How to find motivation and maintain it - 10 ways

Has it ever happened to you that you desperately wanted something, but couldn’t motivate yourself? For some it is important to stick to a diet or go to the gym, for others it is to start a business and overcome difficulties on the path to success. Every person has a dream and difficulties with motivation to achieve it. How to find motivation and not give up until the end? Here are 5 simple secrets.

What is stopping you on the way to your goal?

Childhood wounds

First of all, understand: what or who is holding you back? Look at your own beliefs. You often have thoughts “I will never be able to become such and such...”, “I will never be able to afford such and such...”, “I am not worthy...”, “Money (luck, love, etc.) is available only to a select few.”

1. Such beliefs come from childhood, when the child’s immediate environment tried in every possible way to “protect” him from independence. As a rule, these are parents or other guardians who often said: “Don't go there, it's dangerous,” “Don't do that, it will hurt.” It is the pathological desire of adults to protect the child from absolutely all dangers, the reluctance to even allow him to tie his shoelaces when he begins to try to strive for independence, that kills motivation in the bud even at the stage of its inception.
2. Another “anchor” from childhood that holds back from change is the parents’ lack of faith in the child since childhood, belittling his dignity with words like: “Nothing good will come of you, you won’t achieve anything in life.” There are 2 types of people who, growing up, react to these attitudes in 2 ways:

• take them for granted, give up and go with the flow all their lives;
• they try to prove to the whole world that they deserve a better life, and get ahead.

Remember your distant childhood: did you have motivation or did those around you kill it? Realize this and understand that you are an adult and everything depends only on your decision to become happy. This is your choice, despite the evil tongues from the past that will definitely pull you back.

State of apathy, depression, inability to change the situation

Problems in your personal life affect your career, your ability to lose weight, find a partner, or other goals. This is the burden that takes all the energy and completely kills the motivation to act.

True, there is also a separate type of people who find strength through pain: they understand that this can no longer continue, and shift the focus of attention from complaints to real actions. Become one of them, don't complain and don't feel sorry for yourself.

Pain is part of growth. If it is not strong enough, you will not find the motivation to grow. Attitudes like “I feel good as it is”, “They love me even with this weight (salary)”, “Just think, I’ll buy myself something at a second-hand store” deplete energy. To top them off: remember that you are moving towards a better life.

How to motivate yourself to work?

Such people necessarily have a leisurely job, an activity that does not involve any exhausting active actions. And if they do occur, it is rare and not for long, and then this is the acceptable cost that the “lounger” is willing to pay. And in which he finds benefits to keep himself in good shape.

Others don’t even need this, and their work, as they say, “don’t hit him when he’s down,” is, however, certainly pleasant, definitely brings income, a feeling of being in demand and moral satisfaction. They are always motivated in life and achieving goals.

Their life is arranged according to the principle of comfort, in which there is certainly time for their favorite pastime, pleasant meals, hobbies, and so on. Laziness in their lives is not present in the form in which we are accustomed to perceive it.

Slowness, bliss, the idle course of life, the preference for peace and the reluctance of vanity - this is a natural conscious choice, considered vitally important and therefore completely allowed to oneself at all levels of consciousness.

How to motivate yourself to succeed?

Do you want this kind of life? In which there is always motivation in life and achieving goals? So that your thoughts can materialize? Then watch the video below. Today I give you a water video from my course, you can make your dream come true. Watch it now.

Remember what you want to get in the end

Direct your thoughts towards the result . Picture yourself as the ideal person you want to be. Savor the details: his clothes, his lifestyle, the things he uses, the places he goes.

Make a photo collage . Depending on your dream, select photos on the Internet. A visual representation will help you visualize your goal more clearly and find tremendous motivation. Do you want abs on your stomach? Save a photo of a slender girl/guy with a sculpted body, put it on your computer desktop, or better yet, print it out and hang it in a visible place so that it constantly reminds you why you work and overcome problems. You should know that in the end everything will look like this photo.

There can be many photographs, from different areas that you want to improve.

Top 7 books on developing motivation

Of course, in order to fully understand what motivation is, how it works, and what determines its acquisition, it is not enough to read an article on the Internet.

Top 7 books on developing motivation

We can recommend you books that cover this topic in more depth:

1. "Motivation and Personality" Abraham Maslow.
2. “Psychology of motivation and emotions” Julia Gippenreiter.
3. "The Science of Motivation" by Brian Tracy.
4. “Motivation is what it is. How Coca-Cola, Ernst&Young, MARS, METRO Cash&Carry inspire employees” Tatyana Kozhevnikova.
5. “Manifesto of Motivations. Nine Declarations" by Brandon Burchard.
6. “Motivation is everything” John Maxwell.
7. "Punishment with Reward" by Con Alfie.

