We all know that motivation is very important regardless of whether you are running a multi-million dollar business or just an ordinary employee working for someone.
Motivation is the kick that will keep you moving forward, drive you into taking massive action, and it is the force that will push you to reach greater heights in life.
The problem is that most people lack motivation.
They fail to stick to their goals and plans because they fail to master their personal motivation.
But, how do you master your personal motivation? Here are the 15 keys on how you can do so…
First, manage your thoughts. It is what you think about all the time that will determine your level of motivation, and hence, your level of achievement.
Successful people constantly think about their goals, their dreams, and what they can do to achieve what they want in life. This is why they always seem to have the energy and drive to keep taking action.
You have to do the same. Your thoughts will affect your feelings and your feelings will determine your level of energy.
If you want to achieve amazing success in life, you definitely have to stay positive and think the right thoughts.
It is impossible for someone who is always negative to be able to accomplish outstanding success in life. No chance.
So, start to manage your thoughts from now on. Be conscious of your thoughts because they will affect your level of motivation, and ultimately, your life.
You are who you think you are. So, always feed your mind with positive thoughts.
Read: 10 Major Differences between Successful and Unsuccessful People
Motivation will come as you improve and grow yourself from time to time. When you stop growing, guess what, your motivation will stop flowing too.
You have to constantly work on yourself, grow yourself, improve yourself, learn new things, and try new things to maintain your momentum.
Remember, the moment you stop improving yourself is the moment your motivation will fade. This is why you have to always inject newness into your life.
Visit a place that you have never been to before. Try out a new cuisine in town that you have never tasted before. Read a book in a different industry. Learn a new skill. Learn to swim or learn to play tennis.
Commit to mastering yourself and learn more about yourself. Here’s a quote from Lao Tzu you must remember:
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”
Your words will affect your thoughts, and your thoughts will affect your life. So watch out for the words you use.
What do you constantly tell yourself? Even if you did not say it out loud and you just say it in your mind, the words you use will leave a great impact on your life.
This is why people always teach their children to praise and to use positive words instead of words that will cause damage.
You will be affected by the words that you use. When you got stuck in a traffic jam, instead of cursing the jam, you can use a positive phrase such as, “Great, I will use this moment to listen to my favorite podcast.”
When bad things happen, rather than feeling defeated, say “try me” and think of a solution to the problem.
You will definitely face a lot of ups and downs in life. No matter who you are, you will experience the sweet and sour of life.
And remember, always use empowering words to describe the situation and see how it will change your feeling. And when your feeling changed, you will be able to come up with a better solution for the situation.
The words you use have power. Use empowering words and you will live an empowering life. Use negative words and you will live a miserable life.
It is said that we are often affected by people we mix with. Therefore, if you mix with people who are negative, you will become negative as well.
So, build the right connection and join the right group of people. Les Brown said:
“Birds of the same feather flock together. If you mix around with losers you will end up a loser.”
Network with positive people and join positive people. When you think that times are tough, don’t talk to people who agree with you. Talk to people who think otherwise and who will inspire you and motivate you.
Look at the top athletes, who do you think they train with? Other top players, right? You will never see a top player train with rookies, why? Because doing so will degrade their skills.
Thus, who you mix with is extremely important. It is said that your network will determine your net worth. Build your connection with mediocre people and your results will never run off too far.
Apples will never fall too far from their tree. Therefore, if you want to keep your motivation strong, network and surround yourself with other motivated individuals.
Sometimes you just want to get it off and do something totally different and unrelated when you’re stuck.
When you face an obstacle and can’t find the solution, stop and get it off. Do something totally unrelated like taking a walk. There’s no point to keep thinking about the problem from the same angle. You will waste your willpower and use up your motivation.
Our motivation is like an energy bar. You use it every day in your life. You use your motivation to take action. You use your energy to think and to make decisions.
So by the end of the day, you will feel tired and collapse onto your bed because you have used up most of your energy and you need to replenish it.
This is why you have to spend your energy carefully.
Studies have shown that you have to rest to be productive. For example, when you work for 60 minutes, it is best to take a 5-minute rest in between.
If you consistently work on something for long hours, you will suffer burnout in the end. Success is long-term. It is a long run. It is a marathon. So schedule for your rest and unplug yourself.
You can’t achieve great results without having enough rest and relaxation.
Rest when you need to. You rest because you want to go further.
Personal motivation is not all about work, work, and more work. It is about tapping into your optimum motivation for maximum productivity and result.
