How to find motivation

What Is Motivation And How To Get Motivated (Your Ultimate Guide)

Why do we lose motivation every now and then? Why is it then that some people lose their inner spark over time, which is the pure source of inspiration?

Life is full of ups and downs, and sometimes the “downs” or failures disappoint people so much that they lose the drive to achieve their goals. It also has a spiral effect where they start missing opportunities and lose the direction of life.

If you also find yourself feeling lost and unmotivated, you can start your journey again with a fresh mindset and a systematic way to stay motivated.

Read on and learn how you can find your drive, regain the lost motivation, and always stay motivated.

What Is Motivation, and How It Works?

Motivation is one of the prime things that drive us to achieve greatness. It is a major driving force in our lives and can affect every aspect of our lives. Our level of motivation is a decisive factor in our level of success.

The Oxford Dictionary has multiple definitions of motivation: [1]

Motivation drives us to achieve goals and do what is required to succeed. It would be something that keeps you happy and fulfilled.

To understand more about the psychology behind motivation, go to The Psychology of Motivation: Why Is Motivation So Powerful?

Understanding the Theories of Motivation

Research has revealed numerous theories of motivation and motivating factors. By understanding the merits of these different theories of motivation, you can apply the best ways to keep yourself motivated.

There are three popular theories of motivation:

To learn more about each of these theories and how these theories affect the way we feel motivated, check out How to Use the Theories of Motivation to Keep Yourself Uplifted.

The Importance of Motivation

Do you know what differentiates a confident and successful person from the common populace? It is the level of motivation instilled in the individual.

As humans, we have a skewed view of time. [2] We tend to ignore what’s really important in life and get lured to things that hardly matter. As a result, we keep working in a direction that does not give us satisfaction.

One of the most common misconceptions is that we have ample time and that everything is in control. It is important to realize that we have limited time and don’t have control over everything.

The fact is that if you want to live life to the fullest and enjoy its authenticity, you have to embrace the reality of your own limitations. Once you realize that your time and energy are not unlimited, you can use it as your lens for making the right decisions with your time.

Highly successful people understand that they have limited time and energy, and therefore only focus on things that truly matter. With this laser focus, they can align their time and energy with what they want to do. This is also why they are always motivated and are a lot more satisfied with their lives.

Life is meant to be experienced and not just spent. In order to experience life, you will have to discover your true source of motivation.

What Causes a Lack of Motivation?

The tricky part about motivation is not starting, but staying motivated. Every New Year, thousands decide they’re going to change their lives. Fewer than 10 percent actually stick with their resolution, and that’s being generous. Below you’ll find many common reasons why you’re losing motivation.

Not Aiming High Enough

While it’s easy to think setting easy goals will keep you motivated, it may harm your long-term motivation. If you make goals that are too achievable, you’ll get bored and lose interest. Ideally, you want to strike a balance between pushing yourself and creating realistic goals.

If you’re used to staying within your comfort zone, you’ll be missing out on the satisfaction of achieving a life-changing goal. When you push yourself, you’ll be able to build unshakable confidence as you crush goal after goal. When you look around one day and you’re living your dream, it’ll all be worth it.

How to Find Motivation When You’re Totally Burnt Out

Author and Success Coach | Founder of Grit & Grace Living | Creator of the Writerpreneur Workshop Read full profile

I was weeping in bed for the third time that week, and I’ve never been a crier. But eight months after having my daughter, and four months after going back to work, the motivation and energy I’d originally felt returning to my job had completely subsided, and I’d hit a wall of fatigue and exhaustion of epic proportions. I’d forgotten how to find motivation.

I felt trapped. I wondered how to stop feeling unmotivated when I was trying to be everything to everyone. In today’s non-stop society, this happens to many people, so if you’re feeling burnt out and exhausted, you’re not alone.

So how to find motivation when you’re burnt out?

When I think about my experience with burnout, I can’t help but get a visual of when the hero Wesley is declared “mostly dead” in the classic 80’s movie The Princess Bride.

