TEN TIPS FOR STAYING MOTIVATED
1. Give yourself permission to pursue your goals. Get over feeling guilty if you take time for you. You are at your best to do for others when you have done the very best for yourself. Cars don’t run on empty and neither can you!
2. Establish your goals and write them down on paper. There is something powerful about seeing your goals in black and white. This establishes a ‘contract’ with yourself that is impossible to ignore. Be sure your list is in order of priority.
3. Be honest with yourself. Be sure your list of goals represents what you truly want not what you think you should want.
4. Take immediate action. Once you’re decided what your goals are take immediate action toward your number one goal. For example, if your goal is to loose weight, go through the kitchen and get rid of all the junk food. The sooner you feel the sensation of being ‘off and running’ the sooner you will be ‘off and running.’ As Anthony Robbins has said, “Make your ‘shoulds’ become your ‘musts’.”
5. Cultivate a moral imperative to be the one who makes things happen. Too often we put our own lives on hold while we wait to see the actions others will take. Will there be a new war? What plan does the boss have in mind? Who will be elected president? What after school activities will my children decide to do? Etc. etc. etc.. One hundred percent of the time it’s the things we didn’t do we come to regret. With this in mind, strive to never be ‘on hold.’
6. Banish or neutralize negative people. We all know them. The people who are all too willing to undermine your self-confidence by using their criticisms to cast doubt on the viability of that which you wish to accomplish. They want to ‘infect’ you with their own feelings of inadequacy. Avoid them if possible. If you can’t avoid negative people ‘neutralize them’ by first recognizing what they’re up to and then by devising some little game with yourself that ‘brings them down to size.’ For example, if you’re trapped at a party with one of these sorts, look down at your little finger; imagine a caricature of this person on your fingernail with a tiny little dunce cap topping off the effect. Now their opinion doesn’t mean so much does it?
7. Visualize outcomes. Picture yourself at each phase of accomplishing your goals. Then, for reinforcement, take a piece of paper, draw a line down the center and on the left side write down all the ways you and your life will be different in ten years having accomplished your goals. On the right side of the paper write down how you and your life will be in ten years not having accomplished your goals. Odds are you’ll be even more determined to make your goals happen.
8. Enjoy the process. Cultivate a certain degree of patience. Going to the gym isn’t all about the ‘buff’ end result. It’s about enjoying the discipline, the challenge of lifting a heavier weight than the week before, being with others of like mind, the clanking sounds of the equipment and all the myriad sensations that go along with the process that makes it all happen.
9. Be your own coach. Treat yourself at all times as if you are the most treasured person in your life. This isn’t an invitation to be totally selfish. Far from it. But it is an invitation to take the best possible care of you emotionally, spiritually, physically, and intellectually. You’re no good to others if you’re not in top form. A good way to help in coaching yourself is to banish from your repertoire any negative self-talk. If we looked at negative self-talk as being as dangerous to our health as we view fat grams in our diets we’d automatically be a lot kinder to ourselves and in the process we’d be far better at stepping out of our own way.
10. Mark the milestones. Set smaller short term goals along the way to accomplishing the big stuff and plan rewards for yourself at these points along the way. This just naturally sweetens the deal.
