more often than not, we look like people to create positive momentum in our lives by identifying one massive element that we can adjust to create change and create motivation. The realistic approach is to take a bite-sized strategy to achieve newfound motivation. With that in mind, I've come up with a list of 15 simple things you can do to increase your daily motivation.
1. Define and set long-term goals
Motivation can feel as fickle as a person's daily weather forecasts. But there are plenty of ways to increase your daily motivation and make sure you are on the path to success in your business and in life. When working to achieve this requires you to improve your performance, the first step should be for you to create long-term, overarching goals that you will start working towards. Rome was not built in one day, but the idea that it had to be already in existence before the end result was ever materialized. In the same way, you must be strategic in setting long term goals and then work to relentlessly pursue. The hard part is figuring out the goal: the right way to set long-term goals and achieve success The easy part? Activations are about increasing your daily motivation (with the help of the rest of this list, of course!)
2. Targets in your daily result
Maintaining your long term goal, the next step in this journey is to keep your motivation levels sky high to create bite sized goals within a larger goal for you to pursue. A simple but effective quote comes to mind:
“How can you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."
It may be bad, but the general meaning remains true. You're out of luck losing 50 pounds if you're trying to make it in a week. But if you create long-term goals to strive for more fit, then you will experience the joy of small victories that will lead you on the path to achieving that big goal. These small victories will give you a powerful sense of accomplishment and continue to change your daily motivational levels for the better. During these victories there will be a connection and your motivation will only continue to grow as you continue to check other boxes towards your common goal!
3. Checking the check cash box
In creating milestones in your main goal, it's even more important to set checkpoints in those milestones where you praise yourself for a job well done. As a parent, it can sometimes be much easier to get a child to comply if I include a small compliance prize. We often encourage our daughter to brush her teeth after which we give her a delicious vitamin gummy and this has helped create a positive habit in her morning ritual. Once you've defined your milestones, choose a few of them and add some kind of reward in duet with reaching that milestone. It's like pairing a delicious cut of cheese with a glass of fine wine! It really can be anything you really believe. This will help motivate yourself to continue your self-improvement journey for as long as it helps to keep you motivated and doesn't get in the way of your long-term goal. Keep in mind, the reward should not be a negative factor in the way of your long term outcome.
4. Firm Your Foundation
Considering the first steps in developing your daily levels of motivation, have you really spent a lot of time thinking about goals for pursuing? Having a true understanding in the foundation of why you are pursuing a goal will help you keep going after it in the long run. Do you know why you are trying to pursue this goal? Spending thought and time defining your goals beyond reaching your long-term goal will enable more successful paths and longer journeys to your goals. This solid foundation will serve as a friendly reminder that allows you to keep those motivational levels rising and in place that will lead to success as you move forward towards your goal milestones.
5. Publicly Commit
I've found that when I'm ready to make a more public commitment to accomplish something, I have a stronger tendency to push through and maintain daily motivation in that endeavor. When more people know about your aspiration, the pressure doesn't start to build up on the brain. While pressure at times can be detrimental to pursuit, I think a little social pressure can be a healthy thing to keep you focused on the task at hand. When I know that my parents, significant other, friends or work colleagues are aware of my aspiration, I am more likely to pursue my ultimate goal with more sincerity. Likewise, it was much easier for me to workout, exercise, and eat right at school when I had a basketball coach who reminded me every day why I was actively spending time better. Now that I'm an adult and don't have a built-in coach in my life, I find it more difficult to support those who are pushing to be better. While this is a simple gesture, revealing yourself to the “public” and making a statement of your intent can serve as an effective motivating tool for you to keep on keeping on.
6. Meet Purposeful People
Too often, we strive to increase our motivational levels for each day without considering the people who influence the direction of our lives. If you have to average 5 people, what do you spend the most time on, where does that leave you? You should strive to look for people in your professional career and in your personal life who are more successful than you. If you lack motivation in life, try to be in constant contact with your friends or colleagues in the workplace who have the level of motivation that you desire. Do what you can learn from them! What enables them to maintain a high level of motivation and achieve their goals day in and day out?