Website editors

Make a plan for every day

Plan what you will eat, drink, how you will perform daily rituals (wash your face, brush your teeth, etc.). Be sure to write down what you need to do every day to get closer to your goal.

• The plan structures the chaos in the head.
• It will relieve stress: you won’t reproach yourself again and again for not cleaning your room again, or not getting closer to your dream again. Unfinished tasks kill energy, you get lost and drown in them, and instead of active actions, you engage in useless activities.
• A plan will increase motivation: writing down actions on paper will allow you to see how much you have already done and how much more you have to go.
• A plan will free your thoughts. You will stop remembering what needs to be done. Each time this takes a colossal amount of energy. Determine your to-do list once and carry it with you, rather than trying to find it in your head.

I use Trello.com for planning. I write down all my worries here and what I should do about them. I plan my day from start to finish. In the checklist, I note what has already been done and how many tasks need to be solved per day. This is surprising, but I began to notice that I was moving towards my goal much faster, getting stuck on social networks less, and finding time for important things.

Trello.com can be used both on a desktop PC and on a smartphone connected to the Internet. Here's an example of what it might look like:

In each card you can create comments and lists of important things to do. You may not be able to accomplish everything you set out to do. Plans can change suddenly. You can’t reproach yourself for abandoning the plan. I almost never have time to do everything I want. But even in this situation, I get much more done than when I had no plan.

Reason two. Inaction

The fact that motivation comes in action or is born in activity has long been proven by supporters of the activity approach - the great Russian teachers L.S. Vygodsky and his followers.

Probably, many people noticed how long they spent looking for ways to solve a problem without starting the activity (the solution itself) and how quickly the problem was solved once they started doing it.

Let's say you have an important presentation coming up. You spend the whole week scrolling through different ideas in your mind, postponing the action itself, looking for excuses that you don’t have enough thoughts to start working. But as soon as you start doing (creating) in practice, fresh thoughts appear, new ideas are born, but there is not enough time for brilliant implementation.

In general, it is very difficult for an intellectual to step over the line between thinking and direct action! Therefore, many ideas are put aside and then forgotten without ever receiving the motivation to implement them.

For everyone who suffers from the problem of thoughts prevailing over action, the solution is to change the pattern of behavior: forget that there is such an option to “postpone”. After all, there are only two choices - to do and not to do. If you decide to “do”, you need to start implementing it without delay, without waiting for motivation and inspiration. They will come in action!

Do it without relying on motivation

Today you are in the mood for training, but tomorrow it may disappear. Motivation is a temporary phenomenon. You will 100% encounter difficulties on the way to your goal. And with 100% probability you will want to give up everything due to the lack of the expected result. Understanding this, either don’t start at all, or finish the job, because even terrible difficulties after overcoming them will seem less insurmountable to you.

You need willpower. It's like a muscle that needs to be exercised. At first, an untrained will quickly gets tired: in the morning you are determined to eat a healthy breakfast and run, but by the evening you are drawn to fast food.

How to train willpower if motivation is gone

Avoid successive temptations. Finish work on a project or go to a bar with friends? Should you eat an apple in the evening or chocolate cake?

You must understand: the momentary temptations to which you succumb are:

1. Stress . You begin to self-flagellate. You fail to meet deadlines. Repeated negativity pulls you back into the hole you are trying to get out of.
2. Prostration . The more prohibitions and promises you make to yourself, the more strength you lose. This is called repeated self-deception, which destroys faith in oneself and in oneself. Having promised yourself “tomorrow I’ll go to the gym” 10 times, on the 11th you will think: “Why am I deceiving myself, I won’t do it anyway.” Imagine: you are giving up your cherished dream for many months and even years!

When you take even a small step, refusing temptation for the good of the goal, you:

1. You feel a surge of strength . The key to finding motivation is to start taking action. Only in action is the desire to move on, to achieve more, born. If this does not happen, then you have chosen the wrong path or the wrong goal. Perhaps it was imposed on you: by family, friends, a loved one, or just a nice passerby.
2. Become more interesting . You are improving, while most people give up on their goals due to fear or imposed beliefs. It attracts people, makes you a good conversationalist, and helps you create new acquaintances and connections.

Methods to achieve the goal

The goal has been set. How to achieve it? There are a large number of methods. The methods I offer are not new, but proven and working.

