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.

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!

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.

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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.

How to motivate yourself: methods, methods, techniques

For easy searching, all motivation techniques are sorted into sections. To quickly jump to the desired section, use the table of contents at the beginning of the page.

The most popular methods

Here are collected the methods of motivation that people use most often (sometimes even intuitively) and which are most often mentioned in books and articles on this topic.

1. Give yourself a reward for completing the task. This could be a purchase that you have been putting off for a long time, your favorite TV series, book, computer game or something especially tasty. Don’t use other people’s solutions: find something that will be pleasant for you.

2. Collect motivational materials. Create a separate folder on your computer or smartphone and put in it everything that inspires you and makes you want to act. These could be movies, videos, books, podcasts, articles, or even pictures. If your motivation drops, just look in this folder.

Example of a folder with motivational materials

3. Compile your own collection of inspirational quotes. Write down the quotes you like in a separate notebook or text file and refer to them in difficult times.

An excerpt from a personal collection of inspirational quotes

4. Read stories of other people's successes. If you, for example, are on a diet, look at photos of people who were able to effectively lose weight. If you want to start your own business, read about those who managed to build their business from scratch. Stories like this inspire and help you believe in yourself.

5. Try to make your tasks as interesting as possible. For example, if you are learning English, then read those books that you would be happy to read in Russian.

6. Choose inspirational music. Choosing the right compositions is the easiest way to create the right mood to complete a task. The method is especially relevant for physical labor and sports.

7. Create an interesting background. If you are engaged in “mindless” physical labor (washing windows, driving a car, planting potatoes), come up with parallel entertainment.

For example, try listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks, various courses and webinars while doing your work. And if your work does not require visual control, you can watch movies or videos.

Methods for quick self-motivation

This section contains techniques that help virtually instantly create motivation at the right time. They do not require any special equipment, so they can be used in any situation.

1. Technique of conscious choice. Ask yourself three questions:

• What choice do I have now?
• What will the choice of one option or another lead to?
• What do I choose?

For example:

“I have a choice: to smoke or not.” If I abstain from cigarettes now, then over time I will be able to get rid of the addiction. If I smoke, I will undo a whole week of my efforts and stop respecting myself. I choose: not to smoke.

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.

Practical methods

How to develop motivation? Keep a diary of achievements. In a difficult moment, realizing how much you have already done will give you strength to move on. Many successful people also keep a goal diary, where large tasks are broken down into small steps that will tell them what to do at each specific moment. This simple step will allow you to avoid disappointment if you fail to implement your plan for a long time.

You should constantly discover something new. These could be new places to travel, hobbies, practices and much more. It is useful to constantly expand your circle of acquaintances. You should choose positive-minded people for communication, since the environment largely shapes your living space. Depressed people who have lost their motivation for life can negatively affect your worldview and attitude towards yourself. On the contrary, communicating with a motivated person can increase the desire to live.

How to motivate yourself? Start inspiring the other person. In the process, there is a high probability of finding something that will help you specifically. A word spoken to another is better stored in the head, forming the person’s own experience.

Children often provide the impetus for life. Caring for a small child prevents you from sinking into depression and forces you to constantly do something. But you shouldn’t make a child the only meaning of life. It should be understood that parenting is not the only area in life. It is imperative to find time for your own development and relaxation, to enjoy life.

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.

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.

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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.

How to find?

Problems with lack of motivation arise not only among lazy people, but also among working and disciplined individuals. Before you begin your search, you should determine the need. That is, you must clearly understand the direction in which you plan to move, and also set certain goals.

All people are different: some pursue global goals, some enjoy small successes and accomplishments. Regardless of this, you should understand what your life's mission is.

The ideal option is a plan drawn up for a year. You must think clearly about your goals and desires.

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.

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.

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.

People motivating for success

We are driven to our own exploits by the examples of those who achieved certain heights on their own, without starting financial support, and sometimes even without the most necessary things at the beginning of their life’s journey. Among them there are many truly great purposeful figures.

For example, the famous American actor Tom Cruise says that due to family problems he had to change 15 schools, and Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest Americans, was born into a poor family and began his path to becoming a multimillionaire as a laborer.

There are a lot of outstanding people who can motivate success with their experience. They are truly worth looking up to.

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.

Visualization

Everyone understands perfectly well that following a plan step by step is not enough when there is no complete picture. Therefore, you should periodically present the end result. It is advisable to do this in the brightest colors and incredible manifestations. This way, your motivation will only become stronger.

In addition to visualization, you can enlist the support of like-minded people. When people pursue one goal, it is easier for them to achieve the final result. They exchange experiences, support each other, give valuable advice, and so on.

We break the goal into subgoals: we build a “tree of goals”

So that our goal does not frighten us with its volume, we break it down into several simple subgoals.

We briefly define each one and describe in detail which way we intend to go towards it, as well as what result and in what time frame we expect to receive it. If the subgoal is too capacious, we also break it down into several points and describe specific steps to achieve it. Celebrating what has been accomplished is a good incentive to continue what you started. It is possible and even necessary to make adjustments to the plans, because in the course of completing tasks we will probably have some clarifications.

There is such a thing as a “goal tree”. This tree is compiled according to the principle “from general to specific.” The general is its peak; here the global goal is indicated, which gives an answer to the question: why are we trying, what will we get as a result of these efforts? Branches are subgoals or smaller tasks, the solution of which brings us closer to achieving the main goal. They answer the questions: under what conditions can we realize our goal, what specific steps should we take? And so on. We break down the goals until we get the simplest small tasks, the consistent solution of which will ultimately allow us to achieve success in achieving a complex goal.