In case you haven’t seen the movie, let’s set the scene: Our hero Wesley is flat on his back, seemingly lifeless with heavy limbs and no strength left in his body after being tortured (almost) to death. Hope is bleak. At this point it seems impossible he has any fight left in him to take on his nemesis, Prince Humperdink, and rescue his lady love Buttercup.

But with the remaining air in his lungs, he mutters two words: True love.

This leads us to the first strategy for how to find motivation, even when you’re completely burnt out:

1. Focus on Your True Love

Our hero Wesley had one thing that motivated all of his actions: Princess Buttercup, his true love.

If you really think about it, the same is true for you. Whether it’s an actual person or a passion, you need to remember your “why.”

What is your reason for rising from this rut? Who or what was your motivation for reading this article? There’s something driving you to not stay stuck. There are some people who are counting on you or some mission that’s bigger than you that provide a clear purpose for everything you do.

All of your efforts should be focused on your true love and getting back to being the person who can show up for that noble cause.

Knowing your true love is your compass. Whenever you’re feeling lost or uninspired, remembering the people or passion that make you uniquely you gives you that sense of purpose that you need to feel motivated to rise, even when you feel like you have nothing left.

Unsure what your true love is? Then this Fast Track Class – Activate Your Motivation can help you. It’s a free focused-session that will guide you to find your true passion so you know how to build a sustainable motivation engine in the long-run. Join the free session now!

In my case, I had to eventually realize that my true love (my husband) wanted his true love back—not this sobbing, miserable zombie I’d become.

When I realized that my complete lack of motivation and burn out was really affecting him, I knew it was time to get to the root of what was really wrong, which leads us to step 2.

2. Identify Your True Adversary (and Focus Your Limited Energy There)

There’s always someone or something that has to be defeated in every hero’s journey when learning how to find motivation. In the case of our hero Wesley, he had to defeat Prince Humperdink in order to rescue Buttercup. This singular mission helped him reserve his energy for the most critical moment, when he finally met Humperdink face-to-face.

In the case of your burnout, there is most likely a root cause that has to be addressed in order to reclaim your motivation. Getting clear on what that is will prevent you from running around trying to fix every aspect of your life and allow you to simply focus on the one or two things that are really the reason everything’s feeling so hard.

When you’re truly burnt out, it’s likely that it’s negatively impacted multiple areas of your life, so it may feel impossible to identify the root cause of your struggles at the moment.

To get the root cause of your burnout, do a gut check. What are the first 3 reasons that you think have caused you to burn out? What were the first things that popped into your mind?

If you’re stuck, you can also rank each of the following categories of your life from 1-10 (10 being awesome, 1 being awful):

The aspects of your life with the lowest numbers should help you identify the true root cause of your burnout.

In fact, at Lifehack, you can take the Life Assessment for free and find out how well you are balancing different aspects of life. You can now take the assessment here.

One way to really figure out what’s wrong is to imagine what a 10 would be to you in each area you rank low. For example, if you rank your job a 2, what would a 10 be to you? Describe it in as much detail as possible and compare it to your current situation.

For example, maybe your 10 job would be remote, but your current job forces you to commute and travel constantly. This has the potential to affect every area of your life, but the solution to most of your woes is to get a job that lets you work from home and doesn’t require so much travel.

When you’re clear on what’s not working, you can start to see a way out, which leads us to step 3.

3. Remember That You’re the Hero

It would have been easy for Wesley to play the victim. After all, he literally was tortured to death and endured unimaginable pain in the Pit of Despair.

However, instead of focusing on what had happened to him in the past, as soon as Wesley was brought back to life, he focused on what needed to be done in order to get his girl. He remembered he was the hero, despite how things may have felt or appeared in the moment.

When we’re burnt out, it’s easy to want to play the blame game or feel victimized by our circumstances.

This isn’t a good way to learn how to find motivation because it prevents us from having any agency or creative point of view on our situation.

If anything is going to change in our life, we have to always remember that we’re the hero of our own story. Despite what circumstances come at us, our responses are 100% our responsibility.

In my case, I knew the commute and stress from my job was one of the major sources of my burnout. I also knew something was wrong with my health but didn’t have any answers or solutions yet. What was clear was that the stress I was feeling wasn’t going to get any better if I kept doing what I was doing.

