How to Motivate Yourself 

by Staff

Whether you’re striving to get fit, land a new job, or earn your degree, motivating yourself to take action is the hardest thing to do. In many ways, motivating yourself is harder than motivating a whole team of people, as it’s very easy not to take yourself seriously and undermine your own authority. Despite this, anyone who is determined to achieve a goal must work to motivate themselves to get the job done. Without this self-motivation, you’re not going to strive forward in your journey, whatever it may be. Therefore, if you’re struggling to find motivation, you should start by implementing the following steps.

Set a Date

First things first, in order to make progress, you need to set yourself a date to work towards. If you don’t achieve your goal by this date, that’s okay. You just need a goalpost in mind so that you consistently have something to work towards. Without this goalpost, you’ll find yourself procrastinating, meaning that the end result will get further and further away. This isn’t what you want when you’re looking to improve yourself; instead, you want to get a momentum going that inspires you to grow more and more.

Set Manageable Goals

While it’s important to aim high, you don’t want to set goals that aren’t manageable and end up disheartened when you can’t achieve them. Therefore, you should set yourself small and regular goals that you’re able to reach. This will provide you with various small wins that make you feel good and motivate you to keep pushing forward. If you don’t experience these small wins, they you may feel as though progress is a million miles away, making you more likely to give up on your end goal. This overall goal can be the destination while your smaller goals are the steppingstones.

Monitor Your Progress

In order to know whether you’re progressing, you need to monitor where you started and where you’re going to get to the place you want to be in. Whatever it is you’re working towards, you need to give yourself something that is measurable so that you can be aware of your progression. For instance, if you’re looking to get fit, you should monitor how far you’re able to run each time, if you’re looking for a new job, you should count the number of applications you fill out, if you’re looking to get your degree you should time how long you study each day.

Plan for Imperfection

When working towards something new, more often than not, it’s not going to go exactly how you planned or envisioned it. Therefore, you should always plan for imperfection. For instance, on your first run, you won’t have the best form and you might not be able to go for more than 30 seconds at a time. You might not get the first job you apply for, and the interview might not have been your best performance. You likely won’t get an A+ on your first college paper. You’re never going to be perfect at something right away so planning for imperfection is key.

Create a Healthy Habit

When working towards a goal, you should make it a habit to work towards it. The word habit is so often perceived as negative; however, this isn’t always the case. We can create positive habits for ourselves, especially when it comes to achieving a goal. 20 minutes a day is all you need to get yourself into a positive habits. 20 minutes of exercise. 20 minutes of job-seeking. 20 minutes of studying. 20 is the magic number.

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The New Jersey Digest is a new jersey magazine that has chronicled daily life in the Garden State for over 10 years.

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