Playing out the act in our minds “primes our body to act in a way consistent to what we imagined. Visualization is a motivation technique that works by actually creating new neural pathways in our brains. It’s almost absurd, but looking at my own experience, I can see how the goals that I put onto paper or into text are more often the goals that I actually complete.Īfter you write it down, make it real through visualization. I’m sure you’ve heard this one before and ignored it, but a study showed that writing down your goals on a regular basis increases your chances of completing them by 42%. Write down and visualize the goal(s) that you want to achieve. This technique for motivation is so simple that it was actually hard for me to believe that it works. As with everything I write, I advocate these ideas because I have actually tried them myself and they’ve worked for me. There are, of course, many more ways to motivate yourself besides this list, but I compiled this list based on techniques that take advantage of how our brains work to weave motivation into our everyday lives. The following 6 methods are research-backed for increasing motivation. Like most goals worth pursuing, that was only the beginning. All of a sudden, the idea that had been stewing inside my brain for years came to fruition in about two months. I did it once, and then again, and again. I decided I was going to start waking up early and writing before work. My blog started with a little bit of momentum every day. I saw other people living out my dreams and thought, “I could do that, too,” but I never actually did. Most of all, I cycled through feelings of self-hatred for not actually putting my plans into action. I kept thinking how great it would be to write with purpose, but I rarely did. The idea for my blog and a desire to tell my story had been building up inside me for years.
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I had my own light bulb – a spark of motivation – that almost slipped away until I learned how to generate the momentum for sustainable motivation. *Note: I added the quotation marks because taking the time for self-care, which may include doing “nothing” or being “lazy”, is not necessarily a bad thing. I’ll get home after a day of work and want nothing more than to sit on the couch and do “nothing”. Even now, at the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, I sometimes find it hard to motivate myself. This was a self-destructive cycle because the less I accomplished, the worse I felt about myself, and the worse I felt, the less I wanted to do. Even doing the bare minimum was difficult, and I just wanted to sleep or be “lazy”. One of the biggest issues I had when I was depressed was finding the will to do anything at all.
Often, the happiest moments are the result of motivation. Motivation is essential to increasing feelings of happiness by cultivating passion, purpose, and pride. If that sounds like it takes work, well, it does.
You can generate motivation, just like you can cultivate happiness and relationships.
The good news is that motivation is a skill. The bad news is that motivation isn’t a muse bestowed upon the worthy. Even when the light bulb goes off in your head, what do you do when the light begins to dim?įor this, I have some good news and some bad news. As someone who has gone from doing the least amount of work to get by, to steadily achieving my goals, I’m here to tell you that motivation is not what it’s made out to be. We misunderstand motivation as this omnipotent force that comes into our lives and helps us create masterpieces. What is motivation to you? The romanticized view of motivation is that it’s something that strikes us like a bolt of lightning: “Wow, I should go for a run right now!” or “This project is so exciting that I absolutely need to start working on it.” We have these epiphany-type moments that are so synonymous with the concept of “motivation” that we feel like we need to wait for that overpowering urge to actually do something: “I’ll go to the gym when I feel like it.” “I’ll start my blog when inspiration hits me.” An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.” “An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.
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