Building and Keeping Motivation

Are you having difficulty staying motivated right now?

Do you even want to be motivated?

Do you have untapped potential you’d like to see in your life? What about experiencing that amazing feeling you get after you accomplish a goal?

There are days when motivation feels like a distant memory and then there are other days when I feel like there are too many things I’d like to do and not enough hours to accomplish them. During the times when I don’t feel motivated, I sometimes need a little push to get going again. One of the things I’ve discovered for myself is that there are specific reasons for when I may feel less motivated and so I’ve learned how to navigate around them.

Stress, exhaustion, anxiety, and even hormones can zap my motivation. It’s hard to push yourself toward your goals when you are focused on bad outcomes, physically tired, or generally feeling discouraged. I’ve found that exercise is a great way to shake some of this out of my system. I know that exercise is a huge struggle for most people and that it’s difficult to be motivated to do it. No matter where you are in your health journey learning how to be consistent is key. Can you do an exercise for five minutes a day? Can you put on your workout clothes? If you can do these two things, then you have enough motivation to begin. Starting something even on small levels can give you a platform to build upon.

A few months ago I listened to two books about habits that I highly recommend you check out. One was called Atomic Habits and the other was called Tiny Habits. The simplest lessons I got from these books were the idea that one- you can change your life through the action of changing one habit at a time. Two- the effectiveness of adding very small habits into your life. Paying attention to the daily habits you already have is the first step. Our lives are made up of little habits that can help us or hold us back and it’s up to us to choose where we want to go with this.

Building your habits is foundational to staying motivated. It’s a focus on moving into autopilot to do things that would generally slow us down or stop us if we had to make a decision. For instance, a great example from one of the books is if I’m deciding on whether or not I want to work out I most likely won’t but If my workout clothes are already out and I put them on first as soon as I wake up then I’m already halfway there.  Once we are consistently performing the small habits we want, we won’t be victim to the changes in our moods. Unfortunately, many of our bad habits can compound into other bad habits. The good thing is that our good habits can also compound into even better habits.

To be continued.

What are some things that help you stay motivated? Let me know in the comments.