Affirmation

Affirmations are the repeated pronouncing of one’s goal, which helps to concentrate more on the goal and enhances the attraction of energy for its implementation and the necessary events. Whether you believe it or not, this tool works.

Visualization

Visualization is a more powerful and powerful tool compared to the first one.

You imagine how you have already achieved your goal: you are already sitting in the leather interior of a Mercedes S class, you feel the coolness of its steering wheel with your palms, imagine what you experience when you drive in it on a highway. How people turn around when you drive by and discuss your purchase, etc. Your imagination and fantasy are 100% charged. You also begin to be charged!

Here's another incredibly cool trick. Take it for a test drive! It's simply unrealistically energizing! Yes, yes it's true. That's how I bought my Land Cruaser 200. Visualization plus real sensations work wonders.

Daily rituals

Here your flight of imagination can be limitless:

1. Countdown - When you think there is still enough time left to reach your goal, you are doomed. To avoid such thoughts, hang or place a calendar in front of you, circle date X in red and cross out the days. At the same time, write in your diary or on your phone so that you only have 35 days left to achieve your goal, then 34, 33, etc. For some people this is very motivating.
2. Checkpoints – You should have checkpoints along the way so that you can understand whether you are moving on schedule, ahead of schedule, or behind schedule. You can write them down in your diary, or using any specialized program to achieve your goals.
3. Daily Actions – Most of your daily actions should be aimed at achieving your goal. Ask yourself a simple question: “is this leading me to my goal?”

You can also use the “technology of small steps”, I described it in the article “How to motivate yourself when you give up.”

Make decisions quickly to stay motivated

Every day we make a huge number of choices. If you spend too much time thinking about what to do next, motivation is lost and willpower is depleted.

What to do?

Automate decision making. For example, if the question is “What to wear today?”, “What to buy for dinner?” etc., choose the first option you come across and act! Don't waste energy hesitating. You will need it to make really important decisions that will determine your progress towards your goal.

Trick number 4. Yell at yourself, hurt yourself

It can be helpful to yell at yourself a little. It is not necessary to scold - just make a suggestion.

It happens that you walk around the room, shout, and problems with motivation immediately disappear. That's why I like to work alone. It’s hard to imagine such raised conversations somewhere in a coworking space.

You can also hurt yourself. For example, hitting a brick wall hard with your fist. Pain helps you shake yourself up. The main thing is not to overdo it: even a highly motivated person will not be able to work with a broken arm.

I learned this trick from popular blogger Jon Morrow, who advises putting yourself in a state of altered consciousness before writing each article.

Use anchors to help you find motivation

When you set a goal, you inevitably start thinking about ways to achieve it. You will think about it in the shower, on a walk, in bed before going to bed, and so on. So, if you see something inspiring in a movie, read a motivational quote or story on the Internet , watch someone’s video on Youtube about how to find motivation, start a business, lose weight, etc., get to work.

Moments of inspiration are the best way to start moving. You can start with:

• Creating a plan;
• Setting a daily/weekly schedule;
• Meeting with a friend who has already achieved success.

It is very important to communicate with people who have already achieved the results you dream of. They allow you to find strength and motivation because they help you see the reality of achieving your goal.

Finishing maneuvers

• We alternate mental stress with physical activity.
• We don’t take on a mountain of difficult tasks at once, but solve all the problems gradually.
• We find inspiration in creativity.
• We draw strength from the bosom of nature.
• We restore energy with a good night's rest.
• We eat healthy foods and drink enough fluids.
• Don't forget to smile at your reflection and praise yourself for the results achieved.
• Visualize our own goals.
• We build a “pedestal of honor” for ourselves, recording positive deeds.
• Let's get acquainted with success stories from other people's lives.

The main rule. We don’t get carried away by other people’s “crutches”, but find our own inner core and ideas for motivation.

*when copying material, a link to the source is required

Time frames and promises

1. Set precise time frames . For example, “Lose 2 kilograms in a week,” “Publish 10 blog articles in a month,” and so on. Set realistic goals. If you fail, it will be much more difficult to find motivation for the next attempt.
2. Make a promise to people . Tell us about the goal that you set in point 1. The more people follow the implementation of your plan, the fewer reasons to jump off, watch your favorite TV series, etc. You can, for example, announce your intentions on your personal VKontakte page, if you have a many friends. Talk every day about your steps and difficulties. Friends who care about you will support you and give you motivation. However, there may also be negativity on their part, so filter out trolls who will hint that nothing will work out for you.

