Staying Motivated

I think if there truly was an answer to staying motivated, there wouldn’t be so many people struggling with this frustration.  Look on Google or any other search engine and there is a search about staying motivated pertaining to many subjects out there.

I have noticed for myself that one of the possible reasons for my having difficulty in staying motivated is the lack of structure in planning.  When I don’t plan the day out, I tend to get distracted by other things I’ll think of or see at that very moment.  When that happens, I will sometimes forget what I was doing previously, but what I think happens in this case is that I will feel a sense of frustration of realizing that I didn’t accomplish what I needed to get done.  It tends to get pushed away and easily forgotten about, so I think that’s one reason why it’s important to have something on “paper”.

You don’t need to have everything of your goals or your planning on physical paper.  You can use something like Microsoft Works, or a spreadsheet, or anything similar on your computer or even an app like a notepad on your phone and create something for yourself.

Keys to Staying Motivated Affects Everyone Differently

Every person is affected differently in their ways to staying motivated.  What works for one person will not work for another, so there is no specific answer that can work for everyone, but I do believe that it’s important to create a more structured environment as I have found for myself.  What happens is that it can help you stay focused on what matters the most to you.  It helps to prioritize what you should be focusing on, and it also can help you to save money in the sense that it helps you to avoid acting compulsively when you have everything down on paper, computer or phone.

Staying Motivated Has It’s Myths, Too

I think one myth that people have is that you have to have a black/white approach to whatever it is that you’re working on.  People set too high expectations for themselves, and if they don’t meet the expectations perfectly, then they lose focus, and eventually that motivation to keep pushing forward.  You have to allow yourself to slip or fall.  You have to allow yourself to have moments where you will fail.  Even for myself, just in the past week I became so involved with my two jobs that I felt depleted.  I felt exhausted, and drained that I didn’t feel the energy or focus to put my thoughts onto a particular subject to talk about in my posts.  I felt that my lack of effort in staying motivated with my blog meant that I failed myself.

Despite having gone a few days without blogging, I am back again creating this blog.  I’m getting back up, and I thought I’d create a topic about staying motivated because that was part of the frustration the past few days.  Cut your loss, let the pass few days go.  It’s in the past.  Today is a new day, take that next step forward.  Baby steps.  You’ll fall down, but get back up and keep trying.  It’s not going to always be a matter of consistency, but it WILL be a matter of staying persistent.

Times like this you can fall into the trap of giving up what you’re aiming for.  However, like in the image, I realize that every step I make is another step forward.  I might have times where I’ll come to a standstill to take a breather, but that’s okay to do.  Give yourself a small break, but get back up, and keep taking those steps.  You are not going win a marathon with one big step.  You will win a marathon with many little steps but you sure as hell are not going to win anything if you give up altogether.

Taking the analogy of riding a bicycle.  You’re not going to learn it in one session.  You are going to fall, get your pants caught in the chain,  get cuts or bruises along the way.   You’re not going to get the hang of it right away.  You will not be riding your bike every single day to learn the skill.  You’ll have plenty of days where you won’t ride it, especially in the Winter for most people, but you’ll still get back to riding it on other days or seasons.  You’ll eventually get the feel of riding a bike that it becomes a natural.  Once  you notice the improvement or make enough progress at what you’re doing,  you’ll notice that staying motivated becomes easier because why waste all of that effort training or getting better at something?