How to Keep Your Momentum Going and Stick to Your Plan

Let’s be honest, one of the most challenging roadblocks that we face in our journey to achieving our goals is keeping our momentum going. It is hard. There are days that we feel totally no motivation to do anything and we just want to relax and do nothing. So what should you do when you fail to come up with the drive and to keep your momentum going?

The majority of people fail to achieve their goals because they fail to stick to their plans. They set goals and they get excited, but just for a short moment.

After a few days or weeks, they lose their steam and momentum. They don’t feel as excited as when they first started.

Eventually, their momentum dies down and they stop taking action. They abandon their goals and look for something else to do. They start a new project or they just give up and say that goal setting doesn’t work.

Does this sound familiar?

If this is happening to you, don’t worry because you are not alone. In fact, it happens to me too.

There are many times that I wanted to give up because I’ve lost my momentum. I wanted to rest and just do nothing. It’s hard. It’s not easy.

The point is that we must learn how to maintain our momentum and keep it going. To stick to our plan and to commit ourselves to taking consistent action, we must maintain our drive. Like what Tony Robbins said:

“People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

In other words, to keep achieving and keep making progress, you must maintain your momentum to keep going.

How Your Momentum Works

Imagine when you’re pushing a car. When you first approach the car and push it, you need to exert a strong force and push it with all your might.

But once the car started to move a little, it becomes easier. You just need to maintain the force you exert on the car to keep it moving.

And if you continue to push the car with all your strength, the car will move faster and faster.

This is momentum at works.

And when it comes to achieving your goals and taking consistent action each day, the same principle applies.

When you first started, it may seem very difficult. You need to put in a lot of energy and effort to get things done.

Like writing an article. If you have never written an article before, writing your first article can be a challenging task. You will feel that it is extremely difficult to do.

But if you continue to push on. Things become easier. This is because you have gained momentum and slowly, you get used to the process of doing it.

If you write an article a day, after a few weeks or months, it will become a normal task for you. You don’t feel it be to as difficult as when you first started anymore.

That’s exactly what has happened to me. When I first started this blog in 2015, it was difficult to write articles and it took me a lot of time to finish a 2,000 words article. And luckily, I chose to push through and kept repeating by chunking out words every day.

Some days I produced crappy articles, but some days I produced good articles. I just kept going. And I’m proud to say that this blog got to where it is today because of my consistency.

How to Keep Your Momentum Going

The key to building your momentum is simple – you just need to get it moving.

Like pushing the car, you just need to put in the energy and get it moved. Once it moved, things will become easy. But, you must continue to push and never let the car stop.

For example, if you want to build a successful blog, you must make sure you maintain your progress by consistently publishing quality blog posts.

The same goes for losing weight. You’re not going to lose all the weight in just one session of exercise. You need to be consistent. You have to stick to your plan and do it every day.

It will be tough at first, but once you get over it, it will become easy for you.

So here are 5 tips that can help you build and maintain your momentum so that you can stick to your goals, and produce amazing results in life.

1. Start with just one small and simple step

If you want to build your momentum, you must always start small and simple steps. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself with big and difficult tasks.

Remember, the key is to get things moving. You want to put yourself in the action cycle so that your momentum will grow bigger and bigger.

Thus, start with smaller and easier tasks. For instance, you can break down a bigger task into several smaller ones.

Like writing publishing an article on this blog. It is not just one task, but consist of several:

• Come up with an exciting title
• Draft the article with subheadings
• Write the article
• Insert relevant links and images
• Publish

As you can see, I break my big task into down into smaller and more manageable tasks.

All I need to do then is to focus on getting the smaller tasks done. When I come up with the article title, I gain a little momentum and feel good about what I have done.

After I have drafted the article with subheadings, it gives me an idea of how to write the article. I gained more momentum and I felt that I’m making progress, which led me to write the article.

And the process went on until I get the article published on my blog.

This is what you need to do too if you want to build your momentum.

Always start small and break down your work into easier and more actionable steps.

Another method is to work on a shorter time frame. For instance, instead of working on a task for 2 hours, use the Pomodoro Technique and cut short your work time. Rather than working for 2 hours straight, you can work for 30 minutes and then take a quick 5 minutes break.

The key is that when the task becomes smaller, it is easier to do. And this lowers the resistance so that you will need less motivation and willpower to take action.

The key to building up your momentum is to get yourself involved in the progress. When you take action and make progress, you are in the cycle. The momentum will come and you will want to do more.

2. Celebrate and make yourself feel good with your progress

I know that you may be thinking that celebrating a small task may sound absurd. But I’m here to tell you that celebrating your wins, no matter how small they are, is one of the most powerful ways to keep your momentum going.

Of course, you don’t have to throw in a party just because you work for 5 minutes. What you can do is to give yourself a pep-talk. Telling yourself, “I can do it” after you accomplish a small task can make a big impact on your level of motivation.

When you celebrate, you are acknowledging your hard work. You are telling yourself that you’re doing good and this actually gives you more energy to go on.

Why do you think athletes celebrate their wins? When they score a point, they celebrate. They know that when they feel good about their small victories, more victories will come.

Celebration makes you feel good and helps to build up your momentum.

As I said, you don’t have to celebrate the big way. You can give yourself a pep-talk, make a fist-pump to show that you have won, or just quietly praise yourself in your head.

The key is to make yourself feel good about your progress. The more you celebrate your victories and the more you feel good about yourself, the more you are going to accomplish.

