How can I stay motivated?

Well it’s much simpler than you think

Photo by Aman Upadhyay on Unsplash

People always surround motivation with this idea that it’s more of a special power, that only a select few in society have access to it.

They look at high achievers and glance with awe on how they’re always on job and smashing what they’re doing. It’s become this idea that the key to success is through motivation, if you don’t achieve your goal its because you didn’t have the motivation to keep going. If you didn’t go to the gym, it’s because of your lack of motivation.

Now I must admit that most of the time this may be the case, but I don’t think that motivation is something that you pull out of the bag whenever you need it. The book The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Set Themselves Up to Win, by Jeff Haden just confirmed to me something I’ve always believed in. That motivation is a product of action.

You don’t take action because you have the motivation to do it, you get motivation from taking the action. A good example of this is when I go to the gym at 5 am on most days. I don’t wake up and automatically get the motivation flowing through my veins — I struggle like any other human being. I push through and drag myself to the gym because it’s important to me. Once I start working out, motivation kicks in for me to keep going. There is no magic trick, there is no hard to understand science, it’s basics. Once you start doing something you’ll be more motivated to keep going.

So next time you want to do something and feel like you don’t have the motivation to do, try this. Force yourself to do it, just that one time and see how you feel afterwards, do you get the feeling you desired from completing the task. Sometimes you even get that boost while you’re doing it, for me as soon as I get past the first 10 minutes I’m good, I could go another 2 hours no problem. The motivation kicks in to keep me pushing through the rest, nothing is the same afterwards.

I think we give motivation too much power, action deserves most of the glory — without action, there is no motivation.

Give it a try!