This is one of the most common keys to boosting your personal motivation. It has been said over and over and over again that you need to follow your passion.
Nothing great has ever been achieved without passion. If Steve Jobs doesn’t love technology and design, Apple will never be Apple today. If Michael Jordan doesn’t love basketball, do you think he can still accomplish what he did in his basketball career?
The reason is simple – your passion will fuel your motivation. Without passion, your motivation will never last.
Most people quit and give up on their dreams and their goals simply because they lack passion.
This is why you should align your work and build your career around things that you are passionate about. When you are passionate, you will do it no matter what. And this is how great work is done.
And when you are able to produce great work, people will pay you more for the value you created.
The majority of the people get it wrong. They thought that they need to earn a lot of money and only then they can retire and do things that they love.
That is incorrect. You have to work on things that you love, and then find a way to monetize them. Passion has to come first.
Think about all the extraordinary people who have accomplished amazing success in life. People like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Kobe Bryant, etc. They are successful because they love what they do.
So, align your passion with your work. Love what you do and you will tap into your personal motivation.
Why do you think you exist in this world?
There should be a bigger purpose in life than just making money and enjoying life. Albert Einstein once said that the reason we exist is to serve others.
So what is your purpose in life? I believe that everyone wanted to serve and contribute to the world.
It is just that we often think that we don’t have enough or we think that contribution is all about donation. In fact, contribution can be volunteered work that does not require any money at all.
It could be as small as smiling and greeting a stranger on the street; helping someone to cross the road; giving way while driving; feeding the stray dogs; open the door for someone’s whose hands are full; etc.
Remember, your main purpose in life will drive you and it will determine your destiny.
Find out why you do what you do. Why do you set the goals and why do you want to accomplish your dreams?
When your purpose is clear and specific, you will know exactly what you need to do. And nothing can ever stop you then.
One of the strategies to build your personal motivation is to envision yourself as successful. See yourself achieving what you set have set out for.
“Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, you can achieve.”
The above is the famous quote from Napoleon Hill. You have to first able to see it in your mind. All great achievement starts with an idea.
If you can’t envision yourself as a successful person, you will never act and behave like it. And if you can’t act and behave like a successful person, you will never produce the result like successful people did.
There’s a saying, ‘fake it until you make it’. It is true, but before you can fake it, you must first be able to see it.
If you don’t see it from yourself, no one would. You might be having some tough times right now, but don’t lose faith and continue to envision the success you want.
Spend time to imagine and visualize the perfect life you desire. See yourself as successful. Imagine yourself having achieved all your goals and make all your dreams come true. Visualize how you want to live your life.
You have within you the most powerful tool available to you. It is free to use and you can use it anyhow you want. This powerful tool is only available to human beings. It is your brain.
Tap into your brain’s maximum potential. Imagine your grandest vision and dream as big as you can.
When you see yourself as successful, you have achieved the first step.
Related: 7 Keys to Creating a Positive Mental Attitude
Personal motivation comes together with consistent action. In fact, the most powerful motivation is to take action.
When you stay stagnant, you will drown, that’s why you need to keep moving.
Action will build your momentum. Just like when you don’t feel like going to the gym, all you need to do is to get change.
Once you changed to your sports attire, you will have the drive to hit the gym. In the midst of changing your clothes, you are acting on it, you are taking action and you will then build up the momentum.
The first step is the hardest. But the first step doesn’t need to be a big step at all. It could be as small as saying ‘thank you’, or picking up the phone to make a call, or to say ‘no’ to procrastination, etc.
Actions will breed more actions. Just commit to take the first and the small step, and everything else will follow through.
Want to write an article? Start with writing the headline. Want to wash the dishes? Start by just washing only 1 of the items and you will automatically wash them all. Want to finish a book? Start by reading just the first paragraph will do.
Try it and you will see how powerful it this is.
How can you be motivated when you are not even healthy?
You cannot perform at your peak potential when you are sick or your health is in bad condition.
Take care of your health. Exercise regularly and eat healthy food.
Do you know that exercise can make you feel happy and have a sense of accomplishment?
When you sweat, your body will release a type of hormone that has the same effect as endorphins, which will make you feel happy.
Not only that, exercises will stretch your muscle and relief your stress and tension. It will also improves your blood circulation and make you feel more alert and energetic.
Highly productive people will schedule exercises within their days. And they make it their priority.
