Motivation is key to attaining your goals. If you are someone who can’t get excited about your goals, then achieving them can become drudgery. No one wants to spend their days doing chores. Here are five tips to help motivate you to succeed:
1. Rewards
If you’ve ever worked with children, you know that bribes work. “Eat your vegetables and you can have more mashed potatoes.” “Get an A on your homework and you get a sticker.” “Clean your room and we’ll go to the park.” As an adult, we tend to drop this habit. We just do the work because we’re supposed to, or maybe we don’t do the work at all because there’s no fun in it. Why not add the fun! Reward yourself – notice we don’t call it a bribe? Reward yourself for your success. For example, if your goal is to stop eating after 6pm at night, then buy yourself your favorite coffee and every morning, after a successful night of not snacking, you get to have that coffee.
2. Friends
Friends can make goal setting and achieving fun! Using the ‘snacks after 6’ example from above, whenever you’re tempted to snack, why not call or IM a friend! Tell them what’s going on and laugh about it. That’s what friends are for. In exchange for distracting you from snacking, you could take your friend out for coffee in the morning. Friends can also join you in your goal. If you’re looking to add exercise to your routine, you can join a gym with friends, or just meet each morning for a brisk walk. Now you’re both getting healthy, and on the days when you’re not feeling like walking, knowing your friend is waiting for you and depending on you will get you out of bed.
3. Record your successes
Journaling is a great tool to track how you’re feeling. It can be even more motivating if you journal your successes. By recording your successes, when you’re having a difficult day, you can open your journal and read your success entries. Remembering what it felt like to succeed will help to motivate you through the tough days.
4. Be positive
A positive attitude is a wonderful motivator. When you’re feeling positive and have a happy outlook, it feels like anything is possible. A good way to stay positive, and motivated, is to write down a few solutions when you’re feeling not so positive. It happens, everyone has bad moments and bad days. Planning for those tough times, and knowing how you can turn around your frame of mind, is a useful tool. So what makes you happy? Puppy dogs and sunshine? Your favorite song? What about the smile of a child? Still struggling? Find a joke website and read something funny. Still struggling, take a look at the last tip.
5. Being grateful
What do you have to be grateful for? Remembering what is good and right in our lives tends to put everything else into perspective. When you’re dealing with a particularly difficult day and working out sounds less fun than cleaning the toilet, or you’re thinking a burger and soda at the local drive-thru will solve all of your problems, then it’s time to get out a pen and paper. Why not write down 5-10 things you’re grateful for? This could help snap you out of your funk quickly. Once you remember what is good and right in your world, the gym will maybe not feel so bad, and that takeout food will no longer feel like a life preserver.
