Have you ever found yourself saying ‘I can’t seem to motivate myself’? If so, this article will help you examine the goal you’ve been trying to achieve, identify the reasons for your success, and describe a foolproof way to get motivated in 30 days.
Do you love or fear? What is the what?
Before we explain the simple answer to the question ‘how’ to get motivated in 30 days, let’s take a look at ‘what is the goal’ and ‘why’ you should do it. What would you like to be doing that is different from now? What kind of goals are you creating? Do these excite you? If you fear what you think you “need” to do, then forget about it right now. In the long run, how can someone get motivated by something they just don’t want to do? You are setting yourself up for failure from the start. If you feel this way, ask yourself if you are being true to yourself in setting the goal you are considering.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say, for example, that he wants to lose 20 pounds, but is terrified of going to the gym. Where is the focus of your attention? He is terrified of going to the gym. How can you motivate yourself to do this? You can’t if your mind stays focused on your distance to the gym. On the other hand, what would it be like to lose those 20 kilos? Would you have a feeling of revitalized energy, would you come out more easily, would you have a new sense of confidence? Create this vision, focus on what you love about the task at hand, and you’ll have a fight shift to motivate yourself.
Let me give another example of building my private coaching business. I was absolutely dreading making what I felt were ‘sales calls’ (even though I was calling people who expressed an interest in my services). When I focused on the 1-2 hour calls I would have to make in any given week, my motivation dropped to zero and after procrastinating for days, I reluctantly went through the list of calls I “had” to make. . However, when I switched gears and aligned with my larger vision of building a successful coaching practice, the result I envisioned made this process much more tolerable. Eventually, I stopped marketing the private business and focused my efforts on building The Personal Growth Network. I have learned to take that aspect of fear out of expanding my business and my actions are now much more aligned with what is important to me. Maybe if you dread going to the gym, there is another way to get to the same result you are looking for by traveling a different path to get there.
Is it really important? What is the why?
By now, you may be reading this and thinking that you’ve already thought these thoughts 100 times before and even when I think about the big picture, I just can’t seem to start the process. Talk heart to heart with yourself and honestly examine your current belief structure. Why do you want to do what you say you want to do?
If you find yourself thinking, something similar, dig deeper ‘Everyone wants to be healthy, right?’. These superficial responses don’t appeal to you now, and they won’t in the future. Stop beating around the bush. Maybe you’d like to be healthier, but you really think you’ll live another 30 years anyway, so it’s not worth it. Maybe you think it would be great to start your own business, but you feel pretty comfortable where you are right now. It may be that while you have an inspiring goal (like owning a vacation home in the tropics), you feel like it’s too much work. The pain threshold for today’s perspective is not that high. Face the truth in such a way that you can consciously decide to dismiss these crazy thoughts or accept that this is not the right goal. Another way of saying it: become aware.
A simple step by step guide to get motivated – How to do it!
So here it is: a simple and easy way to get motivated in 30 days. I’ve heard it takes 28 days to form a habit, I honestly have no idea how true this is for most people. From what I’ve seen, clothing seems to come and go over time, and anything worth pursuing requires continuous effort. The 30-Day Motivation Steps outlined below are designed to be the motivating kick-start that will get things moving in the direction you want. The only guarantee is that you’ll see progress toward any of your goals right now, and that progress is often enough to shift motivational drive toward the longer-term scenario. Ready to start?
- Create a 30-day entertainment goals document that you can refer to daily. In it you should have a space at the top to write your goal/vision, then 30 lines to record the activities of the days.
- Create your goal or vision and write it on the brochure to motivate yourself. This should not be what you expect to have in 30 days, rather it is the overall driver that will keep you motivated towards your intended result. For example, my goal is to write personal growth content from a tropical vacation home. This excites me.
- Post your goal/vision in a conspicuous place and mindfully read it every day for 30 days.
- Commit to one action in the next 30 days that will bring you one step closer to the goal you wrote down. It doesn’t matter how long it takes you to complete the action. Even if it takes just 2 minutes, this action gets you closer to your goal and shifts motivation in your favor.
- For the next 30 days, write down the action you took each day (again, if you use the handout provided, it should be easy) and the result you got because of this action. I ask you to write the result (not just the action) because the result is really what has value. For example, an action of surfing the Internet for an hour may not produce any results. Commit to actions that have an identifiable outcome or clearly lead toward your goal.
- Sign up an accountability partner. For best results tell a friend. They should be excited to give you responsibility as they will see how inspired you are to get motivated. This step isn’t a requirement, but if you’ve really been struggling, having a partner who can hold you accountable can be huge. Make sure this person is not someone who ‘gives in’ easily. Or he will take pity on your excuses. Ask them to be firm and, if you haven’t done at least one action in a day, to call you about it. Sometimes enrolling someone who isn’t as close to you as a parent or spouse is a better idea.
Ready. It’s that easy. An action that leads to an identifiable result for 30 days. Given the extent of the target size you’re creating, this seems pretty easy, doesn’t it? If you came up with the right goal, this method will help you get on track to achieve it.
time to move on
Does even this seem too difficult? There comes a point where it’s just time to move on. If you have been talking about a goal for weeks, months, years and have never done anything about it, then it is time to face reality and admit that this is nothing more than a fantasy that you are talking about. I have come across far too many people who say they want to do something over and over again, but the reality is that they have no intention of changing. When they talk about their goals, they are frustrated by the lack of success. They have been lying to themselves for far too long, and the truth is that this constant denial of what they really aspire to (settling for less than what they are talking about) is downright sickening. It would serve them much better to become happy with where they are now, and then aspire to a life they will never have because they refuse to act.
This may sound harsh, but as a coach I have made the mistake of being too soft on people who just lie to themselves and would be better off focusing their attention on more positive and self-serving goals. Instead of putting your goal into an endless cycle of procrastination that is filled with frustration and worry, face the truth of the matter and consciously choose to abandon or put on hold the goal you’ve been paying lip service to. It’s probably not what you’d expect to hear in a motivational article, but being true to yourself can inspire you to motivate yourself in other ways. To fully experience what it is like to move in a positive direction. Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you never know, you may decide to check out that other goal you’ve been paying lip service to and put it through the 30-day motivational challenge test.