The 10 Keys To Motivating Yourself

Many individuals assume that all it takes to attain your goals is hard effort and discipline. This is a half-truth: in reality, we can only achieve specific goals if we are sincerely driven.

Motivation is the key to understanding why humans remain tenacious in pursuing certain achievements that do not bear any fruit in the short term. In this text, we will explain some keys, tricks and tips so that you can understand how human motivation works and you can have a small guide to achieve everything you propose in life.

The 10 strategies and psychological keys to motivating yourself

Below we are going to offer you different ways to motivate you effectively, and whatever your goal.

1. Never forget to think positive

Keep in mind that your thoughts will decisively influence how you face each step you take. If you face the day to day with a positive vision of things, you will be able to move toward your goals. If, on the other hand, you are a negative person to whom everything seems impossible, you will not do anything to improve.

Your internal speech is one of the key factors when it comes to motivating yourself. We all have a little inner voice that can help or boycott us. We must learn to manage their influence and be aware that our mental state is the key so that we can set goals and meet them.

If you have a lot of negative thoughts, now is the time to get rid of them and replace them with positive thoughts and beliefs.

Never underestimate the power of positive thinking when you're trying to motivate yourself.

2. Make a personal journal that reflects your progress

If you are an unmethodical person, this trick can be very useful. One of the most effective ways to motivate ourselves to attain a goal is to become aware of our short-term progress. Thus, we perceive that our efforts are paying off and therefore we are more likely to move forward. It's a good idea to break down your task into smaller chunks that serve as motivation to keep battling.

If you like to write, a good way to monitor your progress is to write a small journal explaining what you have done during the day and what your progress has been. This way you can see how much you have left to reach your goal. It is also interesting that you write down both the positive (progress, good feelings, etc.) and the negative (mistakes you have made, ideas to improve)... We recommend that you be rigid and update your journal every day at the same time.

In addition, with the emergence of smartphone applications, you can keep a diary of your progress almost automatically, depending on which fields.

3. Imagine yourself achieving your purposes, every day

A highly effective psychological trick: mentally visualize the result you want to achieve, for several minutes and with many details. Just close your eyes and enjoy imagining how you perceive the moment of success and satisfaction in what you have set out to do. How would you feel, and who would you share it with?

The more you practise imagining that moment, the more motivated you will be to stay for longer. Your success will be closer if you rehearse this mental image for five minutes every day.

4. You can fail one day, but not two.

Human beings are profoundly imperfect. If one day we do not manage to advance anything, we must relativize it. We all have a bad day when laziness paralyzes us.

You can't waste two days in a row because then you'd be carving out a mental precedent that justifies your future laziness.

5. Healthy competition between friends is a great source of motivation

We all like healthy competition, especially when we surround ourselves with people who make us feel good. This predisposition to competition can be very useful to encourage us to fight for our goals.

If you know a family member, friend, or co-worker who has goals similar to yours, you can "recruit" them to have healthy competition that can help you both. Week after week, you can catch up on who has managed to run more kilometres, smoke fewer cigarettes, get more sales, do more push-ups, and so on.

Anyway, this should be an incentive, not a burden: your goals should be weighted and should be equitable with respect to the other person. For example, it would be absurd for someone who starts running to compare themselves to a professional long-distance runner. The key is not to constantly compare yourself but to rely on the other to continue advancing, and that each one achieves their own goals.

6. Prepare your mind for downturn moments

On a long journey, you may encounter both happy and bad situations. In these moments when things do not go as we would like, certain defeatist thoughts and the irrepressible urge to abandon ship can come to mind.