Self-Motivation Tips

Self-Motivation Tips from Jessica Harlow

Winning is a habit (Vince Lombardi)

Short motivational clip, taken from ESPN Promo footage with Vince Lombardi, a famous American Football Coach

Top 7 Things To Do When You Can’t Get Motivated…

A few years ago, I had a business partner who simply couldn’t make himself get things done.

He told me he had the best intentions but simply couldn’t make himself do the things on his to-do list.

At the time, I didn’t have much empathy. We were under deadline and I could not at all relate. I’d always just gotten things DONE when I wanted them done, period.

But since then… I’ve definitely had reason to gain empathy.

In fact, just a few hours ago I was getting frustrated with myself. I wanted things to happen and I just couldn’t make progress.

So I asked myself a few questions, pulled out a few things from my bag of tricks, and presto… I’m here writing my second blog post in an hour.

Because of that, I present to you in no particular order –

 “The Top 7 Things To Do When You Can’t Get Motivated”.

7. Ask yourself why. Are you in alignment with what you’re working on? Is it something that truly revs you up and excites you?

One way you can find an answer is to take a couple deep breaths and just ask your gut – “Do I want to be doing this?”

Or, if you’re too stressed to get a clear answer, take out a piece of paper. Label it “Why can’t I get motivated?” and then start writing. See what comes up. If you stick with it long enough, you’ll get your answer.

If you’re not in alignment with whatever you’re working on, be honest with yourself.

It may be time to stop doing it – whether that’s abandoning a project (I have NEVER regretted canceling a project because it didn’t “feel right”… even if my logical counterparts couldn’t understand it) or outsourcing it.

Assuming you ARE in alignment with what you’re working on, here are some more things to do:

6. Listen to classical music at 60 beats per minute. Music at 60 bpm balances the left and right hemispheres of your brain and helps your thinking and creativity.

This type of music always helps me produce better results.

I’ve bought this before and really like it.

5. Work off of a plan. Sometimes to-do lists can be random gobbledygook that ends up just being busy-work. Tim Ferriss once said something to the degree about how being perpetually busy is LAZY. People fill themselves up with loads of crap to to avoid actually thinking.

Instead of loading yourself up with work that may have no rhyme or reason… work off a PLAN.

Set a goal, plan it out (#2 on this post may help), and then create your to-do tasks based off of your plan. If you feel purposeful and know WHY you’re doing what you’re doing, you will likely feel a lot better about doing it.

(Bonus if you break up your plan into small, workable chunks so you don’t feel overwhelmed.)

4. Find inspiration. There are many ways you can inspire yourself:

- Visualize what you’re doing this all for. Think about the emotions you’ll feel when you reach your goal.

PLEASE (!!!) have an emotionally-driven “why” for doing what you’re doing… and remind yourself about it.

- Identify “role models” and model them.

- Read books that motivate you (I personally love Man’s Search For Meaning (which is not meant to be motivational but it inspires the heck out of me), Do The Work, and The War Of Art. I’ve heard some great things about Outwitting The Devil but haven’t read it yet.

3. Move your body. If you feel blocked, it only makes sense to un-block your body by moving it around. This can look like going for a walk, dancing around the house, or some other kind of exercise.

One thing I like to do is just jump around and move my arms, legs, jaw… just shake everything up. It looks crazy, but it ALWAYS snaps me out of a funk.

2. Create accountability. This can look like publicly posting your goal on Facebook, having an accountability partner, or joining a like-minded mastermind where you can share your goals.

If you know that you have to report to other people about what you’ve set out to do, you’ll think twice before ignoring it.

1.  Be OK with it. If you’ve tried to get motivated, and you know that you are in alignment what you’re doing… then just let go. Sometimes these things ebb and flow. I believe everything not only happens for a reason, but for our highest good.

And sometimes letting go and not beating yourself up about it can open yourself up to magic.

For example, a few months ago, I was in a hotel room doing my best to “force” myself to create a presentation. I was set to speak in a couple days and I just couldn’t get motivated to create my PowerPoint.