Some great achievers start their day with exercises. They jog, they swim, they workout and they sweat before they start their work day.
Never neglect the food that you take into your body as well. The more junk food you consume, the more work your body had to do to distill it.
Take care of your health. It is the fundamental of your personal greatness.
Do you know declutter is one of the best and easiest way to get motivated?
How do you feel if your workplace or your house is in a mess? You don’t feel very driven to work in a place like that, right?
If you look at all the great offices around the world, like Google and Yahoo, you will see that their workplaces are very well organized and simple.
Thus, create an environment that will support you. Create a place that you want to work in. Make that place your most productive area.
Not only that declutter can clear your mind, it will also reduce your stress level, at home or at work.
Imagine you’re all tired and getting back to your cluttered home where everything is messed up and untidy, how do you feel? The same goes for your workplace.
Want to be more productive? Then create a productive environment that will support you to get more done.
You can start from your workplace, your home, and then move on to declutter your emotional baggage.
Practice forgiveness, forgive and forget people that hurt you, moments that make you feel angry, etc.
You do not want to get ‘blocked’ or slowed down by things around you in your journey to success. So create the empowering environment for maximum growth.
The main key to personal motivation is to keep taking consistent action, day in and day out, regardless of whether you like to do it or not.
Successful people understand this and this is why they constantly take action, everyday, without fail, year in and year out, until they accomplished what they want in life.
Success will never come to you in a matter of days, and probably not months either.
You cannot lose 10 pounds by just going to the gym for 1 day. It takes consistent action, every single day, to workout and to sweat to lose 10 pounds.
It is not your single decision or action that brings you the success you want. Rome was not built in a day.
“It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”
– Lionel Messi
So commit to take consistent action. It does not matter whether the action you take is big or small. Everything counts. More importantly, you have to make sure you are moving forward each day.
It is alright to take just 1 step a day. If you do that, you will still reach your goals, just that it might take longer.
Here’s what you can do. Commit to take 5 small actions every day. It does not need to be something huge, just small actions will do.
Take 5 consistent actions a day and within a year, you will have 1825 actions taken. You will have accumulated 1825 small victories that will create a huge impact in your life.
You can’t get ahead if you don’t know your score. This is one of the biggest mistakes most people will make in pursuing their goals.
If you don’t keep track, how can you tell how much weight you have lost? How can you tell how much money you have made? How can you know how much action you have taken or how is your performance if you don’t keep your score?
You need to always keep track on your results. Know where you are right now and measure how far you have come and how far it is that you still need to go.
And do you know that when you have a scoreboard with you, you will be more motivated and feel more driven to take action?
Read this: Keeping Score: The #1 Reason People Fail To Achieve Their Goals
It is a post where I explained how keeping score can affect what you do and hence, affect your achievement. It is a very interesting post that you must read.
When you know your score, only then you can decide whether the action you take is effective or whether should you change your strategies.
There’s no way you can achieve great success without going through failure, rejections and setbacks. It is not your victories that make you who you are. It is how you are able to rise again on every fall that makes you who you are.
When you commit to success, you have to understand that the journey will be a tough ones. So be ready and embrace failure.
The key to making it all work is to get up and try again with different strategy every time when you fail. It is not a question of whether you will fail. It is a question of whether you can treat failure as lesson and learn from there.
Study successful people and you will see how they turn failure into their success.
It is the determination to get through all the adversities that make success worthwhile. Without failure and adversity, everyone will be normal.
Just like a superhero needs his superpower. If everyone has superpower, nobody would be special anymore. Everyone would be normal.
Setbacks and difficulties are what separate ordinary and extraordinary people apart. Hence, when you face tough times, don’t escape and don’t give up. Instead, face it.
Persist until you succeed. It may be tough and it may be difficult. You may face difficult times and everything may seem like not working for you. However, don’t give up and keep moving forward.
Arnold Schwarzenegger said:
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”
Whatever you do, do not give up. Do your best and keep taking action. Change your strategies when necessary and track your results.
Success will never come without some hardships. And you have to understand that hardships will never stay. They come to pass.
There will always be sunshine after the rain. So persist until you succeed. Be relentless.
Additional read: How To Overcome Tough Times and Succeed (5 Principles to Overcome Setbacks)
Everyone’s hot button to their personal motivation is different. Some people are easily motivated by what they see, some are motivated by what they hear.
So you need to find out what motivates you and keep doing it.
Let me know what you think about this post. Share your thoughts at the comment section below.
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