Smart Ways to Unblock Yourself
No matter what type of personality you have, there will be times when you feel a lack of motivation. Everyone has difficulty getting or staying motivated from time to time. When you find yourself experiencing motivational blocks such as the ones described last week, there are ways to get past them.
Check these out:
- Write it Down – If you experience problems with motivation, it’s a good idea to write about it. Include what you think is causing your lack of motivation as well as how you feel. Then, go back through it. Rewrite everything that is negative, turning it into a positive. Read this several times through to try to maintain the change in perspective.
- Chunk It – Sometimes a motivational block is caused by being overwhelmed. If you divide up what you need to do into smaller tasks that you can easily accomplish, you’ll experience small bursts of success that will motivate you to keep going. You’ll get done faster and do a better job.
- Change Your Environment – Sometimes you can get your motivation back simply by changing your environment. Go for a brisk walk, go work in the library or a coffee shop, move to a different room. Whatever you can do to change up your environment might help motivate you in a new way.
- Know What You Want – If you don’t know what you want to accomplish, it will be very difficult to start. Sometimes you don’t really lack motivation, you just lack the understanding of what needs to be done due to not having the destination in mind. If you know what you want, you can start with step one.
- What Change Means – You know the saying, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.” Real change will likely necessitate a bit of agitation in your daily life–you will do some new things and there will be new results. But shaking up a routine can be hard! So just know that change will involve, well, change
Lol. I mean that a desired change in a situation or circumstance will likely require changes in habit or routine that might feel undesirable at first.
- Tackle One Thing at a Time – This is much like the “chunk it” tip. But it goes a step further in breaking it down to a single step. There’s a book called Mini-Habits by Stephen Guise that talks about how he wanted to start exercising, and so he committed to doing one push up per day. It’s a great read
The idea being that focusing on one thing at a time is very effective.
- Understand Failure is Part of Life – No one has experienced success without also experiencing failure. I have seen quotes by Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan that talk about all the missed shots and losses etc….yet these two are legends of their respective sports. So don’t expect perfection and you will not lose motivation when there’s a “loss” of some sort.
- Take Care of Yourself – As you take steps to achieve your goals, it’s important that you take care of yourself. Like flight attendants say, if you have kids, you must put the oxygen mask on yourself first. You can only give to a project or a goal what is within you–so nurture you own peace and your own sense of purpose and happiness. This will foster your zest for all that you do.
- Stimulate Your Brain – They say knowledge is power. And certainly knowledge about a task at hand is very useful in helping you feel capable …which in turn is motivating. So learn what needs to be learned for the things you intend to do.
- Know What Success Means to You – It’s important that you define success for yourself. For some people, success means to living in a tiny-house in the middle of the Arizona desert. For someone else, it might mean saving enough to retire early. Don’t let other people define success for you.
Removing motivational blocks is a sure path to your success. And each “win” will bolster your confidence and belief that you can achieve whatever it is you want to achieve.
So start today! And remember–excellence, not perfection is the goal.