I pushed and pushed all day, and nothing was happening.

By nighttime, I was getting desperate. I bargained with myself that I would order room service, finish the presentation, and reward myself by getting to go out and play.

Thankfully room service didn’t offer any options I liked, so I walked over to the hotel restaurant. I brought my notebook with me, but mostly just concentrated on eating a fantastic dinner.

Somewhere in between bites of the delicious food and looking at the beautiful aquarium surrounding the restaurant, inspiration just jumped at me.

I got out my notebook and ideas flowed like wine.

It was amazing… as soon as I stopped PUSHING, the flow came.

I suspect the same may happen for you too. 

—

I hope these help you!

If you have any of your own tips, please post them below – I’d love to hear!

http://rachelrofe.com/top-7-things-to-do-when-you-cant-get-motivated

How To Motivate Yourself

Bruno Mars is not alone when he wakes up singing,

“Oh, today I don’t feel like doing anything. I just want to lay in my bed.”

That’s just human nature, and some days it’s harder than others to entice ourselves to get to the gym or drag on our running shoes like crack fictional investigator Kinsey Millhone, who runs if only to be able to eat Quarter Pounders whenever she feels like it.

But the one who wins the ongoing battle of wills within us is ultimately the one that signals success or failure. And those who can overcome that internal naysayer more often than not stand a better chance of seeing successful results, no matter the mission.

I want it. I really, really want it.

Consider Ralphie from “A Christmas Story”. The holiday tale about a boy on a mission starring Peter Billingsley has now become a cult classic on TBS, in part from its marathon run on the cable network every Christmas Eve, but also because of its heartwarming message about Christmas dreams that do come true.

And when it comes to motivation, few can match the determination and focus of Ralphie, who wanted nothing more for Christmas than a Red Ryder BB gun, despite myriad warnings about the gun’s safety. He wrote classroom essays about it, sat on a department store Santa’s lap to ask for it and placed ads for the gun strategically throughout the house for it his mom and dad to see in time for Christmas.

Ralphie was motivated to invest so much effort into enticing his parents to buy him that gun because he was motivated by desire, and in the big picture could imagine himself with his Red Ryder, chasing burglars away as he starred in his own Wild West show, circa 1940.

For Ralphie, the gun itself was an external, or extrinsic motivation, but the process of acquiring it was intrinsic motivation (or internal) as the fantasies of owning it gave him so much pleasure that writing essays seemed as if it was no work at all, even for a boy who viewed homework as an elaborate plot to steal his young joy.

And through his efforts, Ralphie ultimately merged the two main sources of motivation that drive virtually everything we do.

The same holds true for an Olympic hopeful, who strives to be the best he or she can be in hopes of earning a bronze, silver, or gold medal, but in working toward the goal sees intrinsic rewards in the lean, mean fighting machine that he or she has become.

Most goals are reached by using both forms of motivation.

Intrinsic motivation: For the simple love of it

Those projects we tackle where we look up at the clock, hours after we’ve started, and have no idea where the time has gone because we were so involved – that feeling is intrinsic motivation, and wouldn’t the world work better if all of us felt that way about everything we do?

Imagine saying, every day, I don’t go to work, I go play. When looking at new challenges, seeing them in that light is a great way to make them happen.

Seeing a challenge as a chance to become a better person is an excellent motivator, whether it’s a gourmet cooking class, a math problem or mastering a new dance move to look killer on the dance floor. The satisfaction of success is an internal motivator, and is in itself the reward.

Extrinsic motivation: From the outside

For Olympic athletes, the idea of a gold medal at the end of a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice is the driving force behind the action. The idea that he or she is the best in the world, and has the endorsements – and bling in the form of medals to show for it – is the reward that comes at the end of a hard-won battle.

To motivate through workouts, we often have to envision those rewards coming to fruition to make it happen, to find the strength to get moving.

What’s in a reward?

