January is a month of enthusiasm.
The gyms are full. New diets are being tried out. Homes are being decluttered and simplified.
Then comes February. The explosive enthusiasm has faded. Many return to their old habits or get frustrated because it isn’t as easy to stay motivated and to keep going as it was at the start of the year.
So what can you do?
I’d like to share one of the most effective ways that I have found for jolting and refueling my own motivation.
Step 1: The negative.
Sit down in a quiet place. Close your eyes for just a few minutes. To get a jolt to get going again ask yourself:
- How will my life look in 5 years if I continue to stay on the same path as now?
- How will life likely become worse for me and maybe even for the people around me?
It may be uncomfortable but try to see the negative consequences as vividly as you can in your mind to kickstart your motivation to get going again for that positive change.
Step 2: The positive.
Then look at the other side of things. Close your eyes for a few minutes and ask yourself:
- How will my life look in 1 year if I stick with it and keep going?
- How will it look in 5 years?
- How will life improve not only for me but for the people around me that I love if I stick with it?
See all of that come alive in your mind.
Step 3: Your most personal motivation.
With these two sets of questions try to not just to see the future as detailed and as vividly as you can.
More importantly, also try to find your very personal reason or reasons for making this change.
For example, getting into better shape could help you to become more optimistic and more energetic. That is great and doing the two steps above usually fills me with a lot of new and fresh motivation.
But to really find the heart of your motivation close your eyes and keep looking for a few more minutes for the more personal answer if you haven’t already found it.
The answer could be that you want to make this change in your health because if you don’t then you might not have the energy to have fun and play as much as you want with your daughter while she is young. And as she grows up you may be too tired from work to give her quality time each day.
If you want to make a change in your money habits then it could be because you always dreamed of seeing Machu Picchu or visiting the Maldives with the person you love most in the world.
If you want to become more effective at work it could be because you would like to that promotion and be able to earn more to provide more financial security for your children and family.
So go personal to come alive and to refocus on and refuel with your true motivation.
Then get a small piece of paper. Write down the most personal and emotionally engaging answer you found. Put that small piece of paper where you cannot avoid seeing it every day.
Good places could be your work space, your bedside table or your fridge.
This will make it easier to keep your eyes on what is most important and to not get lost in everyday life. And you you can revisit this exercise whenever you need a bigger motivational recharge.
If you want more motivation and practical tips each week then subscribe to my Postivity Newsletter if you haven’t already. I usually send out two newsletters a week.
I am now also (more) active on Google + if you would like to add me there.
Image by Tony Fischer Photography (license).
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I’m Henrik Edberg and I live on the west coast of Sweden.
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Henrik, great ideas & solid steps to take. No doubt they’ll make a positive impact on those willing to do them. The ideas you outlined could be done very easily as part of one’s “initial morning wake up” routine. It takes developing the habit, but once you’ve got it down, it becomes “old hat.”
One of the first thing I do when I wake up (before I get out of bed even) is to run through the things I have to be grateful for — which includes the current goals & aspirations I have for my life. It’s a pretty empowering way to kick off the day. Again, thanks for such a great post and all you do to help folks LIVE BIG!
Josh
Thanks for the kind words, Josh! And for adding your morning habit, sounds like a very helpful one!
One of the most remarkable life changing techniques i have used was one that i found as a gym owner was able to improve dramatically the length of time a member would stay coming to the gym. I would tell them to visualise that they are at a fork in the road with two directions in which they could go. One was take no action, the other take massive action. I would then get then to look five years ahead to see the difference each road would lead to in their life. I assure you their body language told you the differences they saw, and their commitment was evidence this worked.
Thank you for sharing your experience, glad to hear that this has worked well for you and your clients too!
Nice article. Need to wake up early to go to the gym before work somehow is a very difficult task for me, especially the “wake up” part, but would be awesome to get back in shape! Train first thing in the morning would be very good for me because after work I would have time to do other things I like.
Thank you, hope it helps you to get back into the workout habit!
I would venture that relying on motivation to keep us productive is a poor bet. Motivation is as fleeting as a fickle lover. It’s good for one thing — getting us started.
Then it’s gone.
After that we had better place our faith in persistence. Persistence will never love you then leave you. It will stick with you until the bitter end.
