7 Powerful Ways to Increase Self-Motivation
If you’re feeling, stuck, unfocused and uninspired you’re probably looking for ways to increase motivation.
When your motivation is at an all time low, there are things you can do to transform stuckness into energy and motivation.
For many of us we get stuck in the ‘getting ready’ process.
We simply never actually get started.
So, how can we live every day with a clear intention to get closer to achieving our goals and living a happy, motivated life?
What strategies can we use to increase self-motivation and bring more energy and joy into our lives?.
The best way to increase motivation is to power up our self-motivation.
You can light your own fire.
How to increase self motivation
It is not enough simply to wait for inspiration to kickstart your forward progress. It doesn’t have to be something that happens to you, it can be something that you create.
All progress and self-motivation starts with taking action.
One action will lead to another.
Action, and achievements, will create better outcomes and new experiences for you.
When my coaching clients are feeling stuck and overwhelmed, I simply get them to start taking action. To get fired up. To do something specific.
If you want to increase self-motivation, committ to achieving something specific every day.
Even if it’s doing something for just 5 minutes, it’s often that little push that is enough to get them going and to increase motivation.
Reduce your to-do list to increase motivation
If you focus on a small number of things to create the change you want, it can have a dramatic effect on your motivation in business and life.
Here are 7 powerful ways you can increase motivation and energy right now to take that jump forward you need when you may feel a little overwhelmed or stuck:
1. Increase motivation by simplifying
By creatively planning your life, it allows you to simplify.
Delegating and eliminating activities that don’t motivate or excite you ensures you maximise your time and focuses your energy on achieving your goals.
It’s really hard to stay motivated when your mind is confused and cluttered with all of the projects and tasks you need to do.
Transform complexity into simplicity by doing less.
Doing less and focusing on the things you love, will help you increase motivation.
If you can simplify, you can carve away the unnecessary.
When you do this, your life will become more focused. And more focus leads to increased motivation.
What areas of your life could you simplify?
Combine your small tasks
One way you could do it is to combine tasks. Think about two things you want to do and see how you could combine them into one activity.
The author Marilyn Vos Savant takes this one stage further in her book Brain Building in Just 12 Weeks.
She recommends that we make a list of every small task that has to be done, say, over a day or a week-end and then do them all one after another.
Essentially, you are fusing lots of smaller tasks together into one task and completing them all together.
So rather than doing one task on one day and another task on another day, it becomes a focused blitz to get lots of little things completed all together.
This frees up our time, gives us a sense of accomplishment, that helps to increase motivation.
2. Focus on your accomplishments
One of the things that reduces motivation and causes procrastination is that we measure our success not from how far we’ve come, but how far away we are from our dreams and ideals.
If we can change our mindset and become more conscious of how our brain is working, we can set ourselves up for a motivation boost.
We’re often at our happiest when we use our brains to problem solve, visualise, achieve and measure our progress.
If you talk in specifics rather than generalities, there is an opportunity to feel happier and more energised.
One way to do this is to start training your brain to measure specifics, which grounds your feelings in reality and can increase motivation.
Increase motivation by celebrating success
Rather than focusing on your ideal, think about what you’ve achieved from a specific starting point.
If your goal is to lose 14lbs in the next 6 months and you’ve lost 3 lbs in the first 3 months you have two choices.
- You could focus on the fact that you’re still 11lbs away from your goal or….
- Focus on the fact that you have lost 3lbs since you’ve started.
The second option will allow you to celebrate success and increase motivation and refocus your mind to lost more weight whilst the first option may focus your mind on how far away you are from your goals.
Let your brain set your own goals and have your own experiences.
3. Set measurable goals
This follows on nicely from the previous point. When I work with coaching clients we always set specific, measurable goals.
By goal setting, you increase motivation and train the brain to focus only on things that are specific and measurable.
When we are making real progress towards our goals, it makes us a lot happier. We are motivated and inspired.
We all sense where we are in the present moment. The past has gone and the future is well, the future.
In this present moment, we feel like we’re making progress, moving forward in the right direction or we’re not. We can’t stop time. We can only make better use of our time.
If you’re not happy with the progress you’re making, you may start comparing with others which can make you feel a lot worse and stop motivation in their tracks.
