Five Ways to Stay Motivated
You need a pile of motivation to actually achieve goals, which explains why only 8% of people do. How can you ensure that your momentum doesn’t sputter out as time goes on? Here are some ways to keep the drive high.
Power hacks for goals
Slice your goals into small, achievable segments (learn about the Sausage Principal).
Build habits to execute them, setting them clearly in space and time.
Go one step further by stacking those habits with something you enjoy (Every work day, at the end of the morning I will spend time at my treadmill desk to clean out my inbox, and then I will have lunch, which I top off with a piece of the yummy 93% raw chocolate I love).
Find out more about habits:
Motivation is a force, a stimulus, an influence. It’s incentive. It’s energy. Staying motivated is an art in itself. Here are five tips to feed the hunger that pushes you forward.
Create Meaning
I like huge, aspiration-filled goals awash with meaning. Things you want so badly you have to get out of your comfort zone. I don’t pour ice water over myself every morning just to feel the cold. No, I do it because it strengthens my mitochondria to stay healthy longer, so I can honor a date I have with my daughter to go tree climbing when I’m 100. It also keeps the fat in check and gives me energy to show up every day as the kind of person I want to be. Adding values and passions helps. Topping it off with necessity is even more powerful.
Tell the Story
Stories shape the life we live. And we model those stories. So let’s do it consciously. Storytelling is one of the longest-lasting and most powerful technologies ever—our brains are wired for it. So write the narrative that will help you reach your goal. What kind of hero do you want to be? How will you overcome the obstacles? What does triumph look like?
Be Specific and Quantifiable
Be very clear about what success means, both as a quantifiable result and an overall feeling and experience. You have to know, unambiguously, when you’re succeeding and when you’re failing. Hone in on the details of your plan—you need a plan, you must define where, when, and how you will get where you want to go.
Fail Some
Set goals that are just hard enough to challenge you—you should fail 20 to 40% of the time. If they are too difficult, you’ll get frustrated. If they are too easy, you’ll get bored. Both vexation and tedium are stressors that cut you off from your thinking brain.
Build Habits
Habits account for 40 to 50% of what we do every day and are very efficient. You don’t need to think about them or expend energy on them—a perfect solution for our brains, which is always seeking the best outcome for the least effort. It’s worthwhile constructing routines that serve our goals and to undo those that don’t.