I had to save myself. I had to do the work, and perhaps I was using my husband as an excuse because in admitting I needed a break or help, in my mind I was admitting weakness.

I was afraid to be that vulnerable and to ask for and expect his complete love and support when I wasn’t “working for it.” I was more comfortable playing the victim of my circumstances and falling on my noble sword because it made me feel strong.

Can you relate? If so, spend time answering these questions:

Once you take complete responsibility for your circumstances and for saving yourself, there’s another key thing you’ll need.

4. Accept Help From Your Friends

Our hero Wesley was “mostly dead” and unable to walk, feed himself, or hold his head up when his friends Inigo and Fezzik found him. If it wasn’t for them, he would have died in the Pit of Despair, but they held him up, found Miracle Max, advocated for a remedy, and carried him on their backs until he could stand on his own again.

My story is no different. In order to find my motivation again and recover from burnout, it required me to rely on my husband and support network more than I ever had before. It also required doctors, life coaches, and the support of friends and family.

This is how you learn to achieve your goals after losing motivation.

Final Thoughts

Remember, burnout happens to all of us from time to time, and it’s during these times that we may need to learn how to find motivation again.

Sometimes, doing this requires making a huge life change, but other times, it can be fixed with a new habit as simple as shutting down your computer, putting your phone out of sight, and giving yourself some down time.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with all of the responsibilities on your plate and with all of the things you’re thinking you need to change, remember to start small and focus on the ONE thing that’s going to make the biggest impact.

My thing was leaving my full time job, which, after months stressing about it, was accomplished in one 10-minute conversation with my manager.

Save your precious energy for only doing the things that truly matter right now, and your motivation will start coming back sooner than you thought possible.

How to Get Motivated Every Day When You Wake Up

Founder & CEO of Lifehack Read full profile

It’s Monday morning. The alarm goes off. Do you know how to get motivated at that moment? What’s the first thought that comes to mind when you open your eyes?

Are you excited to get up and go to work, or are you dreading the day and week ahead?

Whatever your response may be, ask yourself this question:

“What is it that makes you feel unmotivated?” What’s driving you to feel negative or positive about your Monday ahead? If you want to know how to get motivated, keep reading.

What Is Motivation, Really?

You likely know of people who have been doing the same thing for years and seem to not have any problem staying stagnant. Whether it be in their marriage, job, or personal endeavors, they seem to be getting along just fine without progressing towards anything “better.”

On the other hand, I’m sure you also know of individuals who focus on the positive, goals setting and are constantly pushing themselves to greater heights. Be it promotions at work, building a family, celebrating marriage milestones, traveling more, or going to school again, these individuals seem to constantly progress towards something that improves or enhances their life.

So what’s the difference between these two types of individuals?

What you feel capable of doing comes down to one thing: motivation. It’s the force, or lack of, that keeps driving you forward to overcome challenges and obstacles to achieve your goals.

Without motivation, you’ll give up after a few failed attempts, or even on the first tough challenge that comes your way. Or you’ll just remain where you are: unhappy yet not doing anything to progress ahead.

Whether you realize it or not, motivation is a huge force in your life, and it needs to be harnessed in order to excel and actually enjoy whatever it is that you’re doing on a daily basis. If you find yourself thinking, “I need motivation,” there are specific steps you can take.

Unfortunately, many overgeneralize the word motivation. We think of being either motivated or unmotivated as a simple “yes” or “no” state of being.

But motivation is not a switch. Motivation is a flow.

The Motivation Flow

To feel motivated, you need to dive beyond the surface. Just reading a motivational quote, being encouraged by your friends or mentor, or writing out a short to-do list won’t help you build sustainable motivation in the long run.

You can think of the motivation that we want to achieve like the Sun (self-sustaining and long-lasting), which supplies a constant influx of energy to all life on Earth. Just like the Sun, your “motivation engine” has different layers, starting from the core and spreading out to the surface. The surface is what you see, but the real process is driven from the core (your internal motivation); and that’s the most important part.