Use 90 day goals to boost motivation
So, think about what goals you want to achieve for the next 90 Days. Ask yourself what is the meaning/purpose behind each of the goals.
Write the goals down. Put specific measurements against each goal and visualise what achieving the goals will mean to you in terms of your own personal progress.
4. Shift your motivation from getting to giving
Some people only focus on what they can get out of life and relationships. It’s all about me, me, me.
“When you change the way you look at things; the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer
However, if you come from a position of serving and helping, and being more consciously awake to the world around you, your mindset can shift from merely receiving to giving.
And when you create this shift, coming from a space of giving, your brain starts coming up with more and more creative ways to spread more and more abundance.
It’s far more satisfying to focus on giving. If you really focus on this, it can become a true purpose and focus for you.
Deepen relationships to be more motivated
Rather than focusing on simple transactions, you focus on deepening relationships and doing things that will genuinely make people happy.
If you focus on giving and gratitude and surround yourself with people of a similar mindset your motivational energy will always be high.
There are also additional benefits. When givers come together the results can be so much bigger than on an individual level as everything has the capacity to be multiplied.
When your motivation is to give your brain will think of more and more creative ways to do that.
Random thoughts will pop into your head and you’ll find more creative ways to improve other people in both your business and personal life.
5. Create and repeat a new positive habit
Sometimes, the smallest shifts create the biggest results. When you start a new habit, whether that’s going to the gym, creating videos or improving your speaking the key is consistency and repetition.
By actually doing something new over and over again, your brain wires new pathways that help you create incremental improvements.
If you want to start a new morning routine, the key is repetition. If you want to start meditating, the key is to stay with it. If you’re gearing up to run a 5k, the key is to run every day and build that strength and stamina.
When you have a vision of yourself as someone who doesn’t complete projects, then you think of yourself as that person.
But if you tell yourself every day you’re a world class ‘project completer,’ you’ll begin to think and act like that person.
If you’re procrastinating on a big project, just start small and do something to move it forward, even if only five minutes. The next day work on that project again.
The key is deciding what you want to improve and then working on that thing every day. A 1% improvement every day can produce big results in the end.
6. Increased gratitude boosts motivation
When you come from a place of expressing gratitude both to what you have and the people around you, the change can be immense.
If you express gratitude for what you have, you are less envious and fixated on what other people have.
When you express gratitude to the important people in your life, it changes how you perceive them and how they feel about you.
Gratitude increases your energy and your feelings of abundance. With gratitude, everything is appreciated.
Expressing gratitude also makes you a lot more creative and deepens your motivation. Handwritten notes, more expressive feelings, instantaneous notes or calls to the people that matter most become commonplace.
The thing about gratitude, though, is that it requires an active pursuit in all areas of your business and life. It’s not about what that person has done for you. It’s about how you feel about them, and their value to you.
How to increase gratitude
Here’s a quick exercise:
Think about the people that are most important to you.
Next, write down 5 things you are grateful for, or appreciate, about that person.
You could tell them the 5 things or just keep it to yourself and sense how you are with that person the next time you meet.
Another important focus for gratitude is yourself. What are you grateful for today?
Taking the time to look inwardly and appreciate what you have built momentum and motivation and makes you a lot happier.
7. Increase your energy to increase motivation
Energy is a huge motivator. If we are fired up or excited about someone or something, we are usually very motivated.
Think about the last time you achieved something important. I’m guessing your energy and motivation was high?
If you’ve beaten your best time on the track, or lost the weight you wanted, or won a big piece of business, your energy will be sky high and you will want to dive back in again to improve your previous performance.
When we are excited and motivated about the things we are doing, we bring high levels of energy.
Spend more time doing the things that motivate you
If you could spend more time doing the things that excite and motivate you, what would that mean for your business and life?
High levels of energy produce continual growth and give you higher levels of confidence. One of the best ways to increase your energy is to improve your sleep.
Try this:
Pick three things that give you high levels of excitement and motivation. Commit to spending at least one more hour on each of the things every month.
See what you can achieve. If it brings in the results you want, aim to spend more time on those 3 things and remove 3 things you want to spend less time on.
