Sometimes you do not have anyone or anything in your environment to motivate you, so you’re left to motivate yourself and that is what I call self-motivation. I’d imagine that there are a multitude of things you could do to motivate yourself, but in this post I am going to conjure up only five ways to motivate yourself. The key to being a successful self-motivator is to preoccupy your thoughts with the achievement of some goal that means a lot to you; a goal that will leave you feeling as if you are on top of the world once you have achieved it.
Motivation does not come easily, but once you find a worthwhile reason to be motivated and run with it, it’s usually hard to stop moving forward. When picking a reason to do something for your betterment, pick something that is long-term and something that will stick with you and marinate in your mind for a great amount of time.
- Feed Your Ego — Yeah, that’s right, go right ahead and talk about how awesome you are. Speak with others about how awesome you are, make a song about your awesomeness, create videos about your awesomeness, and so on. You can motivate yourself to undertake any endeavor (such as working industriously for hours in the gym) by merely feeding your ego and I know this from experience because I do it all of the time. If I have learned anything in my life, it is that there is nothing wrong with being arrogant because such pride in oneself has to be there to be great.
- Compete — Nothing gets you going like competition. I compete with others, whether they know it or not, all of the time when I exercise. A good goal to set for yourself is to try to outwork your best competitors because it does good for you and the opposing party. The day you’ve stopped competing is the day you’ve stopped living.
- Hate Your Current Situation — Hate your current situation so much that it forces you to work for something better. Get it in your head that success is your only option and that your hard work can do nothing but pay off. Whatever is in your life right now and you do not like it, start hating its presence with all of your passion and energy. You have to keep in mind though that merely hating your current situation is not enough as change requires action. If you just hate your current situation and that is all, then you’ll become one of those people who hate something about their life, but are not willing to actually put themselves against adversity and change it.
- Look to the Future – The future is the only place we all must go, so you might as well work on it now. You could be in a horrid situation currently, but if you are planting seeds of growth, then you know that things will eventually get better and that is fantastic. While some find it neglectful to be so steadfast in future achievements, I find the future all the more appealing because it gives the things you currently plan or do even more purpose. At this point in my life, the future is my primary motivation for continuing to stay positive and productive.
- Make It Worth Your Time — Even though you may not be fond of doing something (for example, going to school), you might as well make it worth your time. I have been in situations and places that I definitely did not want to be in, but I made the best of it and kept going because life goes on. Life will not ask if you want to be a part of it or not because that decision is solely up to you. If you’re spending your time, time that you cannot and will not get back, then you might as well make it worthwhile.