Motivation causes us to act and react towards desired goals. Said or written like that, sounds incredibly simple. So, why than so many people have a problem with motivation or self-motivation? I can only speak for myself. My motivation is always decreased if I cannot see the clear goal in an action.
I’ll share several tips that I find useful that boosts up my motivation:
- Keep positive attitude – negative thoughts about your job, homework, work environment take more energy than it seems. Energy takes time, and time is all we have. Time spent in negative thinking, is time we could have used to get the job done. One of the ways to motivate your positive attitude is using quotes. For instance I keep a sticker of this Chinese proverb on my wall:
Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.
- Find your goal – many of us are facing challenges in self-motivation as goals are lacking. Once you have a clear understanding what is your goal, break it into smaller, as our mind will not be “scared” of great expectations. For instance, if the goal is to write a paper, read a book and complete your presentation in a week, if you break it into small goals per day – read a chapter, do a presentation research and write one page for a paper, the goal is easier to compete. Step by step, takes you to the first goal set.
- Fight for your cause – we have often heard that having a pure desire it’s not enough for our dreams to become a reality and it’s definitely not enough to keep us motivated. What boosts a motivation is an animal instinct to fight for your cause. That doesn’t mean to use immoral actions towards other people, but to beam your energy into your cause until is done!
- Visualize your dream – for dream not to remain a dream you need to visualize it. That means see it, feel it, know it. To keep yourself motivated, the dream needs to be inspirational, challenging and feasible.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale shares how to visualize a dream – “Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously and never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop this picture!”
How important visualization is knew Albert Einstein saying that “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.”
For inspiriting motivational lecture I encourage you to listen Dan Pink’s lecture on Ted Talks.
@majacakarun
Very interesting Maja, I particulary took away your chineese saying; and that takes me back to that great value people must care of: their character ethics. The end of the chineese saying was more than clear on that :”watch your character it becomes your destiny”. That says all.
Thank you. I truly believe in power of positive thinking and visualization. It would always work for me.