But how do rewards in general motivate? Not so well, it turns out. Studies have shown that although we all love it, it turns out that money is not the best reward. A teenage girl who is offered $10 for every pound she loses might be more inclined to see being able to fit in a great prom dress, or land her dream date, as a better motivator than the money.

Once money enters into the picture, the task takes on the illusion of work, and that is seen less favorably. One classic study asked lawyers to help low-income people with their legal needs, some being offered a very low wage for their services, others being asked to perform the services for free. Turns out, the offer of money transformed the task from good deed to work, and made that control group less likely to agree. The motivation wasn’t money, it seems, but the good feelings that came from within for doing something nice.

Threats of punishment also don’t work as motivation, it seems. Instead of making people more inclined to work harder, the looming threat of some form of punishment usually backfires. Nerves caused by the thought of failure usually lead to more slipups and mistakes rather than less. Fear is only a great motivator on a show like “Fear Factor,” and there, it’s the money that’s the true motivator.

So what is the best motivator? That depends on the task at hand.

How to get (and stay) motivated

To get you on the right track, consider the following tips:

Have a goal in mind.  Whether you want to fit into the same size clothes as you did at your high school graduation or you want to be able to run with your kids, pets, or grandkids at the park, the goal is the thing to keep in mind to help secure positive results.

See and track improvements. Getting on the scale every Monday to measure pounds lost or realizing that running a mile suddenly turned into two miles without much extra effort can provide the impetus needed for getting over hurdles of discouragement, sure to come no matter the goal.

Take a break. If you’ve been working really intensely, you’ll be likely to be even more invested in the coming days if you take a day to recover from a hard workout or take an afternoon to replenish energy stores with a coffee break if you’ve been writing day and night trying to reach a big deadline.

Focus on how seeing the goal to fruition will make you a better person. The knowledge that comes from making good food choices or learning which forms of exercise offer the best health benefits makes you a better person. Knowledge is money.

Reward yourself. Many people find that by setting up rewards as part of a process – new earrings for 10 pounds lost or new bike gear after taking on that steep climb without stopping – will help make the road to success just that. A real success.

The more motivation…the merrier

Everyone tends to have a dominant type of motivation.

For some folks, they could care less about attention, accolades, and what other people think. They are motivated intrinsically. They simply want what it is they want for their own reasons. People like this don’t need to be carrot-and-sticked in order to achieve a goal.

On the other hand, you have those of us who are all about the rewards, attention, and bling. We are extrinsically motivated. We want what we want because of how it will make us look in the eyes of others. We have a strong desire to be able to show off our awards, jewelry, or body. We like be the envy of others, or at least receiving the praise of others.

So, does it matter whether you’re more intrinsically or extrinsically motivated? Does being more motivated one way limit your success and results?

No, not at all.

What matters is for you to know whether you’re more motivated from within, or if you derive more of your motivation from external factors.

You then take that knowledge and put it on steroids. Boost your most dominant motivator until there’s little room left to improve it. But, don’t stop there. After you’re done playing to your strength or dominant type of motivation, spice up your weaker area. Think of how you can double your less dominant type of motivation. Why? Because the more motivation you have and can cultivate, the more success you’ll experience. And that’s the whole purpose of motivation – to help you more easily and swiftly achieve your goal.

Whether your desire is to lose 20 pounds, sculpt gorgeous abs, or increase your income by 100% within the next 6 months – motivation will make it happen for you. Increase your motivation and you increase your results.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/how-to-motivate-yourself.html

25 Simple Ways to Motivate Yourself

Feeling less than motivated all too often? I do. Well, perhaps not too often. But sometimes I just feel really lazy and unmotivated.

Want some practical solutions to that universal motivation-problem? Here are 25 of them. Try a handful.

Let me know which ones work well for you.

I’m sure you’ll find at least one or two that do just that among these suggestions.

1. Make a deal with yourself. Good for overcoming procrastination and getting things done. You can make the deal small or large. You simple tell yourself something like: When I’m done with this chapter/these reports I can take a walk in the park and enjoy an ice-cream.

