Motivation 101: How to Stay Motivated

Motivation is the emotion that gives us the force to do something. Without motivation we would do nothing. We wouldn’t go to work without a strong motivation to pay rent and to live a comfortable life. We wouldn’t go out with friends without the motivation to have a crazy night.

It’s simple to be motivated to do those things, as they are necessities for most people. But what about things like working on your business or doing your workout that aren’t necessities? How can you be motivated to keep doing those things that you know you should do, but for one reason or another you keep postpone?

In this guide I’ll show you many ways to not only keep your motivation level always high, but also to constantly grow it.

Step 1: Know your enemy

Before trying to find a way to gain motivation, let’s first see why we lose motivation in the first place.

According to Wikipedia, The Hawthorne effect is a form of reactivity whereby subjects improve an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they are being studied.

The Hawthorne effect can be directly linked to motivation. When you are just starting out with a new project, you are highly motivated and committed, but after some days or weeks your motivation level tends to lower.

The main reason is simple: when you started the project, you somehow received a stimulus from an external source that motivated you to start your project. For example you may have heard a success story and you decided to start your very own business to replicate that success. On the next days, you rely on your memory to recall the original stimulus, which might be the only thing that keeps you motivated.

After a few weeks however, your memory of that stimulus tends to lower, until you completely forget about it and you lose all your motivation. At that point you’ll find it hard to continue working on your project and you probably put it apart in favor of the next big thing.

Step 2: Fixing the problem

Now that you know what the problem is, is simple to find a solution. We just need to recreate the original stimulus over and over again. How you do that is not important, as long as you can reproduce the desired effect.

Let’s see some methods you can use to reinforce your motivation.

• Re-experience the original stimulus. If you have the opportunity, you can experience the same stimulus again. For example if you got motivated by reading an article, you can read that article again after a few days or week.
• Read motivational books. You can probably spend 15 minutes each morning to read some motivational books, or you can listen to audio tapes while commuting to work. There are thousands of motivational books/audio available for every situation, and they do a great job boosting your productivity. I personally like Brian Tracy’s stuff.
• Read success stories. Read about people who already did what you want to accomplish. If you can’t find people in your local area, do a quick search online and subscribe to forums where people like you are hanging out. More often than not, they’ll be more than happy to offer their advice and expertise.
• Share with your friends. Talk about your project with your friends, tell them what you are going to do and how much you are excited. Keep them updated with your results if they are interested.
• Challenge it. If you are trying to implement something that goes behind your comfort zone, consider starting a 30 days habit change, where you commit yourself to do a specific task everyday, no matter what. At the end of the 30 days you can roll back to the original lifestyle/situation if you want, so there’s no risk at this stage.
• Write about it. Writing helps to clarify your intentions, and it’s a tremendous way to keep you motivated. You can create a blog or a wiki where you share your results. It doesn’t need to be public, the only important thing is that you keep it up to date.
• Find a partner. If you can, find someone else who’s willing to help you. For example if you want to start running in the morning you can ask a friend who’s already a runner for some support. For example you could do some workouts together.
• Append a poster. It’s incredible what some people can do to your motivation. For example I’m a fan of Bruce Lee and when I see his image I became very motivated. This is because I know and respect his history.

These are just few of the things that you can do to keep your motivation always high, but they are those that works best for me. You don’t need to apply each of them, just find what works for you and then keep going.

Conclusion

Once you’ll find what keeps you motivated, there’ll be no more procrastination in your days.

If you already have figured it out, what are the things that keep you motivated?

Recommended Reading:

The Motivational Handbook

Posted on January 05 2010

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