Motivation can come from many sources. Self-motivated people have a drive that leads them to accomplish a lot of things. Even from our earliest school days, motivation played a significant part in our lives. Frontiers in Psychology notes that motivated kids tend to achieve better grades in class. For adults, motivation can mean getting things done and taking ahold of your life. For a marketer, motivation is the push to make a buyer close the sale. But how does someone find what motivates them?
Finding Your Personal Motivation
Motivation comes from several sources, and even more things can drain motivation out of us. Inc. mentions that motivation affords us the ability to push past difficult times and stay focused regardless of the world around us. Many people go for life-improving guides to help them capture their motivation. The truth may be even easier than that. Finding your personal inspiration can come down to three simple things.
1. Think Positively
Yes, it’s cliché, but it’s also right. Getting and staying positive is a simple matter of taking the small wins where you get them. Harvard Business Review notes that small wins help encourage a sense of progress in people. This sense of progress is what we need to keep positive. Don’t look at an overarching win. Take every small success as a positive, and you’ll remain positive throughout the big projects.
2. Hack Your Brain
No, you don’t need a USB port in the back of your skull. Lifehacking is taking a trait of your body and turning into something useful to help you get through everyday life. Hacking your brain to give you a good feeling for small rewards isn’t complicated. Whenever you finish something on your to-do list, treat yourself. It doesn’t have to be a full three-course dinner. It could be something as simple as ice cream. What this treat does is establish a tangible connection between completing work and getting rewarded. This connection sticks with your brain and encourages you to be more motivated to finish things. Remember, each large project can be broken down into a series of smaller, more rewardable projects.
3. Tap Into Your Network
The people closest to you can be compelling motivators to your success. Having people who are motivated seems to help you stay motivated. If others are achieving things, then you feel the drive to succeed as well. It’s like using peer pressure to your advantage. This particular step can have the side-effect of increasing your anxiety, so you should be careful when attempting it.
What Motivates You?
Asking yourself the question of what makes you reach for success can offer you some valuable insights into how you value things. Do you prefer having more time or more money? What makes you happiest in life? Each of these questions helps to discover what motivates you and keeps you going. Once you uncover what makes you go, you can set out applying it to your most important projects so that you manage to complete them.