If you can create a self-sustaining motivation engine, you’ll be able to find more meaning in your life and enjoy every minute of what you’re doing, which will make your roles and responsibilities less of a chore.

Let me help you understand this motivation flow better by breaking down the motivation engine into 3 parts:

The Outer Layer: Surface

The outermost layer, also known as Acknowledgement, encompasses any type of external recognition that might give you motivation. It may come in the form of respect or recognition, such as compliments and praise.

Or it could be emotional support through encouragement, feedback, and constructive criticism. It could also be affiliation, where you have mutual companions or buddies sharing the same goal or burden with you.

Therefore, it’s important to recognize that rewards will motivate you, but they won’t necessarily make you happier in an undesirable situation.

This is generally what you see on the surface when you look at other people. You see the external acknowledgement, respect, and recognition they’re getting.

The Middle Layer: Support

In essence, the second layer of the motivation engine (also known as Enablers) is what supports your goals. They can magnify the motivation core you have, or speed up the momentum that you build. Basically, they create favorable circumstances for things to go smoothly.

If you want to know how to find motivation, positive enablers are key. This could include friends and family, or any support network you’ve created in life.

The Innermost Layer: Core

But what’s most important, and the true driving force behind your motivation flow, is the innermost core, your Purpose. Your purpose is what differentiates the motivated from the unmotivated, the achievers from the underachievers, the happy from the unhappy.

Your motivational core is your Purpose, and it is sustained by two things: having meaning, and forward movement. With these two as a foundation, you’ll have a power source that will feed you motivational energy indefinitely.

Sustaining Your Core Motivation — Your Purpose

Having meaning is simple. If you want to learn how to find motivation, just ask yourself a question: Why?

Why are you pursuing a certain goal? If the reason is vague or unclear, then your motivational energy will be the same. While motivation provides you energy to do something, that energy needs to be focused somewhere. So without meaning, there is no direction for your energy to focus.

Yet, having a meaningful objective doesn’t mean you have to change the world or have a huge impact on society. The secret to meaningful work is simple: it should contribute value to something or someone that matters to you.

Next up is gaining forward movement. In short, this means to just keep moving. Like a snowball, motivation from having progress creates momentum. So to keep this up, you have to keep moving.

The good news is, your progress doesn’t have to be huge for you to recognize it. Small amounts of progress can be just as motivating, as long as they keep coming. Like driving a car, you may be really impatient if you’re at a complete halt. But, it lessens if you’re moving forward, even if you’re moving slowly.

Creating a simple progress indicator, like checklists or milestones, is a great way to visualize your small (and big) wins. They trigger your brain to recognize and acknowledge them, giving you small boosts of motivational energy.

This is why video games are so addictive! They’re full of progress indicators everywhere. Even though the progress is completely virtual, they’re still able to trigger the motivation centers in your brain.

How to Get Motivated Starting Today

1. Find out What Drives You Today

Why not take some time today and do a quick reflection of where you’re at now? Take one aspect of your life that you’d like to progress further in.

For example, it may be your current job. Start with your why. Write down your reasons for why you’re in the job that you’re in.

Then, think about your Motivation Core: your Purpose. Write down what it is within your job that gives you meaning, and what are some things that will help push you forward in life.

Once you have those points, it’s time to do a comparison. Does your current job help you make progress towards that purpose that you’ve written?

If it does, you’re on the right track. If it doesn’t, or if you’ve realized your life isn’t going where you want it to, don’t panic. There’re tools that can help you get through this.

Do your best to not focus on the negative. Review your goals and aim yourself in a positive direction, even if it means that you start small.

2. Change Your Approach and Don’t Give up

When something doesn’t feel right, it’s always a good time to take a moment and look for a different approach if you want to learn how to get motivation.

You may be doing everything correctly and efficiently, but such an approach isn’t necessarily the most motivating one. Quite often, you can find a number of obvious tweaks to your current approach that will both change your experience and open up new possibilities.

That’s why saying “one way or another” is so common—if you really want to accomplish your goal, there is always a way; and most likely, there’s more than one way.