2. Act like it. If you don’t feel motivated or enthusiastic then act like it. The strange thing is that within a few minutes you actually start to feel motivated or enthusiastic for real.

3. Ask uplifting questions in the morning. Here’s what you do; every morning ask yourself five empowering three-part questions this way:

What am I ______ about in my life right now?

What about it makes me _______?

How does it make me feel?

Put in your own value in the blank space. For instance, a couple of my questions are:

What am I happy about in my life right now?

What am I excited about in my life right now?

It’s important that you really feel how it makes you feel. When I think about the last part about what makes me happy right now I really feel it. These morning questions are great because the way they are set up makes you recognize things you take for granted and then they really get you to feel those positive feelings.

4. Move the goalposts. Set a large and specific goal. This will motivate you much more than small goals. A big goal has a big effect and can create a lot of motivation.

5. Do something small and create a flow. Just clean your desk. Or pay your bills. Or wash the dishes. You just need to get started. When you have finished that small task you’ll feel more alert and ready to go do the next thing. You just to get started to get motivated. So if you really don’t feel like doing anything, start with something small and work your way out up.

6. Do the toughest task first. This will ease a lot of your day-to-day worries and boost your self-confidence for the rest of the day. Read more about doing the hardest task bright and early right here.

7. Start slow. Instead of jumping into something at full speed start slow. When you do that your mind will not visualize the task as something hard that you have to do fast, fast, fast. If your mind sees such things guess what often happens? Yep, you don’t get started. Actually getting started, even if it’s at a slow pace, is a whole lot better than not getting started at all.

8. Compare yourself with yourself. Not with others. Comparing what you have and your results to what other people have and have accomplished can really kill your motivation. There are always people ahead of you. Most likely quite a bit of people. And a few of them are miles ahead. So focus on you. On your results. And how you can and have improved them.

Reviewing your results is important so you see where you have gone wrong in the past to avoid similar missteps further on. But it’s also important because it’s a great motivator to see how much you have improved and how far you have come. Often you can be pleasantly surprised when you do such a review.

9. Remember your successes. And let them flow through your mind instead of your failures. Write down your successes. Consider using a journal of some kind since it’s easy to forget your successes.

10. Act like your heroes. Read about them, watch them, listen to them. Discover what they did that was special and what made them tick. But remember that they are people just like us. So let them inspire you instead of looking up at them admiringly.

11. Remember to have fun. Or create fun in a task. Then you’ll stay motivated to do and finish it.

12. Get out of your comfort zone. Face your challenges to get a real boost of motivation. If you are holding yourself back have a look at 5 Life-Changing Keys to Overcoming Your Fear and the methods in this article. They can help you get started and take that first scary step outside your comfort zone.

13. Don’t fear failure. Instead redefine it as feedback and as a natural part of a successful life. As Michael Jordan said:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Also, try to find the valuable lesson(s) in each of your failures. Ask yourself: What can I learn from this?

14. Do some research on what you are about to do. Then your expectations will be more grounded in reality and you can also get good hints on what difficulties that you might run into along the way. Managing your expectations can lower the often almost explosive initial enthusiasm. But it can also lessen the lack of motivation that usually follows when most of that enthusiasm has dissipated.

When you know what has happened to others in similar situations – what path they have walked – you can adapt and try their solutions (and personal variations of those) and your own. This makes the worries and challenges easier to handle. Both emotionally – since you know at least some of the things that will happen and that others have lived through it before – and practically.

15. Figure out why you are doing something. If you don’t know or don’t have good enough reason to do something then it will be hard to get it done. Do things that you have really strong reasons to do. If you want to do something then figure out a good reason to do it. If you can’t find one consider dropping it and doing something that you have a good reason to do instead.

16. Write down your goals and reasons for working towards them. Tape them on your wall, computer or bathroom mirror. Then you’ll be reminded throughout the day and it becomes easier to stay on track and stay focused.

