Avoiding failure is hard. It starts off with a great idea about how to accomplish a goal-whether it's your fitness regime, your professional career or spending more time with your loved ones. You may have even written down these goals on your white board, journal or post-it notes. You start out by focusing or envisioning how it would feel to reach that goal, and you use that vision as fuel for success. Day by day you make a bit of progress, and you start feeling great about yourself, thinking you've got this, you will get there. But somewhere, along the way, you slack off. It starts out by putting off or neglecting one aspect of your regime, on a particular day. Then it happens the next day, the day after that, until it snowballs into your new normal and you realize reaching your goal is harder than you thought it would be. This is a familiar story to many of us, and it concerns more than just our new year's resolutions. It's a life handicap that prevents us from reaching our highest potential. It leaves us feeling frustrated, disappointed or even worse- it causes us to doubt that our goal is even worth pursuing. Let me tell you this-- no matter what your goal is, if you were motivated enough to either think it up, write it down or mentally repeat it to yourself in the past, it is worth pursuing.
This is because you created your goal to fix something that likely bothered you a great deal, had profoundly affected your perception of self-worth, or that you perceived to be necessary for you to reach a higher level self-satisfaction. That feeling isn't likely to go away soon, and once you realize how hard achieving your goal truly is, you only have two choices: you either give up and spend the rest of your life convincing yourself to accept a current situation that brings you deep displeasure, or you work your entire life toward reaching that one thing which you truly believe may make you happy. The former choice may seem easy at first because it requires less effort. However, with time, you'll quickly find out it is the hardest choice of the two. The need for change that you have inside of you won't go anywhere. It will come back to haunt you with regret and constant frustration. The truth is, both choices are hard to face and will take something out of you. However, if you are to devote so much time and energy either way, why not choose the option where your happiness lies at the end of the tunnel?
In my notes, I made a list of all the things I thought would help: one of them was to start with the easiest task, gain a feeling of satisfaction from accomplishing it and use it to motivate me further. Alas, let's just say that it didn't work in the long run, and none of the tricks I had in mind helped me boost my drive. So what is the best means for recovering your inspiration?
We may have a vision, but any thing that gets created in the mind is elusive and fragile; it is constantly shaped by our environment and requires nurture to survive. As a result, to protect that vision, you must constantly nourish it. This can be achieved by altering your environment to reflect how you really wish your life to be. For me, it was cutting down my music streaming time on Spotify and replacing it with carefully selected motivational podcasts. It was changing the background picture of my cell phone into an inspiring quote. It was replacing the entertainment celebrities I follow on social media with other figures I find inspiring. It was being more selective with what I read and finding the time to reflect on how it shifts my emotions and inner desires. I was (and still am going through a period of dissatisfaction in my life) and that is a constant fuel that keeps me going. On the other hand, one thing to keep in mind is that for this new motivational environment that you're creating to be sustainable, you need a balance. If you stop watching or listening to EVERYTHING, or almost everything, you love and begin surrounding yourself only with motivational speeches and educational content, you risk feeling suffocated over time or worse- just getting bored of your vision. And that is the real threat to staying motivated and preserving your dream. Being bored. Boredom kills motivation and crushes your vision. To prevent this, you need to discover through trial and error what "balancing" looks like for you. It will be different from one person to the next. I suggest starting small by slowly and gradually adding to your environment (your apartment walls, your phone background, your fridge, your computer bookmarks, the pinned memos on your phone's Notes app etc) content that motivates you. Get hooked on that one thing, get into the habit of staring at it, listening to it or thinking about it- whatever the "it" is for you, then gradually sign up for more.
Another important factor that preserves motivation when you're no longer inspired to keep working on your goal is to block out negative emotions, most importantly DOUBT and you guessed it...FEAR of failing! Allowing fear and doubt to seep into your thoughts is a poison that's hard to come back from. To help fight your fear, try coming up with a mantra, something that positively spins your energy and reminds you that you can achieve your goal and that overcoming fear is a necessary step to progress. Because your goal or dream can be so elusive, you need to recite that mantra every day. This requires disclipline, but it's so worth it in the long run to center your attention on your strength and ability to unlock your potential. Otherwise, you might find yourself getting sidetracked with every day tasks and with nothing to block out your fears.
Additionally, no matter what goal is, the road to reaching it will inevitably entail pain along the way. You need to be comfortable with that. The cliché "no pain no gain" rings true in every facet of your life. In this context, pain is good. Accept it as your gateway to success. At the end of the day, you have to decide if you want to deal with pain or regret. Most people give up along the way and choose regret by default- and end of regretting that choice for the rest of their lives.
Finally, you need to protect your dreams against those who will bring you down and make you doubt yourself. That can include family and close friends- no matter how well intentioned they may be. You're alllowed to be selfish with your dreams! Only share it with those who can help you nurture the positivity and self-confidence you need to keep going.
At the end of the day, there is no magic formula to regain motivation once it's gone, but you have to keep trying to discover what works for you. The most important takeaway is...you guessed it: never give up!
Comments