps you to understand the passing of time and the importance of using it in the best way possible.

When we have no motivation we see no possible changes in our lives, we are static and so we are not willing to work hard and to do sacrifices. When you lack a goal or something to achieve in the future you don’t see any reason to keep getting better and so you are more likely to waste your time in actions that gives you just temporary pleasure and joy. But hard work always pays off, when you struggle for something you never waste your time. Even if you face many failures before succeeding don’t give up, every defeat is just another step toward your goal.

How to Motivate yourself

Even if you have clear in your mind the importance of motivation and all the benefits that it could bring to your life you might still miss the motivation itself. This could be a problem, but I have noticed that there are some tricks you can use to get motivated even when you feel that nothing can be changed in your life:

• Start a self-evaluation process. Define your strengths and weaknesses and understand what you would like to change in your life. This process might be very hard, it’s easy to pretend that we are just like we would like to be while it can be really challenging to accept our flaws and weaknesses. Anyway if you don’t look at yourself sincerely you will never be motivated, only when you feel that you need to change something or to do things in different way you will find the courage to make a step forward and leave the past behind.

• Get the motivation. Now you that have defined your goal, you might still miss the needed motivation to undertake a change. To find the will to go on and turn your dream into reality  I suggest you to analyse your goal and what you will get by achieving it, both rationally and emotionally. Using your rational mind you can understand what benefits and drawbacks you might get in the long run by undertaking the change. Furthermore you could realise that the change requires less effort than you imagine, most of the times in fact what really stops us is just the idea that we can’t get what we want because we are not strong enough. But that’s just a lie. After you have analysed the problem in your rational mind move to your emotional mind, visualise your dream, imagine yourself as you reach your goal. Feel enthusiastic and vibrant. Use the power of imagination to understand how you will feel once you get what you are dreaming for and get extra motivation to start today a path to make it come true.

• Get extra motivation. If both the rational analysis and the emotional desire are still not enough to motivate you, then there is a last resource you can use: surf the web and look for people that have already succeeded in achieving your goal. Whatever you are dreaming for you will surely find someone with your same desire and fears. Find inspiration from people that already achieved your goal and get motivation from people that have just undertaken your same path. When we are not alone is a lot easier to overcome our fears.

Keep Motivation High

Once you have defined your goal and you are truly motivated it’s time to act. In order to get closer to your goal you might have to make some changes in your life, to develop new habits and to give up some of your beliefs. The path won’t probably be easy but as long as you are moved by a disruptive inner desire and you feel confident about yourself you will probably overcome most of the difficulties that you might have to face. The real problems might appear after a while, when you have already achieved part of the goal but still miss a little step forward in order to fully accomplish your desire. Most of the times when we reach this situation (you get 50% of your goal for example) we tend to relax and think that what we have achieved is enough, that there is no real reason to move on.

This is not the right way, if you have defined a goal and you reach only half of it, you can’t settle down and enjoy this partial achievement. There is a reason if you decided to go for the full goal and not just a half of it, of course you can be satisfied by your progress but still you should feel the urge to keep on and get what you had once decided to get. I know it’s very hard to keep motivation high once the initial boost has gone, but I think that there are some suggestions that might help you in the process:

• Remember the reasons that made you undertake the change, the unbridled desire that you felt when you started your way to your goal, visualise again the goal as you get it. Consider the impact that your change will have in your present and future life, find new enthusiasm for your decision. This way you will take to the present moment all the emotions you felt when you decided to start your journey, it will be like having a fresh new start.

• Split your final goal in multiple sub-goals. If you decide that you want to exercise daily you could start with exercising once a week and then move to twice a week, three time a week and so on. This technique will help you a lot since when you reach a sub-goal you get the enthusiasm of your achievement but at the same time you won’t see the following one as very hard to get. If the step you have to take between one target and the successive is not that big, your motivation will hardly drop: the effort you need to move on is very little and so you will see no reasons to stop where you are.

• Get in touch with people that are following your same journey, talk with them about your difficulties and successes. Get excited by their results and let others be excited by yours. Understand that you are not alone in your path, that there are people willing to help you when you are in need, that someone really believe that you will succeed.

• Use the power of commitment. Tell your family and friends that you are pursuing a goal, that you will do your best to get it. They will both encourage you in your decision and help you when your motivation will start to fall.  Once you reveal your goal you make it come true. It will no longer live just in your mind. People will talk about it and ask you about your results, and feelings. Moreover since now your desire is public you have another strong motivation: you don’t want to disappoint others and so getting the goal will be even more important.

• Let failure be with you. We can’t always succeed, nor always fail. Remind this every day of your life. If you keep failing in the way to your goal don’t give up or feel exhausted, tomorrow is another day, tomorrow you could move a little step further and get closer to what you really want. Accept every failure as an important teaching, if you fail it means that you are not following the right way and so you have to try other strategies, to set other sub-goals, to ask for better advice. If you fail it doesn’t mean that you can’t get it, it just means that you haven’t got it yet.

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