7. Develop team responsibility
We all have the best of intentions when we set off towards any particular goal in our lives, but life has this annoying mannerism getting in our way from time to time, which leads to inevitably collapsing in our motivational levels. This is the time in your journey when a group of friends, family, your significant other (who would you put in your corner if you were a boxer) need to jump in on your behalf and remind you what you set out to do in the first place. Sometimes, your accountability team may be a group of people with a common cause (weight loss groups, group therapy, basketball team), and other times, they are the same people with whom you are not very close. All that's right for you is a team to help you keep your promise to you, so it's important to your success when you start coming up with roadblocks in your daily motivational levels. Keeping this team on speed dial will be a life saver when you have those Monday blues and start considering goal abandonment. They will be the ones you can “confidence drop” and can help pick you back up, give you confidence and restore that motivation you started with!
8. Consider Future Dead Ends
The prospect of increasing our motivational levels on a daily basis and maintaining them over the long term is good, but, you must remember that the road will not always be smooth and silky. The key aspect of traveling to the best place in your own life and in achieving your goals and dreams is considering the direction you are headed in and plan for future successes and failures. What obstacles lie in front of you that you believe you must be prepared to face? Regardless of what problems you come up with, as you pursue a strong motivation to move forward on your path to a better life, you will run into some obstacles that stop you in your tracks. If you take the time to consider the trajectory of your path through life and mentally set aside the energy and time to consider what pitfalls may come along the way, then when these problems materialize, you will be more prepared and able to deal with them. Take time into your studies to consider where along the way you might encounter flashing danger signs and know what your plan to deal with them will be ahead of time. Knowing yourself is such a huge element that can help you defeat your notorious enemies and let your motivation be strong!
9. Your Success
Also consider that not only your mental health at the moment to assess the fuel that you use on a daily basis to give you energy throughout the day. Do you make pizza in the evening and donuts for breakfast? Your physical body and how you take care of it has a direct and huge impact on your mental state, motivational levels and energy to get through life in a positive way! My family has taken steps to stop our eating of processed, frozen foods and have opted for more whole foods, vegetables, fruits, and grains to fuel our gains throughout the week. Instead of snacking on chips for my afternoon snack, I try to include cheese sticks and grapes! Take a look at what it is that you eat on a daily basis and ask yourself if you need to make some small changes in what you consume to better maintain your energy levels and keep your motivation boosted.
10. Fuel Your Achievements
I have a confession to make and it may sound a little crazy, but here it goes: I love coffee. Every morning I allow myself a cup to get the day going and on hard days when my motivation to move through the day is work is at a minimum, I could even sneak in a second. I am amazed at those people who have gone their entire lives without using a cup of coffee to make their day light up. I actually question those people's sanity, because who doesn't love coffee?! It doesn't matter if coffee and/or tea is such a fantastic way to get your body into full awakening mode, activate your consciousness and start the day on the right foot. Is there a better way to boost your daily motivation than waking up with a fresh caffeine injection to clear the fog from your attic? Research by the American Heart Association shows that: ((American Heart Association: Is coffee good for you or not?))
“[Drinking coffee] gives you energy and helps you lose weight and sharpen your mental focus, thanks to the magic of caffeine. Studies have shown that caffeine can improve mood, help improve brain function, and improve performance during exercise.”
The same study went on to warn readers that drinking coffee has clear health benefits, the manner in which you take your coffee will play a role in whether it's good for you or not as a "drinker" or sugar loaded. coffee will end up harming you more than helping you. Over consuming caffeine can be just as bad as it is especially if it interrupts your normal sleep cycle.
11. Catch some Zabolotsky!
According to the National Herat Lung and Blood Institute,((National Herat Lung and Blood Institute: sleep deprivation and deficiency))
“Sleep plays a vital role in the health and well-being of your entire life. […] Damage from lack of sleep can happen in an instant, or it can harm you over time. [Lack of sleep] can affect how well you think, respond, work, study, and get along with others.”
