People talk about being motivated to attain their dreams. We read in the papers of people who were inspired by their illness, or a major shift in their thinking, that got them motivated to do great things. Perhaps we look at the famous and notice how they were motivated to change their humble beginnings and to live the dream. Yet, with all of this we still find it difficult to get off our behind and start making the changes we seek.
We find excuses; we fall at the first hurdle. Each setback seems to take the wind from our sails and we have to start again. Yet others seem to have all of the luck and it all seems to fall in place. Jack Nicklaus (famous golfer) was once told “Gee you’re so lucky Mr Nicklaus”. To which he replied “Yes I practice being lucky every day”. This is the key; it’s not going to fall in your lap, if you don’t fan the flames, then the fire of motivation is going to go dim and even be extinguished. So what can you do?
First and most important is set a goal. It is easy to say and more difficult to do. Set yourself small goals at first those that you know you will achieve. Perhaps you want to exercise and you could start with I am going to walk up the stairs to work, at least 3 times this week. The point is by choosing small goals that you will achieve you are choosing success not failure. What you are doing is breaking the big goal (losing weight) into smaller more achievable steps along the way.
Celebrate each of your successes. Give yourself a pat on the back: you set a goal; you stuck with the programme and achieved it. Recognise your achievement, and perhaps even reward yourself. You should be careful that the reward doesn’t undermine your achievement (e.g. A cream cake because you have lost 3lbs).
Celebrate your failures. Let us be realistic sometimes you might go back to old behaviours or not achieve a goal. But even those failures tell us something about ourselves. Perhaps it’s a situation to be avoided, or we need to take smaller steps, but each mistake can tell you how you can change to make yourself more successful.
Who inspires you? Perhaps they have an autobiography that tells of their journey their setbacks that you can take inspiration from for your journey. Perhaps they are someone close like a relative, could you spend time with them. Reading and being around motivated people helps us to stay motivated ourselves. It’s always good to have support when making changes and always good to have cheerleaders for your cause.