How to “stay motivated”
Motivation. The definition of “motivation” is the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way. To be honest, until right now, I have never looked up the definition of motivation. You tend to hear people say, “I’m just not motivated to exercise, or I’m not motivated to eat healthy, or I’m not motivated to cook dinner, or go to sleep one hour earlier, or wake up 30 minutes earlier, etc.” Here is the honest truth— you won’t always be motivated. No one is always motivated and if they say they are, they are lying. So go ahead and take that off of your plate, don’t strive to be motivated all of the time. It’s not going to happen. So what can you do?
I think the number one thing to feel motivated more often is to FIND YOUR WHY. What do I mean by that? “Finding your why” simply means, thinking about WHY you are doing something. Why it is important for you to work out? Why is it important to you to eat healthy? Why it is important to you to cook dinner? Why is it important to you to go to go to bed earlier or wake up earlier? Until you establish your why, it’s going to be hard to be consistent. For this post I am going to use exercise as an example. Let’s say you are trying to make exercise a habit.
Here are 8 steps you can take in order to find your why, and make exercising a habit.
Find your why. Get specific. Write it down. Look sat it often, especially when you aren’t feeling motivated.
Start with something you enjoy. It’s a lot harder to do something if you hate every second of it.
Start small. Set SMALL sustainable goals. Then take action. Goals are great, but mean nothing without action.
Find an accountability buddy. A friend, hire a coach or a trainer. This is the person that helps you stick to those goals and encourages you along the way. No one can do it for you, but it helps to have a cheerleader.
Stay committed to yourself. You wouldn’t cancel a huge work meeting or a meeting for your child, don’t cancel on yourself either. You can’t pour from an empty cup.
Celebrate small wins. BE PROUD of yourself. There is no finish line, so start enjoying the process.
Don’t rush it. Like I said before, there is no finish line. Sustainable change takes time. You will fall, that’s part of it. Get back up, try again. The only way you truly fail is to stay down. Get back up, you didn’t fail. This is part of the process.
Remember: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU. You can hire a coach or a trainer for guidance, but YOU must do the work. Are you ready??
So, instead of striving to always be motivated. Strive to find your why, make it a habit, and know that every single day isn’t going to be the same. Show up for yourself anyway and give it your best effort.
I am going to keep this blog post short & sweet. Do you need someone to help you with your goals? Reach out, I’m here to help YOU!
ONE more tip: Mindset is EVERYTHING. If you think you CAN do something, you’re right. If you think you CAN’T do something, you’re right. What will you choose?