Remembering ambitions

The word “ambition” evokes negative associations for many people. This is probably because it is often combined with the word “overpriced.” People with inflated ambitions pretend to do a lot without having sufficient grounds for it, and overestimate their personal qualities and capabilities. Conversely, a person with low ambitions does not need anything: he strives to satisfy only minimal needs.

But ambitions can also be healthy. And in this case, they are an excellent source of motivation. A person with healthy ambitions is constantly on the move, he strives to stand out with his knowledge and skills, sets goals and achieves them. And although psychologists claim that ambition begins in childhood, it can still be developed in oneself. Communication with ambitious people who always need more than others especially helps in this. The desire to keep up with them, to be no worse, is a good motivation in the desire to become successful.

We tell our friends, relatives or colleagues about our goal

By introducing others to our plans, we will receive additional motivation to achieve our goals. After all, no one wants to be branded as an idle talker, an empty talker, or an idle talker whose words mean nothing. The fear that we will no longer be taken seriously will drive us when motivation alone is no longer enough.

True, there is an opinion, and quite justified, that you should not tell everyone about your plans, because in this case they risk remaining plans. After all, the more we talk about them, the less we want to start implementing them: our subconscious perceives the voiced goal or desire as already fulfilled.

Pitfalls that prevent you from motivating yourself

Let's look at the main demotivators and how you can deal with them.

Laziness

All people face the desire to do nothing at the wrong time. However, this condition should not be confused with elementary fatigue. But if you rested, got enough sleep or changed your activity, but you still haven’t increased your motivation, try the following cure for laziness.

Find meaning for yourself in what is happening. For example:

• if you need to do something routine, you can train your concentration and awareness;
• if the action is somehow connected with the benefit of others, direct your attention to the process of giving - the satisfaction that you are able to contribute something to this world will be an excellent help in the fight against laziness;
• if there is an element of creativity in the matter, just give yourself completely to it. Then next time you won’t want to be lazy and watch the series - the drive is not the same.

Self-examination

The habit of self-reflection and psychoanalysis can become an obstacle to self-motivation, because you can dig for a long time, unearthing different things and trying to rebuild. So long that a lifetime is not enough.

Therefore, if you find it reasonable, study the contents of your mind. But don't let this process take over your life and immobilize you.

Greed

This quality interferes when you feel sorry for your efforts, time, and mistakes made. “It’s better to do nothing than to endure such waste,” says the greedy person.

Abandoning such logic does not mean becoming reckless. This means accepting: you can't cook scrambled eggs without breaking eggs. And act, after the choice is made, decisively and boldly no matter what.

Depression

Problems with motivation may indicate depression. In some cases, you cannot do without the help of a specialist.

You can help yourself too. Follow a daily routine. Go to bed before 11:00 pm, or better yet, 10:00 pm (don’t watch TV before bedtime!), and get up at 6, or better yet, a little earlier and immediately take a cool shower (over your head, maybe through a cap). 60 – 70% of depression will go away on its own!

And also use foods that increase cheerfulness and optimism - banana, mango, dates, figs, etc. (eat them from 6 to 8 am or at least in the morning), pomegranate (you can eat from 10 to 19 hours).

We practice self-hypnosis

Self-hypnosis, when used skillfully, works wonders. With the help of goals that influence the subconscious, you can change yourself, as they say, beyond recognition. Quite often, people trigger the self-hypnosis mechanism involuntarily. For example, calling themselves losers, they begin to behave accordingly - like losers. Doctors assure that with the power of thought you can both defeat the disease and go to another world.

This means that by repeating phrases such as “I believe that I can do it”, “I can do it, it’s not difficult for me”, you can program yourself for success. To be more effective, they need to be repeated in the morning, as soon as we wake up, in order to create the appropriate mood for the whole day.

It is highly discouraged to use the negative particle “not”. For example, instead of “I won’t be a bungler,” you should say “I’m very attentive.” Motivational phrases should evoke positive emotions in us.

Create a plan and track progress

I decided to create a new challenge - going to the gym regularly. To do this, I downloaded a calendar app and ticked every day when I reached my goal.

Although it may seem silly, seeing those red ticks on the calendar was motivating. I could visually track my progress. Seeing all these marks in a row encouraged me to continue so as not to break the straight line.

Think about what you can do to visually track your progress. You can draw a graph to track debt repayment or net worth.

Hang a magnetic board on the wall to display your goals for the future. Stay motivated to achieve your goal! Create a visual representation of your plan and your progress. This visual image will be a constant reminder of what you want in your life.

Remember your "Why"

What made you pursue your goal in the first place? Tired of not having enough money to make ends meet? Tired of seeing chaos everywhere you turn? Do you want to take a new, more creative path?

Something has sparked your interest in achieving your current goal.

Remembering why you started this journey is often a big motivator. It helps us get back on track.

I first became interested in minimalism many years ago. My goal was to have a home where I could host a group of friends at any time. I was sick of cleaning the house for hours just to entertain friends or family. I wanted our home to be a comfortable gathering place. And I didn't want to spend hours getting it in order.

Action creates motivation

Everyone has probably heard that the key to working out is getting dressed, tying up your shoes, and taking your first steps. You can stop training at any time. But 9 times out of 10 you won't leave because you're already moving. The act of preparing for the workout created the motivation to do so.

This same principle can be applied to any situation. Set the timer for 5 minutes. Start completing the task as soon as it triggers. More often than not, you will continue.

Grab your bag and start clearing out the space you're in. I bet you will continue even after you achieve your goal. Why?

Getting started is the hardest thing!

Once you get your body moving, motivation arises. The trick is to just start!

Nothing happens until movement starts. Albert Einstein