Feeling in a rut? We’ve all been there. Low motivation can have such a negative effect on your life. In this article, I take us through five scientifically proven methods in which you can get motivated right now.
These are going to work for you, so let’s go ahead and work on getting you motivated!
Motivation isn’t action
OK, so my first tip to share in order to get motivated right now, is to notice and become aware that motivation does not equal action. Action equals motivation, however. The more that you take action, and the more that you actually go out there and do the things that you set your mind to, the more motivation comes with that.
So, the more I am taking action, the more I can see that it’s achievable. The more that I feel accomplished and I have already achieved and seeing myself progressed like that creates the motivation to back up more action.
Think about it. It’s so true.
So you have two options in front of you, right now. You either take the action and just do it, or you can sit there and overthink and overanalyze the situation at hand. That’s your two options. My advice is that you take the action that takes less time, less stress, less energy and worry. You shouldn’t be sitting there and over analyzing if I should or shouldn’t do that.
We waste so much time sitting there debating whether or not we should or shouldn’t do it. We are beating ourselves up over it, for not doing it. Then we are trying to fit it in our schedule. Then we start asking ourseleves if we need time management training.
Then there’s giving yourself negative self-talk because you aren’t doing the things that you’re doing. It’s just so irrelevant – they’re honestly just excuses. We all have obstacles to overcome throughout our day – big or small – and the way that we deal with these obstacles ultimately defines our success.
Please don’t let them become excuses. Overthinking is creating excuses. Just do it if you want to. Go work out, put your clothes on, go to the gym and just do something – do anything. Even the smallest little thing that you do, will ultimately get you closer to your goal. If you want to wake up earlier, and you set your alarm and you sit there and keep hitting snooze over and over and over and analyzing should I get up. I don’t know if it’s worth it.
You are creating this like narrative in your head, that’s creating anxiety and stress and ultimately giving you an excuse to stay in the familiar state of not waking up early and instead of just simply sitting up and waking up early, like just get up do it it’s so easy.
Create rewards for yourself
The second tip that I have for you to get motivated right now, is to create or analyze your rewards. We have intrinsic rewards and we have extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards are internal rewards that we give ourselves, such as passion for the things we’re doing, love for the things we’re doing, curiosity, creating meaning for ourselves, created a mastered skill. Anything that brings you internally the rewards that you get from the outcome of achieving whatever you’re trying to do.
We also have extrinsic rewards, which are external rewards. Outside of ourselves that influence us to do certain things – whether that’s rewards money, fear of failure, fear of punishment – things that are outside of our control.
However, we do them for that specific purpose. Think about your goal or think about what you want in life, whether that’s work related, fitness related, etc. Now jot down six positive outcomes of achieving your goal. What will it bring to you? This is going to be your why. Why do you want this goal? Write that down, jot it down.
Now analyze are they intrinsic or they extrinsic? If you have a mixture of both, I feel like that’s going to be a good motivational push and drive to get you to do things. If you have more intrinsic rewards than extrinsic, try setting up a reward system.
Because intrinsically you’re motivated to do the things, but maybe you’re lacking motivation because you don’t have anything extrinsicly rewarding you for doing those certain things.
Try to create external rewards, put something on social media, kind of claiming your goal. Making it public like that will hold you accountable for it, because of the external influence of peer pressure.
I’ve actually read something that you can do that’s pretty interesting. If you’re going to give your friend or your parents or whatever $100 or whatever, you can give them something that means something to you that if you would lose it. It would be kind of a harsh blow and tell them if I don’t do X, X and X today, then you get to keep that hundred dollars. However, if I do you give it back. Creating the reward system for yourself.
If you have more extrinsic rewards rather than intrinsic rewards, sit back and analyze. Is this something that I truly, truly want? Is it bringing me any joy at all or am I doing it just to make my external situation, for other people rather than yourself?
Do you really love what you’re doing? Do you find and get anything intrinsically from what you’re doing? If that’s not the case, you will not get motivated, so a thing here that you could do to find out what your intrinsic rewards are.
One of the number-one motivators in life get motivated right now, is happiness, and if you don’t even have that, intrinsically like I feel like you won’t ever get motivated. So try taking that test and see am I really doing what I really want to do and maybe that’s why I’m lacking motivation so just make sure that you have a mixture of both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.
Set goals and remind yourself
My third tip to get motivated right now, is to put your goals out in front of you. If you see them every single day, you can set goals, or affirmations or intentions for yourself. It creates a constant reminder of your why, and helps you get excited and pumped up to do certain things.
Something I used to do in high school, was take my dry erase marker and I would write down my goals on my mirror. Something that I’ve recently been doing now that has helped me so much is a post-it note for my videos. For example, I will write down all of my current video ideas that I have. Then I’ll highlight it when I’m completely done.
