We’ve all been told at some point or another that if you put your mind to it you can achieve anything, and that’s true so long as you have the motivation. Whether your goal is to lose weight, run a marathon, or get ahead in your career, we all struggle to keep up the motivation necessary to achieve our goals.
Take a look at our top five tips for staying motivated.
5. Have a plan
If you find yourself having trouble implementing a new routine, you might need to set daily, weekly, or monthly tasks. Having a plan or designating time on your calendar lets you see exactly what you should be doing, and will help you stay on track. It’s harder to forget or ignore a task if you’ve already set aside time for it in your schedule.
4. Baby steps
We all like instant gratification, but achieving a goal rarely happens overnight. You won’t be a marathon runner after one run, and that’s ok. As long as you expect to have to put some time into making your goal a reality, you can appreciate the small milestones instead of kicking yourself over not being an Instagram yoga star after one yoga class.
3. Cut the crap
So many people resign themselves to never making any major changes in their lifestyle because it doesn’t ask anything from them today. Telling yourself you’ll start a task tomorrow is the best way to ensure that you never reach your goal. We will always we busy and have excuses as to why we can’t start right now, but if we were honest with ourselves, those excuses boil down to laziness.
Making a change will always be hard because it requires you to make an effort today, not a week from today. That’s why it’s so important to set aside time in your schedule to work at a task so you can’t come up with a reason why right now isn’t good.
2. Reward yourself
Rewarding yourself is one of the easiest ways to keep your motivation up. Giving yourself a reward for achieving even a small task helps you enjoy the process, and will encourage you to keep at it. Just be sure that your rewards don’t go against what your trying to accomplish. After a great week of sticking to your workouts, try getting yourself a cute new workout outfit that makes you feel good instead of treating yourself with a decadent dessert. Next time you put on that outfit you’ll be reminded of how great it feels to accomplish something, and will be motivated to keep going.
1. Have fun
One of the most important keys to staying motivated is having fun. You may have heard the saying “no pain no gain,” and while most goals require lots of hard work and sacrifice, it’s almost impossible to stay motivated if you truly dread doing what it takes to achieve your goal.
Find ways to make the process fun so you’ll actually want to put the effort in. If you’re trying to lose weight, try a new class that interests you or working out with your best friend. The more you enjoy what you’re doing, the less you’ll have to fight with yourself to stay motivated.
How do you say motivated? Share with us in the comments
[Featured image credit:commons.wikimedia.org]
The Top 5 Ways to Stay Motivated is a post from: LifeDaily