Motivation

“I’m just not in the mood.”

Motivation is the energy that fuels your drive to achieve.

To renew lost motivation:

• Spend time reflecting on why your goal is meaningful to you.
• Make a decision to take one step toward your goal.
• After you take the first step, reward yourself for a job well done.
• Examine and deal with your obstacles.
• Begin, or begin again.

How do you focus the energy of motivation? Make a commitment. Commitment means that you do what you say you will do.
How do you go about making and keeping a commitment?

• State your commitment concretely.
• Get started and note your progress.
• Renew your commitment regularly.
• Keep track of your commitment.

Take initiative. Push yourself to take that first difficult step.

Be responsible. Live up to your obligations, both those that are imposed on you and those that you impose on yourself.

Think positively. Attitude is important to success. Many people believe that what happens in your life can be linked to how you feel about yourself and your place in the world.

Ways to develop the habit of motivation:

• Be clear about goals and act on them. Make a promise and keep your word.
• Befriend your discomfort. Investigate the discomfort (your thoughts). Observe what is happening with your body (tense, breathing changes).
• Change your mind and your body. Plant new thoughts in your mind or change your physical stance.
• Sweeten the task. Change one aspect of the task so that it will seem more appealing and be more enjoyable. (Move to a cheery environment to read your text or get a soda and snack.)
• Talk about how bad it is. Tke the task to its extreme (This is the worst project I’ve ever had to do). This may introduce its own perspective.
• Turn up the pressure. Pretend that the due date has been moved up one month. If you raise the stress level slightly, it can move you into action.
• Adopt a model. Find someone you consider successful and use him or her as a model for your own behavior.
• Comparing the costs and benefits of any behavior can fuel your motivation.
• Do it later. Sometimes it’s effective to save a task for later. But make sure you keep your promise.
• Sometimes not being motivated carries a message that’s worth heeding. For example, chronic reluctance to read accounting textbooks may not be a problem. It may reveal a desire to major in something else.