10 ways to unlimited motivation
Has it ever happened to you that you wanted something so much that you could drop everything and just go with it? You felt such a strong desire to do something that no one could stop you.
If you have experienced such a feeling, it means that you were highly motivated then. The problem is that such a phenomenon occurs not too often. We just usually don't feel like doing certain things, and we have to force ourselves to do others. How many great ideas have you given up just because you lacked the motivation to develop them. I have, too many, to allow this to continue in my life.
I decided to test for a long time various ways to evoke an emotional state. And there is good news. You can motivate yourself to almost anything. I will show you 10 ways, thanks to which you will be able to evoke a state of strong motivation whenever you want to. I have been practising all of them for a long time and thanks to them I can achieve great effects. It is best to use a few of them at the same time, combine and modify them. Check out what works best for you. Here they are:
1. Set goals for yourself. It is absolutely essential. Setting goals directs your mind towards achieving them. Before you start doing something, carefully consider what you want to achieve. It is much easier to get motivated when you know the effect of your actions. Which goals should be set? They should be ambitious. The bigger the goal, the stronger the stimulation for your mind. Of course, they should not be impossible to pursue, but allow yourself a little fantasy. In no time will you notice that setting really ambitious goals considerably improves your effectiveness. When you set goals that may seem too big - do not change them! Simply, divide them into smaller sub-goals. Consider the individual component of the bigger goal.
How to set goals? It is best to write them all down. If you just want to learn the material for the exam, jot it down on a piece of paper. However, if you desire to generally direct your actions, you can do the following exercise: get an A4 piece of paper and draw on it 4 big circles (2 circles in 2 rows - let them take up the entire page). In the last circle write or draw symbols of all that you want to achieve in your entire life. Think, what do you want your life to be like in the future. Do the same in the one but last circle, but for the entire next year. Think, what do you want to achieve during the coming year. The second circle should contain your goals for the next month while the first one the goals for tomorrow. If you achieve the goals from the first circle, it will be much easier for you to achieve those from the second one, and so on.
2. Visualize the achieved goal. Find five minutes to visualize the effect of your work. Whatever task you have planned, think, what it will be like when it is completed. What will you look like? What will you feel like? Let those images be positive. See the result of your work in the best light possible, feel the enormity of the knowledge which you will have acquired. Think what you will do once you finally get it off your mind. Deeply experience the pleasure of a well-done task. Enjoy what you are visualizing. Try to make the created image rich in detail. Do this exercise at least once a day for a few minutes. It is one of the most powerful tools to achieve true motivation.
3. Write down the benefits. Take a blank piece of paper and a pen. Start by pointing out all the benefits that come to your mind with relation to completing this task. More free time, the joy of a loved one, the received pay, the opportunity to meet with friends, learning something new. Not all of them must be strongly justified or logical. Write down everything that springs to your mind, even if your reasons are ridiculous and senseless. What is important is that there are as many of them as possible. Once you have created such a list, you will adopt a completely different approach to scheduling a task. Before creating the list you could have hardly found one reason, and now you have so many of them.
4. Plan. Carefully plan what you have to do. The awareness of what the effect should look like is not always enough. Planning helps youalso to perceive the whole process, not only the effect. Each complex task consists of simple elements. That is why when you write down separate steps that will lead you to achieve a given goal, it will be easier for you to get down to the separate elements of the process. The whole will no longer seem so difficult as it will consist of simple steps. It will help you to keep up with your progress. The awareness of where you are and how far you are from achieving the goal will improve your performance.
5. Take advantage of the Five Minute technique. When you have to do something you don`t feel like doing, decide to do it but only for five minutes. Tell yourself - "five minutes, any longer". Such a perspective will considerably help you to approach the task, and what is more - it will often happen that once you do something for these five minutes, you will not finish after this period of time, but you will do it much longer that initially planned.
6. Combine the goal with the highest quality. Think about what the most important thing in your life is? Health, family, love, education, fun? What precedence over all other values? To which of these fields are you able to fully devote yourself. Once you set (it can be more than one) the most significant value, combine it with the task that you have to do. You can do this by asking yourself - "how will I benefit from it?". How will you benefit from learning this material? You will pass the exam. How will you benefit from passing the exam? You will not have to retake it. How will you benefit from that? You will have more free time. How will you benefit from having that free time? You will be able to spend time with friends or go somewhere that means having good fun. Simple, right?
7. Be positive. Pay much attention to your thoughts. Observe them all the time, especially when you think about the forthcoming task. If it turns out that they are negative, change them into positive ones. Stop saying "I won't make it", "It's difficult", "I won't manage". When you say it to yourself, you are right. You direct your mind to fail, and as a result, your efficiency considerably decreases and it doesn`t give you anything. It is like a self-realizing prophecy. When you think that you can make it, that it will be simple and that everything will go easy - You areright, again. When you direct your mind towards success, you stimulate it to action. Your efficiency considerably increases. Get yourself into the habit of positive thinking. You have great abilities! Once you believe in them, you will act much better. What is more, the prospects for success will immediately stimulate your motivation.
8. See yourself motivated. This is a technique that stimulates motivation on an emotional level. It involves visualizing yourself on a movie screen. Think that you are sitting alone in front of a movie screen watching yourself achieving the goal that you motivate yourself to. Imagine yourself being immensely fascinated by what you are doing. Feel yourself being fired with enthusiasm. See all the details - the way you move, your eye expression and the impetuosity of movements. Pay attention to the colors of the movie and the sounds that you can hear. Look into your thoughts as watching yourself greatly motivated in this movie .
Once you see the precise image of yourself in such a strong state on a movie screen together with all the details and emotions, enter the screen and enter your body. At the moment of doing it, feel it all, behave just like you saw on the screen. Intensify all of these sensations. This is a very powerful tool and it will make you feel motivated immediately.
9. Listen to motivational music. Has this ever happened to you that you were listening to some song and it evoked in you a specific emotional state? This is a phenomenon of emotional conditioning, otherwise known as anchoring. There are stimuli that evoke in us specific emotional states. How can you use it? With all the possibilities that you have just read about, you can evoke a powerful feeling of motivation. Once you achieve this state and you intensify it strong enough, turn on a song – let it be cheerful and energetic. Choose one that you would not listen to before. And while the song is on, intoxicate yourself with your powerful state of motivation. Your brain will associate this state with an external stimulus, which is a song. And when you listen to it next time, the state of motivation will appear again.
10. Praise yourself. It is a good, old method that everybody likes. Think of how you can praise yourself for the achieved goal. What will you do if you succeed with completing a task? Will you eat something sweet? Will you go to the cinema? Will you allow yourself to unwind for an hour? The choice is yours. It is worth to consider it because it shifts your thinking from the hardship of the task to the pleasure of the prize.
Try everything and see what works best for you. Perhaps one of these ways will appeal to you as much that you will always practice it before performing various tasks. I use most of them. If you right away get down to practising everything that you have read here, motivation will accompany you whenever you ask for it :)