Trick #3: Mental map with pictures

I have a mental map. These are just pictures that motivate me. It is known that visual images reach us much faster than anything else.

Of course, everyone can have their own pictures:

• icon;
• father mother;
• child;
• a great athlete or businessman;
• Bugatti Veyron or gold iPhone (wow to be like that!).

It only takes two or three minutes to run your eyes over the map. And the effect is noticeable immediately.

Trust the water to boost your motivation

Water is the source of life and energy. Without enough of it, we feel weak and drowsy , even if we have had enough sleep. One and a half to two liters a day is the norm. You should drink clean water to cleanse your body.

It has long been proven that water can record information about emotions. Depending on who influenced it, the structure of the water changes for the better or for the worse. Imagine how much negativity is recorded in bottled water in a store or even in tap water passing through tens and hundreds of apartments? It all accumulates, you feel apathy and lack of motivation.

But any water can be purified from harmful impurities and negativity. Moreover, you can charge it with positive emotions. Cows produce more milk while listening to classical music. Plants become stronger and healthier if they grow to harmonious music. Why? Because water is the basis of all living things, and it is capable of absorbing the energy of the surrounding space. Water also affects our well-being, affects motivation, the desire to create, because we are also made of it.

How to get the purest water with a positive charge

1. Pour tap water into a jug with a filter. This is the first stage, giving a rough cleaning.
2. We bring it to the state of “white boiling water” - when many white bubbles rush upward. The main thing is not to miss this state.
3. Cool and place the water in the freezer. After 2-3 hours, remove the first crust of ice, pour it into another container and put it back in the freezer. She will stay there for about a day, perhaps less.
4. You need to get a piece of ice, inside of which there will be a small amount of unfrozen water. It is the dirtiest: salts and heavy metals are dissolved in it.
5. We break through the ice and drain it, rinsing the ice from the inside. The result should be a completely transparent and solid substance.
6. We are waiting for the water to thaw. This way it will regain its original properties and be reset. Then you can work with it: turn on pleasant, calm music, dream about the goal as if it had already happened, live in your thoughts the life you are dreaming about.
7. Gratitude has a wonderful effect on motivation. Thank life for all the wonderful things it has given you. If you have a job, loved ones and relatives, you can walk, you have pets at home, you can eat delicious food - this is a reason to say “Thank you.” Place a piece of paper under a glass of water that says what you are grateful for in this world. In experiments with water, it was proven that a piece of paper with the handwritten word “Thank you” completely changed the structure of the liquid, making it more orderly.

Of course, nothing will happen without active action on your part. However, such water is filled with positive energy and increases your motivation. Don't believe me? Check it out! Drink 1.5 – 2 liters of purified and positively charged water every day and see what happens.

Important Notes

Before moving on to the techniques themselves, at least skim through this section. The information provided here will help you use self-motivation methods more effectively and avoid serious mistakes.

Popular Misconception

Many believe that strong motivation is a necessary condition for achieving goals. That is:

• To play sports, you need to really want to play sports.
• To learn a foreign language, you need to love it and enjoy it.
• To lose weight, you need to enjoy diet and exercise, etc.

As a result, people wait for a long time (sometimes for years) for the right mood, and before each major task they try to “wind up” themselves in every possible way. If for some reason they don’t get “super motivation,” they easily give up their plans.

In fact, strong motivation is not at all a prerequisite for completing tasks and achieving goals. We can play sports and learn a foreign language without feeling any craving for these activities and without getting any pleasure from them.

To begin to act, a rational decision is enough for us.

Strong motivation is, of course, great. But if we believe that it is right to act this way and not otherwise, then we can do without it. For example, to quit smoking, it is enough to understand that smoking is harmful and make an appropriate decision.

Believing in the need for motivation is often just a ploy to avoid completing a task:

— No motivation to work? Hooray! I'll be watching TV shows all day!

It is important to understand here that if the goal is really important to us, we can begin to act at any moment, relying only on self-discipline. In other words, the lack of strong motivation is not a reason to give up.

How to motivate yourself correctly and incorrectly

Now a few words about some common mistakes and problems due to which motivation techniques may not work.

1. A long period of apathy is an alarm signal. Sometimes you can hear the following complaints:

“I haven’t wanted to do anything at all for several months now.” Where can I get motivation?!

In such situations, you should first think not about motivation, but about health. Prolonged apathy may be a sign of overwork, lack of vitamins or various diseases (for example, hidden inflammatory processes). You need to see a therapist.