Read: 13 Great Ways How to Celebrate Small Victories and Make Progress

3. Share it with someone else

Another powerful way to generate momentum is to involve someone else.

First, having a partner or when you involve someone else in your work, it becomes a support system that holds you and your partner accountable.

And besides that, you can motivate and keep each other driven to get things done.

Energy is contagious. It can be transferred and it can affect your mood. So when you are at a low energy mood and you don’t feel like doing anything, your partner can then support you and influence your mood.

It is better to work together than to work alone. When you can share your experience with someone else, it makes you feel motivated to do it.

Therefore, find someone to share your experience with. Hold yourself accountable by sharing your progress and what you have done with your partner.

Think about it, when you promised your friends you’re going to meet them at Starbucks at 3 PM, mostly you’re going to honor your words. The same goes for every area of your life.

When you tell your team or your colleagues you’re going to get the presentation done by tomorrow, you will do it. This is because we have committed ourselves to do it and others are holding us accountable.

Your commitment will be higher when you’re doing work together with someone else. That’s how you can grow your momentum. Find an accountability partner. Get someone else to involve and monitor your progress.

Sometimes, we really need that little push from someone to get us moving.

4. Have an exciting purpose for what you do

Why do you want to do it in the first place? Many people find it hard to stick to their plan because they don’t have a strong and empowering purpose for what they want.

They say that want to build a successful business, but they don’t a strong supporting reason behind it. When this happens, they will quickly lose their motivation and momentum when things become tough.

This is why people fail to achieve their goals. When your purpose is strong and exciting, it will keep you going for the long-term.

And this is also why the experts often say that you shouldn’t do it for the money, instead, you should do it for the passion.

Imagine if you don’t have a strong reason to work. How do you think your days are going to be like? Boring. You will wake up late and you resend going to the office. You try to leave as early as possible and you will try to avoid taking more responsibilities or getting more work done.

On the other hand, when you have a strong reason to work, say you love what you do. You’re passionate about your work and you’re looking forward to doing it. Do you think that things are going to be different? You bet.

When you love what you do, you will continue to do it even when things are difficult or when you are not getting paid. But if you’re doing it for the money, you will give up soon enough when you don’t earn any money from your work.

Therefore, find your why. Discover your purpose behind your goals, your dreams, and why you do what you do.

When you know your why, always keep it in your mind. Visualize and focus on the rewards and your purpose.

Your purpose builds your desire. Your desire will build your momentum and give you the motivation that you need to keep going.

Most people don’t understand what they want out of their lives and they have no idea what they’re passionate about. And I’m here to share with you a book you must read, it is called Start With Why, written by Simon Sinek.

5. Practice Reverse-Gap Thinking

Instead of thinking about how far you are from your goal, think about how far you have come.

This is also called Reverse Gap Thinking. The idea was made popular by the management consultant, Dan Sullivan. I strongly suggest you watch this short video below where Vishen Lakhiani explains the Reverse Gap:

Too many of us lose our momentum, happiness, and motivation because we focus too much on the future gap. When we think something like, “I’ll be happy when I reach my goal,” or “I’ll be successful when I’m rich,” this future-gap thinking isn’t working.

When you think it this way, you’re postponing your happiness to the future and you will quickly lose your momentum.

Instead, choose to focus on the reverse gap. Look at how far you have come and appreciate how much you have accomplished.

When you think about all the great things that you have done, all your victories, all the wins that you have created in your life, you feel good almost instantly.

This is why reverse-gap thinking is so powerful. Thinking about your accomplishments actually makes you feel grateful and driven.

Hence, stop focusing on the future-gap that you’re yet to accomplish. When you think that you can only be happy when you’re promoted or when you finally get a pay raise, you will never be happy.

Why do you need to postpone your happiness and motivation to the future instead of experiencing them right now?

Choose to be grateful for what you have done and appreciate whatever that you have right now at this moment.

Many people get it wrong and think that they will only be happy to fully enjoy life when they become rich. Switch your thinking. Instead of “I’m happy when I have a million dollars in the bank”, change it to “I’m happily achieving and earning a million dollars.”

Can you see the difference now? And the way you think will greatly impact your level of momentum.

When you are happy and when you’re feeling good, you will raise your energy and momentum to a higher level. This is how you maintain and keep your momentum going.

Build Your Momentum Through Goal Setting

I have shared with you 5 methods of how you can maintain your momentum and be consistent. But there is another powerful way to build your momentum that we can’t miss out – goal setting.

In my opinion, goal setting is one of the most powerful tools that is freely available for anyone to use to achieve real success and create amazing results in life.

But the problem is that most people get it wrong. They set the wrong goals. They don’t know how to do it. They set mediocre goals and end up their goals are not inspiring, not motivating, and not exciting enough. They don’t look forward to achieving their goals.

Thus, I would like to share with you an effective technique that you can follow to set empowering goals, step-by-step. You can check it out here: Goal Setting Formula Masterclass.

Let your goals inspire, motivate and build your momentum for you.

Conclusion

Building and maintaining your momentum is extremely important when it comes to achieving your goals. People fail to follow through their plans because they lose their momentum somewhere along the line.

Don’t let this happen to you. Apply the 5 tips above to help you create the momentum you need to keep you going.

Successful people understand the power of momentum. If you want to achieve extraordinary results in life, you need momentum. So learn to build your momentum, keep it, maintain it, and grow it.

When you have momentum, you become unstoppable.