If a certain approach doesn’t work for you, find another one, and keep trying until you find the one that will both keep you motivated and get you the desired results.

If you can’t find the right approach, you may need to go back to motivation basics to find your motivation style. Check out Lifehack’s Free Assessment: What’s Your Motivation Style?

3. Recognize Your Progress

Everything you may be working on can be easily split into smaller parts and stages. For most big or long-term goals, it is quite natural to split the process of accomplishing them into smaller tasks and milestones. There are a few reasons behind doing this, and one of them is tracking your progress.

We track our progress automatically with most activities, but to stay motivated, you need to recognize your progress, not merely track it. Tracking is merely taking note of having reached a certain stage in your process. Recognizing is taking time to look at the bigger picture and realize where exactly you are and how much more you have left to do.

For example, if you’re going to read a book, always start by going through the contents table. Getting familiar with chapter titles and memorizing their total number will make it easier for you to recognize your progress as you read. Confirming how many pages your book has before starting it is also a good idea.

Somehow, it is human nature to always want things to happen in short term or even at once. Even though we split complex tasks into simpler actions, we don’t quite feel the satisfaction until everything is done and the task is fully complete.

For many scenarios though, the task is so vast that such an approach will drain all the motivation out of you long before you have a chance to reach your goal. That’s why it is important to always take small steps and recognize the positive progress made. This is how to keep yourself motivated in the long-term.

4. Reward Yourself

Feeling down about doing something? Dread the idea of working on a particular task? Hate the whole idea of working?

Right from the beginning, agree on some deliverables that will justify yourself getting rewarded. As soon as you get one of the agreed results, take time to reward yourself in some way. This creates external motivators to help you feel motivated in the long run.

For some tasks, just taking a break and relaxing for a few minutes will do. For others, you may want to get a fresh cup of coffee and even treat yourself to dessert.

For even bigger and more demanding tasks, reward yourself by doing something even more enjoyable, like going to see a movie, taking a trip to some place nice, or even buying yourself something.

The more you reward yourself for making progress, the more motivated you will feel about reaching new milestones.

Final Thoughts on Staying Motivated

Happiness doesn’t need to be a vague term or illusion that you’re constantly chasing after with no end in sight. By finding your true motivation, you’ll be one step closer to realizing your happiness and finding meaning in everything you do.

You may have tried many solutions to help you stay motivated and found that none of them really have any impact. That’s because they bring about incremental changes only, and permanent change requires a holistic approach. It requires more than just focusing on one area of your life or changing one part of your routine or actions.

You want to make a fundamental change, but it feels like big, unknown territory that you can’t afford to venture into at this point in your life.

The truth is, taking your life to the next stage doesn’t have to be this complicated. So, if you’d like to take the first step to achieving your life purpose, the time to learn how to find motivation is now!

Don’t have time for the full article? Read this.

27 Smart and Simple Ways to Motivate Yourself

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”
Wayne Dyer

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
Zig Ziglar

“I was thinking one day and I realized that if I just had somebody behind me all the way to motivate me I could make a big difference. Nobody came along like that so I just became that person for myself.”
Unknown

Some days you wake up motivated and ready to go. And some days things feel heavy as you arise and it is hard to get going and find that inner drive.

At least in my experience.

So over the past 10+ years I have found some simple and smart strategies that work for me to get back into the right groove and to get things done.

Here are 27 of my favorite tips and habits for doing just that.

Bonus: Download a free step-by-step checklist that will show you how to improve your motivation and keep it stable (it’s easy to save as a PDF or print out for whenever you need it during your day or week).

1. Just get started and let the motivation catch up with you.

You don’t have to wait for motivation to get started. If you want to work in a consistent way every day then sometimes you just have to get going anyway.

And the funny thing is that after I have worked for a while things feel easier and easier and more fun and the motivation catches up with me.

2. Start small if big leads you to procrastinating.

If a project or task feels too big and daunting don’t let that lead you into procrastination.

Instead, break it down into small steps – like just setting up your blog or cleaning for 5 minutes – and then take just one of them to start moving forward.