When I find myself with a strong lack of motivation at work, I often drop by to check on my last week's sleep habits, which can often play a role in my inability to stay on task and motivated. Sleep gives our body and mind time to reset, recharge, and repair the damage that we do in our daily movement through life, which is why it's so important to take the time to get proper rest. The college recommends 7-8 hours of sleep for adults aged 18 or older, which is hard to achieve on time, but it's so important to your quest to increase those daily motivational levels. Simply put, if you don't get enough sleep, you will find success in your quest to have more energy for the area that you really care about in order to be productive in your life.
12. Take steps to materialize motivation!
Some of the greatest tools for creating levels of motivation are simple yet highly effective. Exercise is a huge part of promoting a healthy mind and body. If you can go out and exercise on a regular basis, your motivation to continue and exercise will actually increase. According to a study cited in the Men's Journal of the University of Copenhagen ((Men's Journal: moderate physical activity increases motivation))
“Moderate exercise can increase your work motivation and lead to an all-around healthy lifestyle.”
So just work 30 minutes a day, research shows that your desire to continue that positive behavior will increase. Even if you just walk for 30 minutes every day as your form of exercise, that can be a great way to take steps towards a healthy mind and body. The better off mentally and physically, the stronger your motivation to be better overall and to pursue long-term goals will be.
13. Know Yourself
You know yourself better and you will be as aware as possible of your inner weaknesses, behavior patterns, and the way to decrease the level of motivation towards a certain goal. Exercise your self-awareness and plan ahead for potential areas of failure you have encountered in the past. If you are working to move on from your previous places of failure, which can lead to lower daily motivational levels, then you obviously have a stronger potential for success. Maintaining a realistic understanding of our own bad habits and weaknesses, and the fact that we don't allow those bad habits to rest, or weaknesses, to re-materialize is so key to maintaining a high level of motivation on a daily basis. Changing habits is a tough and daily result. But if you can control your thoughts and reactions to situations, then those reactions will eventually transform into new positive habits, which in turn will eventually restore your personality and behavior. All this work and effort will go far in raising your daily motivational levels!
14. Overcome Your Fears
The retreat of motivational levels, in my opinion, is often associated with self-doubt and inner fears creeping into your mind. So often, when we are near the peak of success, we revert to a previous version of ourselves in our minds and let fear dictate our ability to continue instead of reality. The truth is that inner fear is a mental block that we often let enter the equation, and we let it bully us into a chase or aspiration. However, I must emphasize that fear is something you can overcome! If you work in the face of your fears, then you will begin to understand that they have no power if that power is given to those fears of the individual. Fear is just an idea, and if you overcome it, you will see that there is nothing holding you back from success! The level of motivation will continue to rise as you have yet to remove another hurdle from your internal thought process and allow more headroom to build yourself, engage in positive self-talk, and continue to grow in self-confidence. Take a look at this guide written by Mandy Holgate on how to overcome your fears: How to overcome your irrational fears (that stop you from success)
15. Pool With Your Wins
When you're working towards a goal, long and painstakingly maintain a solid foundation of motivation throughout the pursuit, it's just as important that you find the right time to marinate in that victory. Success doesn't come easy and it never happens overnight. Your desire to boost your motivation and do it on a day-to-day basis is not without its pitfalls. But, in the end, when you work so hard to keep those efforts and see it through, you will experience the benefits of this journey. Winning is never easy, so make sure you give yourself a break and take the time to evaluate your growth on this journey to be more motivated and achieve your long term goals! Revel in your victory! Hop, because after all this time, patience, hunger and internal doubts, you have finally reached your goal. Even if it's a small win, with every gain you make in your life, your confidence in what you're doing will grow and your motivational levels will benefit from it. Once you get that initial taste of victory, it builds your desire to see future success and, as a direct consequence, you'll see your motivation become even stronger and more resilient than ever!
What's more, to boost your motivation
- 9 types of motivation that allow you to achieve your dreams
- Positive Motivation vs. Negative Motivation: Which is Better?
- How to get motivated every day when you wake up