All About Motivation

As a personal trainer and business owner I get asked all the time about motivation, and I’ve done a lot of reading and looking for the keys to getting and staying motivated over the years.

Obviously, (or maybe not so obviously, since everyone’s trying to sell their One True Way ™) there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. But, here are some things I’ve learned. All of the following suggestions have research and my own experience to back them up, but bottom line: try them for yourself. See what sounds appealing. Tweak until you have the right mix for you, because that will probably be something slightly different than what’s right for me, or your friend Susan, or your Uncle Bob. Everyone’s different.

1) I’ll start with the easiest one. Play music that pumps you up. As often as possible. In the car. While working out. While getting ready in the morning. While cooking or folding laundry. Change your playlists when you start to get tired of what you’re listening to.

2) When you’re not listening to music, listen to or watch motivating stuff. Podcasts, videos, audiobooks, whatever interests you and gets you excited about possibilities. Google will lead you to endless possibilities. I also print and hang up motivating posts and images where I’ll see them often. Make as much of your daily input positive as motivating as possible – it helps maintain a good mindset.

3) Surround yourself, as much as possible, with positive, motivated people with similar interests. It’s hard to get and stay motivated when you’re always hanging around people who… aren’t. That doesn’t mean ditch your loved ones if they’re not go-getters. But also seek out new friends with the qualities you’re looking to cultivate in yourself. Where do you find those? Online meetups can be a good place to start. Joining an activity, club, team, church, charitable organization, sport, etc. can be a good bet.

At the same time, to the extent that you can, minimize your time with people who are negative and drain your energy. That doesn’t mean be cruel or insensitive. It does mean make conscious choices about how you spend your time and attention.

4) Cultivate a growth mindset. This means choosing to believe that you, and your situation, can get better, and that you have the power to make it so in your actions. People who are stuck in the belief that nothing they do can affect their situation or move them closer to their goals aren’t very motivated. If you’re having a hard time with this, think of times in your life you’ve achieved something, and how your work and actions contributed to that achievement. I’ll bet you can come up with some things. And yes, by the way, you do get to choose what you believe.

5) Avoid “all-or-nothing” thinking. Many of us, when we want to lose weight, for example, decide we’ll exercise for an hour every day and subsist on 1200 calories a day (this is a bad idea anyway, by the way, and I’ll walk you through why if you want to have a conversation about that sometime). Then, when we inevitably miss a workout or eat a donut at work or deviate from the master plan in any way, we decide we’re not cut out for this and give up completely, until the next time we decide to try again and make the same mistakes.

If instead, we show ourselves some patience and compassion, things work a whole lot better. Let’s say I eat something that’s not on my plan. I could berate myself, which would likely lead to overeating for the rest of the day, because “I already messed up anyway,” then the rest of the week “ugh, whatever, I’ll start over on Monday I guess,” then deciding “I have no willpower anyway,” and giving up completely. OR, I could say “huh. That wasn’t part of the plan. Oh well, I’m human. I’ve gotten it right most of the time this week. I’ll just get back on track with dinner. Not a huge deal.” In this way, I feel a lot better, and I keep working toward my goals.

5) Have a really clear “what” and “why.” You’ve probably heard of setting SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound. I like to take things one step further and get really clear on what you’re aiming for and why. How will your life change when you achieve your result? How will you feel? How will others around you be affected? Visualize your life when your goals are achieved. The more real you can make the image in your mind, the more you’ll be excited to make it happen and the more you’ll believe it’s possible. That’s an example of “moving toward” motivation.

You may also experiment with considering what you’re “moving away” from: what is likely to happen if you continue to neglect your goals? What pain are you experiencing that makes you want to change what you’re doing? But always remind yourself of what you’re moving toward, because getting caught up in fear and pain can be good for a shot of quick motivation, but positive thinking works better in the long term.

6) Track your progress. Tracking is super motivating. If you notice when you make small progress, you’ll be motivated to make more. If you notice when you have small setbacks (and can be disciplined enough to recognize this as part of progress and not get depressed about it), you’ll be motivated to tweak what you’re doing so you can get back to making progress. If you aren’t tracking, you won’t notice these small trends and you’ll miss out on the information and motivation they provide. Pick a method of tracking and measuring that works best for you. Use spreadsheets, or checklists, or aps, or a notebook, whatever appeals to you.

7) Try affirmations. These aren’t my personal favorite but some people really swear by them. That basically means telling yourself often that you are worthy and capable of achieving what you want to. Google affirmations and you’ll find many phrases you can use; or make your own. You can repeat them out loud, or in your mind, or write them on sticky notes so you’ll see them when you look in the bathroom mirror every morning. More on this in another post sometimes, because it can get pretty involved.