3. Start tiny if a small step still leads you to procrastination.

If breaking it down and taking a small step still leads you to procrastinating then go even smaller. Take just a tiny 1-2 minute step forward. That’s it.

Because the most important thing is to just get going and to build momentum forward.

4. Reduce the daily distractions.

When you have easily accessible distractions all around you then it becomes hard to focus.

So shut the door to your office. Put your smart phone in silent mode at the other end of your work space or home. And use an extension for your browser like StayFocusd to keep yourself on track.

5. Get accountability from the people in your life.

Tell your friends what you will do on social media, via phone or in real life. Ask one or more of them to regularly check up on you and your progress.

By doing this you’ll be a lot less likely to try to weasel out of things or give up at the first obstacle.

6. Get motivation from the people in your life.

Spend less time with negative people who always look at the dark or apathetic side of things.

And spend more of the time you have now freed up with enthusiastic or motivated people and let their energy flow over to you.

7. Get the motivation from people you don’t know.

Don’t limit yourself to just the motivation you can get from the people closest you.

There is a ton of motivating quotes, books, podcasts, blogs and success stories out there that you can tap into to up or renew your motivation.

8. Play music that gives you energy.

One of the simplest things I do when I feel low in energy or motivation is to play music that is upbeat and/or inspires me in some way.

A break with a few songs or working while listening to them for a while usually works well.

9. Find the optimism.

Pessimism can drain both your motivation and energy.

But the positive and constructive way of looking at things can on the other hand energize and recharge your motivation.

So when you’re in what looks like a negative situation ask yourself questions like:

What’s one thing that’s good about this? And what’s one hidden opportunity here?

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of beating yourself when you stumble or fail.

But that don’t work that well in my experience. You just feel worse and less motivated.

So try this the next time: be kind to yourself, nudge yourself back on the path you were on and take one small step forward.

11. Be constructive about the failures.

To make your setbacks more valuable and less hurtful be constructive about them. When you stumble ask yourself:

What is one thing I can learn from this setback?

Then keep that lesson in mind and take action on it to improve what you do.

12. Compare yourself to yourself and see how far you have come.

Instead of deflating yourself and your motivation by comparing yourself to others who are so far ahead of you.

13. Compete in a friendly way.

When you’re in school or at work make it a friendly competition with a friend to for example finish a boring or routine task first. Just that element of competition tends to liven things up.

And if you want to you can also add a small prize for extra motivation, like the winner getting a free ice cream or a beer from the other person.

14. Remind yourself of why you are working toward this.

When you’re feeling unmotivated and low in energy it’s easy to lose sight of why you’re doing something.

So take 2 minutes and write down your top 3 reasons for doing this work, getting an education, working out, saving that extra money or something else.

Put that note where you can see it every day or keep it in your smartphone for easy access when you need a motivational boost.

15. Remind yourself of what you’re moving away from.

You can also motivate yourself to get going again by looking at the negative impact of staying on your current path.

What will the consequences be if I continue on this path for 1 more year? And if I do if for 5 more years?

I have found that this exercise has given me the kick-start I needed many times in the past years.

16. Be grateful for what you got.

When motivation is running low then it’s easy to start seeing your life and the aspects of it through a negative lens.

To put your focus on what you still have and who you are – and to recharge with positivity and motivation ­– ask yourself a question like:

What are 3 things I sometimes take for granted but can be grateful for in my life?

My answers would, for example, be a roof over my head, clean water and not having to go hungry.

17. Mix things up.

A rut will kill motivation. So mix things up. Make a competition out of a task with yourself or with someone else.

When you work out vary what you do instead of going through the motions. Listen to music and podcasts that you usually don’t listen to.

New input and variation tends to be a good way to keep the motivation up (or to recharge it).

18. Declutter your workspace.

Take a couple of minutes to clean it up.

I find that having an uncluttered and minimalistic workspace helps me to think more clearly and I feel more focused and ready to tackle the next task (or small step).

19. Reduce your to-do list to just one item.

An over-stuffed to-do list can be a real motivation killer.

