At the beginning of the month (which also happened to be the beginning of the year), I posted an article that outlined 10 Secrets of Highly Motivated People. Hopefully, the suggestions in that article helped to give you a jump-start to a FabYOUlous year. If however, your motivation has started to fizzle a bit, I also posted (ten days later) an article on how to combat five common motivation myths (click here to read that post).
I’m going to continue posting weekly motivation related articles for the next several weeks because I feel that this is a subject that can never get enough reinforcement. Even the most, committed and highly motivated individuals will tell you that motivation is something that must be constantly cultivated and renewed.
Personally, I find it most difficult to stay motivated when I am working towards a big and daunting, long-term goal. It goes without saying that the bigger the goal, the more difficult it will be to achieve; and even when the goal is something that I am passionate about and fully committed to accomplishing, these difficulties are often what sideline me and keep me from making forward progress.
How then do we continue to work on our big goals when our motivation begins to wane in the face of the obstacles in our path?
For me, the only real way that I’ve found to maintain my motivation for the long haul is to “keep my eye on the prize” and to focus my attention upon the FabYOUlous benefits that I will enjoy once I obtain my goal, as well as upon the more immediate, short-term benefits that I experience along the way.
In my own experience with setting and achieving goals. I’ve discovered four main reasons to focus upon both the immediate and long-term benefits as a way of combating the stagnation that often occurs in the face of difficulties. These reasons are…
Ah January–what a tease you are. You start off so fresh and full of hope as you tempt us with the promise of a new year, new hopes, new dreams and new determination. But then you turn on us. Your nights are long and dark and your days are cold. The promises that we wanted to so much to believe in turned out to be lies and the goals that we were so fired up about now seem like nothing more than wishful thinking…and it’s only January 10th.