Motivation
3 Overlooked Items Needed to Maintain Your Motivation
The world is a busy place, and we try to get it all done. Often times we forget some basic fundamental items that, if focused on, allow us to achieve any goal through self leadership and motivation.
With the expectation to succeed, keeping these three simple things in mind will get you there:
1. Where am I going?
In the professional world I’ve seen the gamut of corporate executives succeed or fail based on the clearness of their vision. Not clear on your goal, well if you’re a hiker climbing Everest that could be the difference between life or death, summit success or falling off the side of the cliff. Even worse not clear on the destination, you’ll walk the wrong path, and not even know the right path may be within reach.
During your process you have to be very specific and clear on what you want to achieve. If you wish to write a book, how many pages is it? How many words per day or pages a day do you need to write? What’s your eventual goal? You need to have a path for your success. You need to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
A vision, turns into a tangible goal, which turns into set of tasks to become your desired outcome. Without the destination clearly in mind, you’ll wander, wishing for your personal GPS.
2. You don’t trip over the finish line
We start at these lofty goals and then what happens? We start to fizzle and lose our drive after a period of time. How do we maintain our momentum with building our goals, with the same passion and perseverance, everyday? You’ve got to have an outline for what you want to accomplish. The journey may be longer than you expected or it may be shorter. You may have different benchmarks in the road, but the key, the true key, is going to be that you set this up at the beginning and have a clear definition of where you’re going.
Most don’t identify individual components within the goal to set clear and measurable benchmarks. They want to be rich or they want to gain exposure in a professional environment, or they want to achieve a certain degree of success in an area.
You’ve got to set benchmarks along the way. If you wish to achieve success what’s the best way to do that? Is the best way to say, “I’m going to make a million dollars tomorrow”, or “I will publish my book in a week!”, nope, disappointment ensues. Instead the thought should be, “In order to make a million, tomorrow I’ll make 10, the next day 20.” or ” I’ll write 300 words today, everyday, and next week I’ll do 400 daily”. You’ve got to set benchmarks for yourself along the way. In a race to the finish, you don’t get to the end by accident.
“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” – Confucius
3. No participation trophies
Holding yourself accountable for your goals and plans is the final piece to making it happen. Some individuals find it easy to hold themselves responsible for the next step in their dream. Others use accountability partners to gain success in which they find an outsider can identify very quickly an area where you may need some assistance (or a hard shove). That accountability partner can help steer you in that area either incrementally, or assist with keeping you on trek on a daily basis.
Sharing your measurements publicly is also a great way to keep yourself accountable, motivated and on track. By actually putting your goal or your benchmarks out to the world, you’re letting everybody know that you’re serious about what you’re doing and that you’re going to move forward on your overall goals and achievements.
Don’t forget to celebrate your wins, no matter how small. Throw a party. Put a banner out there. Sponsor an ad when you hit a certain goal on your website. There’s a million things you can do to remind yourself that these small wins are the successes you earned, not by showing up, but working your tail off. Guess what, you’ll be driven by the momentum of other people cheering you on and joining your goal success party.
Push yourself through each task, remember that All Stars should be celebrated for their efforts above and beyond the norm. Keeping your eye on the prize, knowing your path and sticking to it, will keep you moving forward, motivation built from desire and willpower.