So try reducing your current to-do list to just one item. The one that’s most important to you right now or perhaps the one you’ve been procrastinating on for way too long.

Then get started by taking a big, small or tiny step.

And have another list tucked away somewhere where you can’t see it with other tasks to do later on.

20. Don’t forget about the breaks.

Few things can in my experience drain the daily motivation like just working non-stop.

Instead, work for 45 minutes each hour and use the rest for a break where you eat a snack, get out for some fresh air or do a bit of stretching.

You’ll – perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively – get more done in a day and week and do work of higher quality because your energy, focus and motivation will simply last longer.

21. Adjust your goal size.

If a big goal in your life feels overwhelming set a smaller goal to find your motivation again.

And if a smaller goal doesn’t seem inspiring try to aim higher and make it bigger goal and see how that affects your motivation.

22. Exercise.

Working out doesn’t just affect your body. I find that just 20-30 minutes of lifting free weights releases inner tensions and stress and makes me feel more focused once again.

23. Take 2 minutes to look back at your successes.

Close your eyes and let the memories of your biggest successes – no matter in what part of your life – wash over you. Let those most positive memories boost your motivation.

24. Reward yourself and celebrate your successes.

If you’re looking forward to a nice reward that you’re getting yourself after you’re done with a task or a project then your motivation tends to go up.

If you celebrate a success in some other way by for example by taking 1 minute to appreciate what you did or by telling someone about your success then that also usually recharges motivation and positivity.

So dangle those carrots and celebrate to keep your motivation up.

25. Do a bit of research before you get started.

Learning from people who have gone where you want to go and done what you want to do can help you to avoid pitfalls. And to give you a realistic time-table for success.

This is important to not get demotivated when things aren’t happening as fast you had wished.

26. Take a 2 minute meditation break.

When my mind is a bit tired or perhaps even overloaded my energy and motivation goes down. So in the afternoons – or when needed – I tend to sit down with closed eyes and just focus on my breathing for 2 minutes.

This clears my mind and releases inner tensions.

27. Go out in nature.

Few things give me as much new energy and motivation to take on life as this does.

So I often go out for a walk in the woods or by the sea and I’m just there in the moment with the nature, the fresh air and I don’t think about anything special.

Here’s the next step…

Now, you may think to yourself:

“This is really helpful information. But what’s the easiest way to put this into practice and actually make a real change with my motivation?”.

Well, I’ve got something special for you…

A free step-by-step checklist that includes all the 27 steps in this article… save it or print it out so you have it for your daily life and for the next time when your motivation starts to sink.
Download it now by entering your email below.

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About the Author

Henrik Edberg is the creator of the Positivity Blog and has written weekly articles here since 2006. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Gothenburg and has been featured on Lifehack, The Huffington Post and Paulo Coelho’s blog. Click here to learn more…

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Thanks Henrik
This is a wonderful post. Really great tips for staying motivated with what you want to do and where you want to be in life. Blessings to you for your awesome posts. I’ve been enjoying your advice for years and it really does help. Keep up the great work Henrik, thanks so much. Peace and love xx

How to Get Motivated

This article was co-authored by Allison Broennimann, PhD and by wikiHow staff writer, Janice Tieperman. Dr. Allison Broennimann is a licensed Clinical Psychologist with a private practice based in the San Francisco Bay Area providing psychotherapy and neuropsychology services. With over a decade of experience, Dr. Broennimann specializes in in-depth psychotherapy to provide solution-focused treatments for anxiety, depression, relationship problems, grief, adjustment problems, traumatic stress, and phase-of-life transitions. And as part of her neuropsychology practice, she integrates depth psychotherapy and cognitive rehabilitation for those recovering after traumatic brain injury. Dr. Broennimann holds a BA in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MS and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Palo Alto University. She is licensed by the California Board of Psychology and is a member of the American Psychological Association.

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Getting started on a project, dream, or task can seem scary and daunting at first if you don’t feel like you have a reason for doing it. Don’t worry—there are plenty of people who share in the very same worries and struggles. By taking steps to get motivated, you’ll be able to reach your goals, tackle new projects, and understand what gives you purpose and happiness!