Motivation … It’s been one of the driving factors behind our coping mechanisms during these tough times. 

When we are motivated, we are rewarded in some way and this is what keeps us thriving. Staying motivated can be difficult, especially when we are constantly being thrown curveballs in life. COVID-19 is a good example of that. 

When it comes to reaching a goal, motivation is like a cheerleader – constantly encouraging you to move closer and closer to that finish line, cheering you on every step of the way.

The key to getting and staying motivated is to have a passionate purpose. There is always a WHY behind what we say, and what we do. If your WHY is driven by passion and heart, it’s hard to go wrong. However, passion and heart aren’t always conventional ways to make a living but as the expression goes; “if you do what you love to do, what you love will take care of you”.

Motivation counters fear and when we do something where the outcome isn’t known or could have a consequence to it that fear could grow to the point we end up changing our minds and pivoting down the “safer” path. 

Whether your goal involves your health, wealth or happiness, it’s important to take the first step and continue on with those steps until you reach your final destination.

Here Are 7 Quick Tips To Help You Stay Motivated

1. Set Desirable Goals

When deciding on the goals you want to achieve they should be goals that you are passionate about. When a goal comes from the heart, passion becomes the motivator. When you are doing what you love to do and it doesn’t feel like “work”, you’ll want to do it more often and you’ll work harder and more productively. 

Time and effort go hand in hand and often reap the biggest rewards here. As the expression goes “you get out what you put in.”

2. Write It Down

It’s important to write down your goals. When you take the time to put the pen to the paper you are reinforcing your goal not only from a conscious level but a subconscious one too. There’s something that can be said about the power of manifestation. Your mind is like a GPS, if you tell it where you want to go it will start creating opportunities and opening doors to help you get there.

3. Make It Known

When you make your goal known, you become accountable to yourself and to others who you make it known to. 

Social media has become a popular channel for goal setting and achieving. Whether you are setting out to get in shape, quit a bad habit or change your career path, making it “known” publicly can be a huge motivator. 

Often, friends, family, and even co-workers will react positively commenting things like;  “you’ve got this”, “you can do it”, “so proud of you” … these phrases for example can give someone not just the motivation but also the affirmation they need to know they are on the right path and doing the right thing.

4. Break Your Goal Into Steps

Goals, especially long term ones, are best achieved when laid out in actionable steps. You can break your goal down into segments for example. These segments could be time increments or before, during, and after phases. 

If you can break your goal into pieces, you’ll start seeing results faster because the one big goal becomes little goals and each of them take smaller increments of time and effort to achieve – which means you have that sense of gratification and sense of accomplishment sooner.

5. Track Progress

Tracking your progress is extremely important. Picture a marketing campaign without any conversion tracking. You have no idea whether or not you had a return on investment (also known as ROI). When you don’t track your progress, you fail to realize when you achieve your goals and/or milestones. It’s like walking through the woods without a compass – you can easily get lost and off-track. In the long run, this could cost you both time and money.

6. Reward Yourself

As you reach each milestone, it’s important to reward yourself. From a young age, we are conditioned through rewards. Whether it was that piece of cake after you ate all of your dinner, an allowance after completing your chores or graduation to the next grade in school; a reward system has always been in place in our lives to some capacity.

Decide ahead of time what your reward will be as you complete each step towards your goal. The rewards can act as tiny celebrations to keep you motivated as you get closer and closer to what you want to achieve.

7. Invite Others to Join

Sometimes goals are better achieved if you have others participating with you. Fitness programs that involve 30-Day challenges are a good example of this. When you have someone else doing the program with you, you can lean on each other, support each other and celebrate together. The journey doesn’t feel so isolated in this case and it can become a fun social activity at the same time.

Finding Your Inspiration and Motivation

Motivation and inspiration are all around us. You can find motivational quotes, posters, artwork and calendars quite easily in stores and online.

You can also spend an afternoon creating a vision board for yourself. Vision boards have been known to help people manifest and achieve the things they want in life.

Finally, you can join support groups to help you stay focused on reaching your goal. If you surround yourself with like-minded people from beginners to pros, you’ll gain instant support for every step of your journey.

We have a Facebook Group at HireMyMom. The group is for like-minded Mompreneurs and we use the group to share job leads, tips on getting hired, resources, inspiration, and foster new friendships along the way. You can visit our community here.