How to Stay Motivated (Even If You are Trapped in a Repetitive Routine)

You're reading How to Stay Motivated (Even If You are Trapped in a Repetitive Routine), originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

It’s depressing, isn’t it? Another day goes by and you don’t feel like you are any closer to your dreams. You wake up every day and go to work to do the same thing as yesterday. You feel like only the color of your shirt changes. And you wonder if you should give up on your dreams altogether. Stop! You know those thoughts are destructive, not only to your dreams, but also to your happiness. Do you want to live your life without dreams? Dreams will take you places and make your life exciting. Well, that is, if you are able to stay motivated to accomplish them.

Reignite your feeble motivation

We all go through ups and downs in search of our dreams. No matter if the dream is conquering credit card debt, getting a promotion, or starting your own million-dollar business. Somewhere along the way your energy will drain, your problems will seem unconquerable or everyday repetitiveness will threaten to take you down. But you are still reading because you want a solution. You don’t want to give up. So here are five simple tricks that will put you back on track.

1. Slash your expectations

What? Every expert you read tells you to dream loftier dreams, to aim high. The problem with big dreams is that they take a long time to accomplish. Everyone needs to win every now and then, even Tony Robbins. To fix this problem all you have to do is divide the dream into smaller pieces. You’ll feel like a winner every time you conquer a smaller goal. For example, if you want to publish a book, you would have to first find a topic, then pick a title, write the first chapter, and so on. Plan out how to get to the desired dream and make the different activities in the plan individual goals. The smaller goals may not be as sexy as your big dream, but they will help you see your progress. Which brings me to the next strategy.

2. Come up with rewards

Sometimes, just the feeling of accomplishing a task is a reward in itself. But let’s face it, some tasks need a lot more rewarding to get done. Come up with a reward system. Take each of the smaller tasks that you divided your big dream into and make a reward for it. Tougher tasks are going to need a bigger reward. If I had to do cold calling, I know I’d need a chocolate bar for each call I made, but that may be second nature to you. Figure out what will get you going and stay flexible, you may need to divide those tasks into smaller ones and reward each one of them.

3. Create a happy picture

Since the smaller goals are not as sexy as your initial glamorous dream and you want to stay extra motivated by your big goal, it’s best to keep your big dream front and center. On your road to success you want to daydream about your big dream, especially when you hit setbacks. You need to visualize the ultimate end result. And to visualize you need to create a picture in your mind. If you print that picture and keep it visible you’ll quadruple your chances of success. Creating pictures is easy with Photoshop or the gazillion picture apps out there. If that’s not your thing old fashioned scissors and glue will do. So, do you want to lose weight? Create a picture of yourself thin. Do you have your aim on a big pay raise? Create a picture of your new paystub. Keep your pictures in a visible place, maybe your bathroom mirror, and start every morning pumped up about your dream.

4. Vaporize distractions

We are possibly in the most challenging time of history regarding distractions. Distractions are everywhere. I’m sometimes not sure how we get anything done anymore. Junk email is unavoidable, but you can limit it with a good spam filter. Other distractions are easy to manage. For example a cluttered desk, with piles of papers that leave you exhausted just to look at them can be fixed in less than an hour. Then you have social media. You can tackle that if you choose to indulge in social media only as a reward after accomplishing a small task. Win-win! If you want to achieve your dreams you need to get rid of distractions. Find out what robs you of most of your time and trim it down. Or start with a distraction that’s easy to fix.

5. Remember daring Edison

Once one of Edison’s associates asked him if he was discouraged by the amount of experiments he made which had failed. He replied “I haven’t failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Every man or woman who ever achieved great success experienced plenty of failure. Start to see your failed attempts or mistakes in a different light. You can be depressed about them or, like Edison, believe that you are one step closer to your big win. Stay positive even when something doesn’t work, you’ve just gained experience. You get to choose if failures will bring you down or make you brighter.

Regain your excitement

Losing steam happens to all of us, it’s normal. But it doesn’t have to stop you. Or kill your dream. If you want to see yourself finally accomplishing your visions you need to learn to pick yourself up. You need to learn to motivate yourself to stay on course. To avoid the pitfalls which will make you quit too early. It’s not difficult. Master the art of motivation today and see your spectacular dreams come true.

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Corina Semph is a mom, designer, and blogger on a mission to help people transform their houses into peaceful and uncluttered homes, even if they have a problem getting rid off stuff.  Download her FREE Ultimate Cheat Sheet to Transform Your Closet from Crazy to Blissful in No Time.

You've read How to Stay Motivated (Even If You are Trapped in a Repetitive Routine), originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you've enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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