8) Build in routines. I meal prep on Sundays. I know I’ll be busy during the week and usually get home late and hungry, so I prepare ahead of time so I can pull something out of the fridge that’s ready to go. I do certain business tracking activities on the first day of the month. These things are habit and I don’t have to think about when I feel like doing them, I just know its Sunday or the first of the month, and that’s when these things happen. This frees up mental space for other things.

9) Remember the law of inertia: an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an external force. Any action toward your goals will inspire more action, so make a point of taking some action, no matter how small, each day. Give yourself credit for any action too – the positive feeling will inspire you to want more, while beating yourself up for not doing more tends to be de-motivating, because you’ll feel like whatever you do is never enough, so why make the effort in the first place.

10) Focus on the good feelings of accomplishment you’ll have after getting something done. The more you focus on how much you don’t wanna or don’t feel like it, the more time you’ll waste. The dreaded task could have already been done and you could have been putting your feet up and basking in that warm glow of having gotten it done.

11) Pick one thing. Get good at doing that thing consistently before you pick another thing to get good at doing consistently. Trying to do a bunch of habit change at once gets overwhelming and demotivating.

12) Know yourself and be realistic. A lot of experts talk about getting things done in the morning: exercise, meditation, day planning, etc. I’m not a morning person, and I’ve decided that that’s ok. I do stuff in the afternoon and evening, and I’m much less stressed out than thinking I’ve got to do it in the morning or I’m somehow wrong. (Now, for some people getting things out of the way in the morning works GREAT! I’m not saying don’t do things in the morning. I’m saying do what works for YOU.)

13) Make sure to the extent possible that your basic needs are being met. It’s really hard to be motivated when you’re hungry, exhausted, depressed, unsupported. Sometimes these things can’t be helped, but sometimes we’re just doing a lousy job of taking care of ourselves and / or communicating our needs to the people in our lives, and can make some better choices. Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Higher level goals are placed at the top, achievable after we’ve managed to fill our lower level needs like shelter, safety, etc.

14) Figure out who else benefits from what you want and do it for them. Sometimes it’s harder to do the hard things for ourselves. When I teach women’s self-defense, a lot of women have a hard time picturing themselves hurting someone, even to save themselves. So I put it into this context: “If you get hurt or killed, you can’t come home to your family. What will your kids do without you? Your spouse? Your pets? Your parents? Now do you think you will do whatever it takes to defend yourself?” They always say yes, and they mean it. Similarly, when I am working on my business goals, it helps me to remember that when I do well, so do the people who work for me, and my clients. When I slack off, I risk not only not being able to pay my own bills, but I risk my employees not being able to pay their bills; I risk my clients not having a positive place to come to work on themselves; when some of my colleagues don’t do well they risk not being able to buy their kids what they need. Of course it’s good to recognize that you are worthy of having the things you want, but sometimes it helps to remember that others benefit when we get what we want.

15) Embrace “done is better than perfect.” It’s easy to get caught up in trying to make something perfect and never getting it done. This post, for example – I could tweak it endlessly and never put it out there, or I can put it out in its imperfect state, hope it helps someone, and move on to do other things that also might help someone and ultimately get me closer to my goals of serving people and building my business.

16) Set up your environment for success. It’s hard to get work done in a messy office where you can’t find the things you need. It’s hard to exercise at home if your dumbbells are gathering dust in the basement where you never go. It’s hard to eat healthy when there’s nothing but junk food available in your house, or the fridge is full of expired leftovers and it’s always easier just to order pizza. Think about how your environment can be set up to make doing things that support your goals easy or hard, and modify from there.

17) Be accountable to someone. That might be a professional like a trainer or coach, it might be a boss or someone in your professional life, it might be a group of people with similar goals who encourage each other, it might be a friend or family member (choose carefully if you go this route) who agrees to check up on you. People who study motivation talk about internal vs. external motivation, and for those who are more externally motivated, accountability may be the key.

18) If you don’t know exactly how you’ll get where you want to be, just take the next right step. Maybe you know you’re not happy in your current job, but you’re not sure what you’d rather be doing. You could languish for years feeling helpless about it…. Or you could start researching and talking to people about what kind of career you might enjoy more. This may lead you to seeking further education, or networking with the type of people you want to work with, or stumbling across the perfect opening. Usually, when we can’t see the full path ahead of us, more becomes clear with each step forward we take.

I hope something from this list resonated with you and you’re inspired to get started on going for the things you want today!