Motivation gets us started, but it’s persistence that finishes the job.
Cheers!
Thank you for sharing your perspective in your usual, well-written way, Trevor!
My two main goals that I consider the highest priority is eating more (I’m very thin) and not losing hope in blogging.
I started gyming in May and had kept it up well into November but saw very minimal gains. This was because of me ignoring the nutrition aspect of it; arguably it is more important than the actual lifting. I took a two month hiatus and am now getting back into the world of fitness. Currently 115 lb at 5’7. Ideal goal: 145-150lb.
As for the blog, I’m still fully motivated to write and write, but I’m more concerned about the connections after learning more about Jon Morrow and his ideas. Admittedly, it has not been very long since my journey began, but I must admit that it gets discouraging at times.
More so why your advice is golden Henrik. Envisioning the outcomes of my labors well into the future, 1, or even 5, years from today, keeps me going. Maybe I’ll finally be that well-sized man. Maybe I’ll be known and many people will read my words of inspiration. My heart jumps having just 40-50 unique visitors. Imagine thousands; that’ll be my own high.
The “eating is more important than training” principle can backfire very easily imo.
There is a very big difference when you train hard with your own bodyweight, with dumbbells, and do power and compound exercises. Thees are boosting your hormone levels, and as you can see on professional bodybuilders, hormone levels are the most important things when we are talking about weightgaining. Also providing varying resistance is a must because your body easily gets used to training if you always do almost the same exercises. Of course you cant just increase always the weight, but you can vary reps and time too.
I’m just saying this because I know I was tend to use nutrition as an excuse to not train hard enough, because “at the end, nutrition is the most important.” Just my 2 cents!
At 115lbs. Vincent needs to both train hard AND eat big. That is the only way he will be able to gain significant muscular weight.
Cheers!
I like the idea of looking at it from both the positive and negative points of view. That can help the motivation more than if you just stuck to the positive.
Afterall while I believe in positivity. being 100% positive about everything to the point you ignore important things doesn’t help.
-Ben
I agree, 100% positivity all the time become can become quite unhelpful.
That’s exactly how I stay motivated! Great stuff, Henrik! Thinking long-term is a great way for me to get some perspective, and also, there’s nothing quite like thinking about your future goals to bring a nice ear to ear smile on your face!
The fact that you touch both on the positive and the negative I think is a good thing, just so you don’t get some sort of skewed view of reality!
Glad you liked it!
Dear Henrik,
The simplified version of creative visualization looks awesome.
And what I liked about this piece is how you started the article.
You hit the nail on the head by saying that Jan is a month of enthusiasm and Feb it slowly starts fading away… Beautifully crafted metaphor my friend..
There is no better metaphor you can give for this and you are truly a man of amazing wisdom, which can be practically implemented in life..
Your interview questions are ready and I shall send it by e-mail within the next 2-3 hours from now.
Sincerely,
Inspiring Citizen Rafi
I think that these are great steps to take. I think it is important that we always take a step back, no matter what the situation, to look the positives and the negatives and then decide what the true motivation is. Self reflection is so important to find true happiness, and I think these are great steps to achieve that!
Us bloggers mean well by writing all these wonderful ‘motivate yourself now’ articles, but I think you know deep down, most people simply aren’t motivated, and most people simply trundle through life.
It’s the 5% who do things differently, no matter the field.
And there’s not much ‘external people’ can do about it – it needs to come from within.
I like your tips, especially about negativeness. Sometimes it’s not enough for us to think of good things, we become dreamers without taking any action. And stimulating ourselves to work this way can be really helpful.
Thanks Henrik for the post! I’ve enjoyed it!
Hey I see you are active on google plus. I way prefer google plus over facebook. But can’t get my friends to switch. Glad to see you are a google plus man!
Thanks Henrik. I have always said that the best motivation is personal motivation – when you can find your personal reasons for doing something and staying the course. If a person can clearly articulate why they want to do something in the first place and the reason is personal enough and burning enough; they tend to stay the course.
I was working on an assignment for my college class and I came across this blog. Its good go find out a place where we can get positive and motivational information that can help everyone deal with the not so positive situations that happen in our daily lives.
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