17. Take The Positivity Challenge! Learn to think more positively most of the time. Learn to let to go of negative threads of thought before they have a chance to take hold of you. You might not be able to be positive all the time no matter what happens. But I think most of us can improve on our positive thinking and the results it can lead us to. Perhaps more than you realize right now.

18. Cut down on TV. Do you watch it too much? Watch less of what they are doing in TV-land and do more of what you want to do in life.

19. Break it down. Break down your task or project into small steps. And just start with focusing on that first small step. When you are done move on to the next and just focus on that one. The small successes will keep your motivation up and keeping your focus away from the big picture stops you from becoming overwhelmed and discouraged. It’s amazing how much you can get done if you follow this simple method.

20. Reprogram your information intake. Program out negative and cynical thoughts from the media and society. Reduce your information intake. Then program in positive news and entertainment, more of your own thoughts and useful information such as personal growth tapes and books. Be selective and keep it positive.

21. Make use of your creativity. Take out a piece of paper. Write at the top of the page what area in your life you would like to have more ideas about. Perhaps you want ideas to earn more money or become a healthier person. Then brainstorm until you have written down 20 ideas on that topic. Then try for 10 more. Not all ideas will be good. But some will. And as you make use of your creativity you not only discover useful ideas. You also discover just how creative you can be if you try and how motivating and great that feels. Have a look at 8 Ways to Spark Your Creativity for more ideas on this topic.

22. Find out what makes you happy. Then do that. As much as you want or can.

23. Listen while you’re on the move. Build your own small library of motivational/personal development tapes. Listen to them while you are driving, riding the bus or your bike, while you are out running or walking. Take a peek at my recommended personal development products if you are looking for a good place to start.

24. Think outside your box. Don’t imagine the future from the box of what you have now. Just because your mind is in box of previous experiences doesn’t mean that´s the limits of the world. Your possibilities are much larger. Create the future from the now and from nothing rather than your past to experience bigger changes with fewer limitations than you would if you created it from what you can see from your box.

25. Make each day count. We don’t have all the time in the world. So focus on today and do the things you really want to do.

http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2007/06/13/25-simple-ways-to-motivate-yourself/

The 5 Steps to Self Motivation & Success

14 Easy Ways to Get Insanely Motivated

Here's a column that I guarantee will make you more more successful in both your professional and personal lives.

Here are 14 quick strategies to get and keep yourself motivated:

1. Condition your mind. Train yourself to think positive thoughts while avoiding negative thoughts.

2. Condition your body. It takes physical energy to take action.  Get your food and exercise budget in place and follow it like a business plan.

3. Avoid negative people. They drain your energy and waste your time, so hanging with them is like shooting yourself in the foot.

4. Seek out the similarly motivated. Their positive energy will rub off on you and you can imitate their success strategies.

5. Have goals–but remain flexible. No plan should be cast in concrete, lest it become more important than achieving the goal.

6. Act with a higher purpose.  Any activity or action that doesn’t serve your higher goal is wasted effort--and should be avoided.

7. Take responsibility for your own results. If you blame (or credit) luck, fate or divine intervention, you’ll always have an excuse.

8. Stretch past your limits on a daily basis. Walking the old, familiar paths is how you grow old. Stretching makes you grow and evolve.

9. Don't wait for perfection; do it now! Perfectionists are the losers in the game of life.  Strive for excellence rather than the unachievable.

10. Celebrate your failures. Your most important lessons in life will come from what you don't achieve. Take time to understand where you fell short.

11. Don’t take success too seriously. Success can breed tomorrow's failure if you use it as an excuse to become complacent.

12. Avoid weak goals.  Goals are the soul of achievement, so never begin them with "I'll try ..."  Always start with "I will" or "I must."

13. Treat inaction as the only real failure.  If you don’t take action, you fail by default and can't even learn from the experience.

14. Think before you speak.  Keep silent rather than express something that doesn’t serve your purpose.

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/how-to-motivate-yourself-14-easy-ways.html