Stop Relying on Motivation to Achieve Your Goals (What to Do Instead)
Consistency is key to achieving anything great. When you’re aiming for consistency, motivation isn’t reliable. It’s fleeting. It comes and goes, and it can do so rather quickly. If you only take action when you’re motivated, you’ll fall behind and get very little meaningful work done.
Motivation is just a feeling, that’s it.
Becoming motivated is quite simple. You can watch a 5-minute video, read an article, or listen to a podcast and suddenly feel motivated, but an hour later it could all be gone.
If you’re truly looking to make positive changes and get what you want in life, you’ll need more than an unreliable, short-lived feeling. Motivation can be a great way to launch you into action and get started, but once the excitement and motivation wears off, then what?
Think about the most successful people who’ve done amazing things—business men and women, entrepreneurs, and athletes, just to name a few. Do you think they only put in the work and do what needs to be done when they feel like it? Of course not. If they did that, they wouldn’t have reached the level of success that they have.
Here’s how you can stop relying on motivation and get closer to achieving the goals you’ve set out for yourself.
Develop Habits That’ll Move You Forward
Instead of depending on motivation to move you forward, you need to build habits and change the way you see yourself.
You need to start believing new things about yourself.
Your internal dialogue needs to change, and you should start asking yourself better questions that’ll help guide you.
James Clear said it best:
“True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity.” — James Clear
“Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously).” — James Clear
Instead of wanting to be a fit and healthy person you need to start thinking and behaving like a fit and healthy person in order to become one.
Ask yourself what a fit person would do.
What habits would they develop?
What would a fit and healthy person avoid doing regularly?
This type of person would consistently workout, and rarely miss workouts. They’d drink more water and eat a sustainable and healthy diet with variety to ensure they’re getting all the nutrients their body needs. Their health and well-being is a top priority because they understand the importance of it and how it can positively impact many other aspects of life.
Continue to build one habit on top of another until they all work together to create an upgraded version of you.
When this happens, you have a much higher probability of becoming the person you need to be in order to get what you want.
Just Start and Start Small
Getting started is the most challenging and dreadful part.
Once you get going, motivation often kicks in and completing what you started becomes easier.
Simply start doing the thing you’ve been putting off and soon after, the motivation will follow.
Don’t feel like going to the gym? Start small by simply showing up. Once you get there, finishing the workout isn’t so bad. If you need to start smaller, do 10 push-ups and 10 squats at home. That can be your workout. Then keep building on top of that until you have a more challenging workout that you consistently do.
Just remember that people rarely regret going to the gym and completing a workout, but often regret missing workouts. Chances are you’ll feel much better after the workout.
Great things start small. Just get started and the motivation and determination will follow.
What Is Your “Why?”
What’s your purpose?
Why do you want to accomplish this goal?
Why is this goal important to you?
Asking yourself these questions along with similar ones allows you to get clear on what you want.
When you get clear on what you want and why, it enables you to put your energy towards high-priority tasks that will create the most impact.
When you figure out your why, you’ll have more purpose and direction, and less distractions.
There’s a good chance you’ll cut down on the bad habits and meaningless tasks that don’t get you closer to your goal.
Your decisions, behaviors, and actions are all likely to improve.
When your why is clear and strong enough, it’ll be easier to overcome obstacles and keep pushing forward when you face tough times.
Get clear on why you want what you want.
Think Long-Term, Not Short-Term
Focus on long term goals. Imagine how good it would feel to get what you want out of life. Then compare that to the very brief satisfaction that quickly fades from doing something you want in the moment, but won’t help get you closer to your goals.
Sure, eating pizza and cake on a regular basis might be satisfying in the moment, they both taste great and make you feel good, for a little bit, but you’ll pay for it later on. Your progress towards your health and fitness goals will be very slow, hardly noticeable, maybe you won’t make any progress at all. In the long-run, you’ll probably end up frustrated and discouraged from your lack of progress.
Your daily actions and habits determine your future. Ask yourself if what you’re doing today is getting you closer to your goals.
