For many of us, the pandemic has been a time of slowing down. Many folks no longer commute to their jobs, but instead they work from home. Our social obligations have been reduced to almost zero. As a result, a lot of time has been freed up to allow us to pursue our personal goals. The challenge is finding the self-motivation to accomplish those goals.
Being highly motivated is the key to success in any endeavor. Whether you are trying to lose weight or graduate from college, if you aren’t highly motivated, at some point during the process, you will just give up.
Admittedly, keeping up our motivation when working toward a goal is hard. We can’t predict the future, so we don’t know if all our efforts will pay off. Instead, we have to keep working toward our goal with no guarantee of success.
Below are some ways to keep up your self-motivation. Use these approaches, and achieve greater things than you ever imagined!
Make Your Goal A Daily Habit
In order to stay motivated, working toward your goal should be a daily habit. For instance, I have a goal to stay physically fit. I am middle-aged, and unfortunately, my body doesn’t operate the way it used to in my youth. My metabolism has slowed down, and I am not as limber as I once was. At my age, the only way I can stay physically fit is through daily exercise.
Now being motivated to exercise every day, admittedly, is challenging. But I am committed to doing so. In the past, my exercise routine typically consisted of walking my dog every afternoon. But since the pandemic, I’ve had a more flexible schedule. As a result, I’ve added a 45-minute yoga routine to my day. I now do yoga every day, no matter what. And if, on the rare occasion, I miss a day, I feel very odd!
By making exercise a daily habit, I find it much easier to stay motivated. I don’t have to convince myself to exercise each day. It is just part of my normal routine, like brushing my teeth or doing the dishes. I am motivated to exercise because it is simply a part of my everyday life.
The same holds true for achieving any goal. If you make working toward that goal a daily habit, it will be easier to stay motivated.
Vary How You Approach Your Goal
We don’t always have the same energy level each day. Nor do we have the same level of motivation. As a result, I don’t believe in working toward my goals in exactly the same way every day. Instead, I am OK with varying how I approach my goals.
For example, I am a writer. And writers, well, write! Now lots of writers have a daily writing goal. They commit to writing a certain number of pages each day. That kind of routine would destroy my motivation. I would fail 90% of the time. That is because some days, I can write a lot. Others days, it is a struggle.
So, instead, I vary how I approach my writing each day. Some days, like today, my time is my own, I am feeling energetic, and I am able to write a lot. Other days, my life is busy. Or I am feeling exhausted. On those days, instead of writing, I may try to do some editing. Or I may brainstorm about topics that I would like to write about in the future. I don’t expect to accomplish the same thing every day, with respect to my writing. It is enough that I just do something.
You can apply that approach to any goal. To keep up your motivation, don’t set unrealistic daily goals for yourself. You will inevitably fail to meet those goals on some days, and that will be unnecessarily discouraging.
Instead, be flexible with how you approach your goals. Vary the way you work toward your goals each day. If you have an exercise goal, some days you may have the energy to walk a couple of miles. On other days, you may be tired and will only be able to do some light stretching.
By varying your approach, you can stay self-motivated because you will be satisfied with doing what you can on that particular day.
Keep Up Your Self-Motivation by Enjoying the Process
It is impossible to stay motivated to reach any big goal if you don’t enjoy the process. If the process is drudgery, you most certainly will give up halfway through. You have to find ways to enjoy actually working toward the goal.
For example, if your goal is to lose weight, you need to find a type of exercise that is your cup of tea. I’ve tried all kinds of exercise, from running to tennis to working out at a gym. These days, the exercise that I truly love is yoga. Hatha yoga, in particular, appeals to my quieter meditative side. Yet, I also enjoy the physical challenge of it.
If I didn’t enjoy yoga, there is no way that I could keep up my motivation to do it on a daily basis. I would give up after one week. The key to my enjoying the process of staying physically fit is that I’ve found an exercise that enjoy doing.
So, no matter what your goal, find an approach that is fun for you. If you enjoy the process involved in reaching your goal, you will be able to stay self-motivated long enough to achieve success!
Self-motivation is a challenge for all of us. Finding the motivation to work toward a goal is tough when it would be so much easier to sit on the couch and watch television or read a good book. But achieving goals makes life more enjoyable and interesting.
Consider following the approaches above. Keep up your self-motivation, achieve your goals, and have a great life! (For more motivation tips, read here.)
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