2. Don't expect motivation to appear on its own. Some people prefer to wait passively until they feel the urge to work out, exercise, or diet.

The problem is that such a desire may not appear very soon or may not appear at all. In order not to waste time, learn to “turn on” motivation yourself.

3. Motivation is always individual. The biggest mistake is trying to use methods that do not match your values ​​and character.

We are different. And if the possession of status things really “motivates” one person to succeed, then for another it will only cause a contemptuous grin or an attack of “class hatred.” If you immediately feel that this method is “not for you,” it is better not to experiment.

4. Customize all techniques and techniques to suit you. Likewise: in their original form they may not work for you. For example, the advice to “reward yourself with something tasty” will not help you if you are not a gourmet at all. Use what is closest to you as a reward: reading books, walks, games, etc.

5. Alternate techniques. Sometimes we develop “tolerance” to certain methods of motivation: each time they begin to have a weaker effect. It is better to use several methods at once and alternate them regularly.

6. Learn to say “I want.” In their thoughts and in their everyday speech, people often use the following expressions:

— I have to quit smoking. — I have to write this article. — I need to go to training today.

The problem is that such expressions imply coercion, lack of desire and lack of freedom. It is difficult for a person to inspire himself when he feels like a slave acting under pressure.

In fact, most of what we do is the result of our voluntary choice. We quit smoking or go to the gym only because one day we ourselves wanted to. To remind yourself of this, learn to say this:

— I want to quit smoking. — I want to write this article. — I want to go to training today.

Often this change alone can help quickly restore motivation.

7. Break the “demotivation cycle.” Each failure undermines self-confidence, which leads to more failures. And vice versa: success motivates us and leads us to new successes.

If you find yourself in a “demotivation cycle,” strive at any cost to break it and feel the “taste of victory” again.

8. If you relapse, simply return to achieving your goal. One of the most serious thinking traps is reasoning in the spirit of “the barn burned down - the house burns.” That is, we miss one workout or break our diet, and we immediately have a desire to give up training and diet altogether.

In fact, missing one workout is not as bad as missing a week of training or giving up sports altogether. And eating one cake and returning to your diet is a hundred times better than starting to eat these cakes regularly.

Everyone has breakdowns. But only those who know how to “get up” after every “fall” achieve their goal.

Where to begin

And a little about how to start motivating yourself if you haven’t done this purposefully before. Listed below are several principles that will help you build your self-motivation system.

1. Find your values ​​and “anti-values”. Think about what is most important to you in life, what you strive for and what you want to avoid. For example, values ​​could be family, career and self-esteem, and “anti-values” could be poverty or loneliness.

Values ​​and anti-values ​​are like two sources of energy from which our motivation is “charged”. Many of the techniques presented here will address these "basics" in one way or another, so it's best to identify them early.

2. Always answer the question “why?” Before you take on any business, try asking yourself questions “why”, “why”, “so what” until you get to your true desires and values ​​(see previous point). For example:

- Why am I going to do this project? To earn more. — Why do I want to earn more? To better provide for your family (value).

We can truly motivate ourselves only when we know why we are performing a particular task. As the famous psychiatrist Viktor Frankl said, if a person knows the “why”, he can withstand any “how”.

3. Set goals for yourself. Abstract needs do not inspire well. It is much easier for us to force ourselves to act if we have a specific goal.

We recommend getting acquainted with the SMART technique.

4. Set intermediate goals. If a goal is difficult to achieve, break the “road” to this goal into separate stages (this process is called decomposition). For example:

Such small steps no longer seem too difficult, so it’s easier for us to motivate ourselves.

5. Think about situations in which you showed a high level of motivation. What motivated you then? Can you use this approach in other areas?

6. Plan your motivation. Make a list in advance of the most effective ways of motivation for you and look at this list as needed. Try to build some techniques into your schedule or workflow right away.

An example of integrating motivation techniques into a schedule

However, many methods are effective only when they are used spontaneously and at the right time.

Let's sum it up

So how do you find motivation to make your life happier?

1. Think about the end result, create the photo collage of your dreams.
2. Make a daily plan and follow it. Small steps will lead to a big goal.
3. Train your willpower.
4. Make small decisions without hesitation.
5. Set a time limit and promise people that you will meet the deadline.
6. Make your environment more comfortable and motivating.
7. Look for anchors for motivation in life: through films, videos, successful people.
8. Drink clean, positively charged water.
9. Skip fast food in favor of natural foods to boost your energy.
10. Play sports.