Learn 5 Powerful Ways To Stay Motivated

If you are looking for ways to stay motivated with whatever you are doing, here are few ways that you may find helpful

Everyone needs motivation in their lives, every day as we do things or live through the day. Working professionals, students, teachers, businessmen, workers, and every single one of us needs the motivation to perform our roles and responsibilities better and more meaningfully.

So, what is motivation? Let’s look at the definition from Wiki

Motivation is one’s direction to behavior, or what causes a person to want to repeat a behavior, a set of force that acts behind the motives. An individual’s motivation may be inspired by others or events (extrinsic motivation) or it may come from within the individual (intrinsic motivation).

If we pay attention to the definition, a few keywords standout. Behavior, motive, repeat. It’s one’s motive to repeat a behavior. That does not complete the sentence. So, there comes, the most compelling part which is a goal that we want to achieve. It could be a behavior change, it could be winning a race, it could be getting a promotion, and so on.

Now, let’s complete the sentence:

It’s one’s motive to repeat a behavior until he/she achieves the goal.

It’s the ability for a person, to be able to repeat the behavior, every single day until the goal is achieved. How could one do such a thing i.e. repeating a particular behavior or action every single day? What could potentially drive someone and how a person could find that motive inside him/her

There are two ways, a person could find the motivation.

Extrinsic motivation: When our behavior or action is driven by external rewards such as money, praise, fame, then we call that extrinsic motivation. The motivation is out there because we are focusing on something external to us. E.g. As a runner, if I ran every day my practice runs focusing to win a race and get that medal, that would be more of an extrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation: When we do something because it is personally rewarding, then we can call that intrinsic motivation. E.g. As a runner, if I ran every day, to feel good, to improve as an individual in my performance from the previous day(s), then I could say I am intrinsically motivated. Of course, one may get the medal as well eventually but medal won’t be in the focus in this case here as a motivating factor.

Having talked about the type of motivations, let’s take a moment to look “what” aspects of the motivation. What could drive someone potentially, to keep him/her motivated. These are 5 powerful drivers behind our motivation helping us achieve our goals.

• Purpose: Whatever we do in our lives, we have a reason to do it. If we don’t find a compelling or driving reason, we don’t generally get onto it. Sometimes these reasons are so big that, we tend to call them as purpose. When we come up with very meaningful purposes to resolve, we tend to generate motivation, naturally. When we don’t find motivation within us, we look outside of us to find the motivation that we need. Motivation, either intrinsically or extrinsically, happens when we have greater or strong purposes.
• Happiness: Sometimes, we as humans, do few things, to primarily feel good or happy. While there may be a purpose in what we do, we don’t focus so much on the purpose but we enjoy what we do. E.g. As a runner, while I have my purpose as to live fit and healthy all my life, I don’t think about it every day because, running and doing related cross-training has become part of my life now, which gives me happiness. So happiness is my motivation while health is more underlying reality. It could be anything for you, which you may have to figure out. These are things that touch our soul in some way. E.g. reading a book, listening to a good podcast, a good workout, playing with kids, and so on.
• Powerful Introspection: We live in a world of chaos and complexity. It’s easy for anyone to get lost in the routines or so-called rat race. Very few take time to introspect with what they are doing, what makes them happy, what makes them sad, what is their strength and where they can improve, etc., The more and more one does introspections, it provides powerful ways to relook/understand the self which can pave way for how to lead the life, in far better ways than the current ways. Powerful introspections also can provide continued motivation.
• Diving more into How than What: We all keep doing things to get an outcome. There are two things such as What (outcome) and How (the process of getting the outcome). We all constantly talk about or hear about the phrase “be in the present, focus on the task, and don’t focus on the rewards”. While that is easier said than done, most of us focus generally on the result to get the motivation going. There is another way to look at it. Once we have laid a plan to get the outcome, if we focused fully on the task in hand, giving our 100% sincere and intensive (with focused intent) efforts, results or outcomes would automatically happen.
• Health: Many of us don’t realize that, at the core of our lives, good health is a very fundamental aspect. Until we have good health, to do things that life demands, we pay almost no attention to our health. Only when, we lose our health, in major ways, we start to pay attention and then worry about it. Without knowing or realizing, it is the fact that our good health, has been one of the very underlying motivations for us to get up, get ready, and go on with life every day.

There could be more to it, but each one of us can think about what acts as our motivation. Is it intrinsic or extrinsic?. Are we thinking about the purposes of our lives? Could our purposes bring clarity about motivations for our lives?

Being motivated is a habit, anyone can develop it through sustainable practices. Practice means doing something repeatedly every single day relentlessly until it becomes part of our lives.