Having that out in front of me and seeing what I’ve already done, is just an instant motivator for me. I’ll write down like an intention for a day or an affirmation. My main priority or my main goal to be. When I see that every day, I know to kind of keep that in mind because I’m on my desk pretty much like 80 percent of the day.
Seeing it out in front of me, just kind of creates that little kick and push and excitement and reminds me why I’m doing it. Another thing that you can do, is create a vision board. This is something that’s huge in the law of attraction field and that’s kind of just envisioning your best life, and creating a collage of pictures that get you excited and pumped.
You could do that on a poster board and put it in your closet. When you’re getting dressed in the morning, put it on your refrigerator or whatever it is whenever you’re going to see it. The most I personally like to put it as my background on my desktop. Opening up my computer every day and seeing that perfect life that I’m striving to have, motivates me so much.
When it comes to vision boards to get motivated right now, you also want to make sure that every single picture just creates an emotional reaction of just so much excitement. If you have just like random pictures, and they don’t create any sort of emotional connection, it’s not really going to give you those feelings.
So make sure that every single picture gives you that emotional connection to your goal, and then something else that I like to do, is put out affirmations. For example, I put out one recently that was like “I choose to be happy“.
I just want to remind myself daily that happiness is a choice, and just choose every single situation to be happy. I wrote that down, say I choose rather than I should. That’s just something internally like a mental game for yourself. Like if you’re eating healthy foods, if you say I should be eating the broccoli. If you’re like no, I choose to eat the broccoli, it puts you in control.
It’s just better when it comes to like your mental connection to the affirmation and so when you see these goals, throughout your life, whether that’s in the car, on your mirror, on your refrigerator, on your desktop, whatever, it is seeing these out in front of you helps you believe it more and then you’ll be able to achieve it more which is basically the concept of the law of attraction.
Change your mindset
The fourth and final tip to help you get motivated right now, is simply to change your mindset. This is huge when it comes to being motivated. A lot of the times when we are in a slump or feeling negative, or just not feeling happy, there is no way that we can drive any sort of motivation to do anything.
That’s just science, and so something that I personally have been trying to do lately, is create happiness in every single situation, creating a better mood for myself. If I’m feeling ever unmotivated, you want to set the mood for your emotions, your mental state, as well as your physical state, so some ways that I create a positive mood and mindset for myself is gratitude.
That is something that I’ve preached so many times, that is the best thing ever to get you out of like a mood. Just write three things that you’re grateful for, and if you think about it, five years ago, 10 years ago, whatever it is your past self would have died to have the things that you have right now.
Remember what would it be like, if I didn’t have the job that I had today, what would it be like if I didn’t have the partner that I had today? Like at one point in your life you didn’t have the things that you had in your life today, and your past self would be like how are you not happy?
I would have done anything to be where you are right now, it’s kind of reflect on that and be grateful for the things that are in your life right now. Another thing that you could do is get in the habit of meditating every single day.
I really like reading, so if you are into reading or like listening to maybe an audiobook or something that really helps me get in a better mood, and really excited. Self-help books are the key motivator for me, anytime I read like even just a page, of a self-help book it just instantly motivates me.
Another thing that I like to do is to get outside sometimes. I’m just stuck inside a lot, because I work from home and just getting outside and walking around and just kind of changing up the scenario, take a walk around your building at work, just get out of your initial like little routine, because you can get down because you haven’t had a switch-up of scenario yet.
I actually got a quote the other day that said something along the lines of “Your peak mind time like your peak time for your brain is during your workout” You can’t go wrong with the workout. Something else that I’ve recently been doing to get motivated right now, is listening to happier music. I like all types of music, but I tend to listen to kind of slower paced music and I think that that’s okay and I can still appreciate it. However lately I have been listening to more pumped up, happy music and my mindset has been so different and I’m able to get out of like weird feelings like so much faster.
There’s just so many fun upbeat playlists out there on Spotify, and that has helped me so much. I just leave the music on all day, and I’m like go go go all the time, whereas when I was listening to softer sadder music I was slower, and lazy.
Another thing that you can do is journal. When I say journaling, you can do that emotionally like if you’re having an emotionally hard time, or you can just do that mentally, like if you have so many ideas in their head and you’re just kind of like you don’t know where to start. You can just brain dump all of your ideas on your page and just kind of organize and plan around your thoughts.
It will often feel like you’re just like releasing all these mumbled thoughts in your head and you’re just like I can breathe now. I have a starting point, I’m good to go like that definitely motivates me.
Change your environment
Last but not least, but probably one of my favorite methods to get motivated right now, is to change up your environment. What I mean is organizing, even rearranging, your space is huge when it comes to motivating.
Personally, when I have a clean environment, in a clean space and I’ve kind of set the tone for my environment, it helps me want to go out and do the things that I want to do, because I feel more clean, productive and just overall more motivated.