16 Things You Can Do To Stay Motivated
The best way to accomplish one thing after another is to stay motivated. Sometimes it is easy to get motivated but we find ourselves unmotivated to finish somewhere along the way. Motivational levels are always changing. When life gets hard, your character is defined and built. It is important to have some go to actionable tasks that you can perform to help you stay motivated along the journey. As Your earnings and rewards in life are in direct relation to your contribution to society or your organization so if you want to be successful you need to stay motivated and continue contributing on a regular basis!
In order to help you get motivated and stay motivated throughout your next endeavor, I have come up with a list of things you can do to stay motivated.
1. Study
First, learn more about your situation and how to improve your situation and the outcome of your activities. Expanding your thoughts and ideas gives you a better chance at succeeding at whatever you choose to do. Continuously learning more about any given situation is going to improve your motivational levels dramatically. Always seek to increase your knowledge about anything and everything to better your chances of succeeding. Your success rate directly correlates with your levels of motivation.
Today, there are more ways to learn than ever. You can read articles online, watch YouTube videos, listen to audiobooks, order books from Amazon or take a class. For example, if you want to start a business consider ordering The Business Owners Compendium to help you learn more about start up businesses.
2. Eliminate Distractions
Getting rid of all distractions is key to staying motivated. Little distractions can cause big delays in your progress if you let them. By choosing a setting that is distraction free you are setting yourself up for success. Today, there are so many distractions between email, social media, smartphones, tablets, television, other people and more. Learning to avoid the distractions is key to truly staying on task, driven and motivated to succeed. In pshycologytoday.com an article titled 5 Foolproof Ways to Stay Motivated, stated that “nothing is more demotivating than a cluttered mind.”
3. Ask For Help
Asking for help in any situation is smart because there is always something you can learn from someone else. Gain knowledge from your peers or those who are more experienced and you will expand your mindset. Learning from others gives you the necessary information to improve. The smartest entrepreneurs ask for help, including Richard Branson who once said, “When you need to make hard decisions, being able to discuss your ideas with entrepreneurs and business leaders who have solved similar problems can make all the difference.” It is important to ignore your ego and ask for advice more often than not.
4. Don’t Multitask
Multitasking is not a high-functioning skill, it is actually known to decrease productivity. Successful people devote all of their attention and focus on one thing at a time and they stay organized and are efficient in everything they do. According to a Forbes article titled Multitasking Damages Your Brain And Career, New Studies Suggest, “Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.” If you are multitasking to get things done, you are actually limiting yourself.
5. Ask For Feedback
This will help you gain a new and often better understanding of what you are trying to accomplish. A fresh perspective can be very helpful and motivating. Sometimes a set of fresh eyes can lead to a new approach that was the answer you were looking for but couldn’t find.
Elon Musk once said, “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”
6. Reward Yourself
Take the time to recognize your progress and give yourself a reward for your hard work and effort. By recognizing your progress, you are making small notes of mini goals and accomplishments along the way. This makes the work more rewarding, making you naturally feel better about the activity. Try rewarding yourself with something that is enjoyable, it doesn’t need to be special but you should enjoy it so it is consistently rewarding.
7. Remain Grateful
The Forbes article was written by Amy Morin, 7 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude That Will Motivate You To Give Thanks Year-Round practicing gratitude improves your physical and physiological health. When you are practicing gratefulness you open yourself to more relationships and improved self-esteem. Try developing an improved gratitude attitude to improve your motivational levels.
8. Stay Healthy & Active
Develop a healthy workout regimen and meal plan. Your mental health is very closely connected with your physical health. The better your physical health the better your mental health. An article written by the Canadian Mental Health Association states that Mental and physical health is fundamentally linked. So make sure you take care of yourself. Here is a great article by Mental Health America on Taking Good Care of Yourself.
9. Laugh Out Loud
Make sure you take the time to learn how to laugh. Learn to find the humor in your life. Learn more about how to laugh and stay motivated by living a more fulfilling life with motivational humorous speaker Doug Dvorak. Doug incorporates humor and fun into his humorous keynote programs that inspire and encourage you to enjoy life to the fullest while laughing along the way. According to an article published by the Mayo Clinic Stress Relief from Laughter? It’s No Joke there are many scientific benefits of laughing and finding the humor in life including simulated organisms, and aids in stimulating circulation and muscle relaxation.
10. Listen To Music
Listening to music can improve your motivational levels almost immediately. If you put on some music it can change your mood and improve your entire situation. This article on huffingtonpost.com states 7 Reasons You Should Listen to Music Before You Workout. This articles lessons apply well to other areas of life beyond exercise.
11. Set Goals and Strategize
Setting mini goals and creating a strategy will improve your chances of achieving your end goal and achieving success. The more success you achieve, the more motivated you will become. By writing your goals down you will be able to consistently remind yourself of your goals and track your progress. This will help you build a sense of accomplishment. Don’t set goals that are unrealistic, it will prevent you from starting and actually accomplishing your goal. Make sure that you are always looking at the first step and take everything one step at a time. By focusing all of your energy on one step at a time you will be able to achieve more.
12. Define Your Purpose
By acting with purpose you are ready to take on big projects and conquer the world. Purpose gives you a reason to keep pushing when you’re ready to give up. Purpose provides you with an aim, a clear direction which can improve your ability to focus and fuel motivational levels. Think about your purpose as the one thing that will actually become your main source of motivation. Without purpose, your motivational levels will suffer drastically. Find something that gives your life a sense of meaning and something that inspires you to constantly push yourself and improve yourself.
13. Make The Decision
Make the decision that you are going to succeed. One moment it could be just an idea, but when you mentally decide to turn that idea into an action and achieve your goal you are making the decision. When you start going for it, you will start to learn that you can accomplish more than you ever imagined and stop coming up with excuses as to why you can’t do something.
14. Learn To Fail
Every time you fail you need to learn something. You must learn that failure is a part of success. When you learn how to embrace failure as part of the process you are developing a better level of emotional intelligence which is a key trait any employer will look for in employees. Failure is often what teaches us our most valuable life lessons. Every single successful person fails often and encounters roadblocks. Always learn from your failures and keep pursuing your dreams.
Remind yourself every day to Experiment, Fail, Learn & Repeat with a coffee mug like this.
15. Practice
Practice doing what you want to get better at. Practice does NOT make perfect but it does make progress and progress provide massive amounts of motivation.
16. Get Stuff Done
Getting things done gives you a deep sense of accomplishment which is so often needed. When you accomplish a goal that you have set out to accomplish with a strategy you have designed to reach that goal your motivational levels start to peak. You are improving motivation through a deeper sense of self-confidence.
These are just 16 things you can do to stay motivated. There are many other methods of staying motivated and getting motivated. Choose the methods that work best for you and stick with them. When you feel yourself becoming unmotivated call on one of these to help boost your motivational levels.
Get Motivated & Stay Motivated!
Doug Dvorak, CSP
Hall of Fame Motivational Speaker
Learn more about Motivational Speaker Doug Dvorak