Whenever you are not feeling motivated, think long-term. Constantly remind yourself that by doing the things that you don’t want to do, but you know will benefit you long-term, you’ll be one step closer towards getting what you want and creating a better future for yourself.
You might not want to go to the gym at 6 AM, but if you do, that’s one more workout you completed. You’re building discipline, becoming the person you want to be, getting in the habit of going to the gym, and getting one tiny step closer to your long-term goal.
Embrace Discomfort
Your feelings often determine what you do. You do what feels good and you avoid what causes discomfort. If you only work when you’re feeling good and do the things that make you comfortable, you won’t get much done.
Everything you do benefits you in some way, even if it’s not that healthy for you or getting you closer to the person you want to be.
Constantly eating junk food isn’t good for your health and you’ll likely regret it, but it’s benefiting you, whether you realize it or not. Now, it’s not benefiting you in the way you might think. I already said it’s not healthy. It benefits you by making you feel better and providing comfort. The same way procrastinating does.
As I said earlier…
“You do what feels good and you avoid what causes discomfort.”
It feels better to hang around and watch TV than it does to go do something you don’t feel like doing, but you know is important and beneficial.
Doing things you don’t feel like doing is usually uncomfortable.
Putting things off feels better up to a certain point. Once you reach the point where the pain (not physically) of not doing the thing you know you should be doing exceeds the perceived discomfort, then you finally take action. But that could take a while, and you’re wasting precious time.
Change your mindset towards discomfort.
View discomfort as an new opportunity for growth.
An opportunity to become a slightly better version of yourself.
If you always stay within your comfort zone and only do the things that make you feel good and are familiar to you, your progress will be very slow.
Just Do It
For the most part, successful people and unsuccessful people hate to do the same things.
Successful people make themselves do what they need to do while unsuccessful people make excuses and tell themselves a lie to make themselves feel better about not taking action.
So, sometimes it’s not even about motivation or building habits. Sometimes you just need to do it and get it done, even if it sucks.
Going back to what I mentioned earlier…
“Constantly remind yourself that by doing the things that you don’t want to do, but you know will benefit you long-term, you’ll be one step closer towards getting what you want and creating a better future.”
If you’re not motivated to do something, but you know it should or must be done, count down from 5. Once you get to zero, get up and get going.
Just do it.
View Your Most Important Tasks as Necessities
Change the way you view your high-priority tasks. Look at the actions that will get you closer to your goals as absolute necessities that must be done. This will help things become habit and part of your routine. It cuts down on decision making and your most important tasks become non-negotiable. They must be done.
Do you ever have to get motivated to brush your teeth, pay the bills, go grocery shopping, or go to work? These are things that people do on a regular basis because they’re viewed as things that must be done, whether they feel like doing them or not. You should treat your most important tasks that will get you closer to achieving your goals the same way.
Align Your Actions With Your Values
If I were to ask my readers and followers across social media if they value health and fitness, the very large majority of them would say yes, but their habits, choices, and behaviors would say otherwise.
Make a list of your core values and align them with your actions. Once you know what your values are, let them guide your actions. If you’re regularly binge eating, drinking, not getting enough sleep, and missing workouts, you clearly do not value health and fitness. The idea of it sounds nice. It’s something that you would like to have in your life, but unfortunately, you actions and behavior tell a different story. Once you get a clear understanding of what your priorities are, evaluate your life and the choices you make each day to determine if your actions align with your goals and values.
Conclusion
Stop waiting for motivation to strike. If you only do what needs to get done when you’re motivated, you’ll quickly fall behind, and your progress will be frustratingly slow.
Set yourself up for success by building identity-based habits. Get clear on what you want and why you want it. Identify your core values and priorities, then make sure the choices you make each day align with your values and top priorities. When you do this, you have a much higher probability of becoming the person you need to be in order to attain the goals you’re chasing.
You should now understand why you should stop relying on motivation. So, what’s holding you back from getting what you want out of life?
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