People who are unable to motivate
themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their
other talents.
Andrew Carnegie
If you want
to excel in life, self motivation is essential. You must know how to motivate
yourself. You must be able to keep your spirit high no matter how discouraging
a situation is. That’s the only way to get the power you need to overcome
difficulties. Those who are discouraged in difficult times are certain to lose
even before the battle is over.
The question
is: how do you motivate yourself? Here are several tips I’ve found to be
effective to build self motivation:
1. Have a
cause
I can’t think
of a more powerful source of motivation than a cause you care about. Such cause
can inspire you to give your best even in the face of difficulties. It can make
you do the seemingly impossible things.
While other
causes could inspire you temporarily, a cause that matters to you can inspire
you indefinitely. It’s a spring of motivation that will never dry. Whenever you
think that you run out of motivation, you can always come to your cause
to get a fresh dose of motivation.
2. Have a
dream. A big dream.
Only as high as I reach can I grow,
only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much
as I dream can I be.
Karen Ravn
Your cause is
a powerful source of motivation but it’s still abstract in nature. You need to
make it concrete in the form of a dream. Imagine how the world will be in the
future. Imagine how people will live and work.
Having a
dream is important because it’s difficult to be motivated if you don’t have
anything to shoot for. Just think about people who play basketball. Will they
be motivated to play if there is no basket to aim at? I don’t think so. They
need a goal. You need a goal. That’s what your dream is for.
But just
having a dream is insufficient. Your dream must be big enough to inspire you.
It must be realistic but challenging. It must stretch your ability beyond your
comfort zone.
3. Be
hungry
Wanting something is not enough. You
must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to
overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.
Les Brown
To be truly
motivated, you need to have hunger and not just desire. Having
mere desire won’t take you through difficult times since you don’t want things
badly enough. In many cases, hunger makes the difference between the best
performers and the mediocre ones.
How can you
have hunger? Your cause and your dream play a big role here. If you have a
cause you care about and a big dream related to it, you should have the hunger
inside of you. If you think that you are losing hunger, all you need to do is
to connect again to your cause and dream. Let them inspire you and bring the
hunger back.
4. Run
your own race
I do not try to dance better than
anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Comparing
yourself with others is an effective way to demotivate yourself. Even if
you start with enthusiasm, you will soon lose your energy when you compare
yourself with others.
Don’t let
that happen to you. You have your own race so how other people perform is
irrelevant. Comparing yourself with others is like comparing the performance of
a swimmer with a runner using the same time standard. They are different so how
can you compare one with the other?
The only
competitor you have is yourself. The only one you need to beat is you.
Have you become the best you can be?
5. Take
one more step
Success is not final, failure is not
fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill
When you meet
obstacles along the way, there could be the tendency to quit. You may think
that it’s too difficult to move on. You may think that your dream is impossible
to achieve. But this is where you can see the difference between winners and
losers. Though both of them face the same difficulties, there is one thing that
makes the winners different: the courage to continue.
In difficult
situations, just focus on taking one more step forward. Don’t think about how
to complete the race. Don’t think about how many more obstacles are waiting for
you. Just focus on taking the next step.
6. Let go
of the past
Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Believe it or
not, one of the best demotivators is your past. Your past can drag you down
before you realize it. Your past can give you a heavy burden on your shoulders.
The good news
is it’s a burden you don’t have to carry. Take it off your shoulder and leave
it. You might make mistakes in the past. You might disappoint others with what
you did. But it’s over. It’s already in the past and there’s nothing you can do
about it.
Today is a
new day and you have the chance to start again. No matter how bad your past
might be, you still have a bright future ahead waiting for you. Just don’t let
the burden of the past stop you.
***
Apply these
tips and motivate yourself. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Let your self
motivation take you to excellence.
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