Motivation is a scarce resource, but it’s essential to achieve your goals.
How familiar is this?
You’ve created a brilliant goal plan, you’re eager and motivated to get started, it’s all going as planned, however after a while progress slows, falters, and stops.
What is motivation?
It’s the process that drives us to perform a task or behavior. There are 2 main types of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic.
Extrinsic – external factors that motivate us, good grades, more money, bonuses, praise or fame.
Intrinsic – the internal factors that motivate us, for example doing something that you’re passionate about.
When we start toward a goal we feel empowered and excited, but naturally this wears off over time. This is frustrating and disheartening, so here’s 7 hacks/ strategies to reignite that motivation and get you to the finish line…achieve your goals.
#1. Monitor and Track Progress
Knowing what you’ve achieved and how far you’ve progressed has two benefits:
Firstly, monitoring your goal helps you identify when progress is slowing, warning you that something may be wrong, giving you the opportunity to get back on track.
Secondly, by checking off tasks/steps you get closure and can see the progress you’re making.
How you track your progress depends on your goal, for example weight loss or financial goals can be monitored and tracked on a simple spread sheet, however the more visual and ‘in your face’ the better. If you go off track don’t be put off, mistakes are normal, mistakes are a great learning tool – use them to your advantage.
#2. Make the Task More Enjoyable
The process of achieving your goals can be tiring, lonely and challenging. Making the process more enjoyable helps you remain committed and motivated. Ways to achieve this could include:
- Being part of a community, forum or club of like-minded people, providing you with support, advice and reassurance.
- Filling your space with background noise, your favourite music, radio station or TV channel can help you through those tough times.
- Adopting the right mindset, working towards your goal can at times feel like a chore. Alter your mindset to see it as a challenge to be conquered or a problem to be overcome.
#3. Focus on the Positives of the Process
Achieving your goal shouldn’t only be about the end result, every task and step towards your goal will have something positive that you can take from it.
Identifying this takes practice. Persevere with this and you’ll not only progress towards your goal, but you’ll gain so much more. These positive takeaways can include:
- learning new skills
- building your resilience and confidence
- stretching and expanding your abilities
- building up a network/ being part of community
- having a purpose and focus
We gain more personal development from the process of accomplishing our goals than we do the final product, achieving a goal takes time, we experience many new situations which can provide us with opportunities for personal growth.
#4. Reward Yourself to Achieve your Goals
When a task is accomplished, reward yourself with something equal to the effort you put in.
Do this repeatedly and the brain associates reward with effort, feel good chemicals are released which create a positive relationship between effort and reward.
A reward can be anything you enjoy, popping out for a coffee, watching an episode of your favourite series, treating yourself to a small purchase or having a walk.
However, the reward must be in harmony with your goal.
#5. Celebrate Your Achievements
An error we often make is downplaying our achievements, mainly because we see high achievers all around us, on social media and TV. We make unfair comparisons, our small achievements can feel insignificant, however we only see their final product. What we don’t see is the time, sacrifices and hard work which got them to where they are.
Create the habit of congratulating yourself for your achievements and have appreciation for the effort you’re putting in and the sacrifices you’re making, avoid making comparisons between yourself and others. Make this a habit and progression toward your goal becomes easier.
#6. Let Others Motivate You
When our goal progress slows there can be many reasons: self-doubt, a lack of know how or disillusioned with what we’re trying to achieve. To overcome this, we can draw from the experience of other people who have already achieved what we’re working towards.
They’re often eager to talk about how they achieved success; blogs, YouTube, biographies’, podcasts, and other resources are freely available to source this information.
These resources identify how to overcome obstacles and provide the steps to complete a task, or other general advice which is helpful. We can use their experiences to motivate us, which will help us through times of self-doubt.
#7. Focus on the Outcome
When you created your goal, it was with the intention to achieve something, you would have visualised the outcome, imagining all the positive things which would result from achieving your goal, the bigger house, happier you, financial stability…
However, these images fade overtime, so reignite your enthusiasm by visualising yourself achieving your goal, and the improvements and benefits it will bring to your life, use all your senses and really experience it.
If you struggle with this, look back through your goal plan, revisit your vision board, or make a list of all the benefits accomplishing this goal would bring you, be as creative as possible, a bit of daydreaming does no harm now and again.
In Conclusion…to Achieve Your Goals
So in conclusion a goal worth achieving will be challenging, these strategies will help, to summarise what we’ve learnt: keep an eye on your progress, enjoy it, focus on the positives you get from the challenge, reward yourself and celebrate your achievements, remember you’re not alone and people are out there to inspire or help you, and frequently remind yourself what you want to achieve and the benefits it will bring to you.
Persevere through the tough times, motivation will ebb and flow, perseverance in hand with these 7 strategies will get you through the tough times, print the strategies out, note them on your phone or put them on a Post-It and keep them at hand. Before you know you’ll have achieved your goal and will be onto the next challenge and a step closer to the life you deserve.