8 Steps to Motivate Yourself to Succeed

If you ask people about the way to motivate yourself, you will get several answers. Some are based on science and others on intuition. So, we present to you the following ways to motivate yourself to succeed in 8 main steps.

1. Foster a growth mindset:

Before you know the nuances of self-motivation, you need a solid foundation on which you build your future momentum. There are many tips, tricks, and theories. If you don't enjoy the process of learning and getting better in pursuit of your goals, you won't be able to handle the daily requirements of improving and actually achieving your goals. This is why you need to foster a growth mindset that helps you focus on continuous progress over time and prevents you from getting discouraged.

Think that you will always encounter failure while striving to achieve success. The reason people need motivation is that they often face difficulties and need help to achieve progress and momentum when those difficulties take them off the right track. This is where the importance of a growth mindset comes in.

A growth mindset is a common term that describes a person who is focused on learning and personal growth, and who understands the inevitability of facing failure and that each failure is another opportunity for growth and improvement on the path to success. It also shows that people who believe that their skills and abilities are flexible and can improve over time are more willing to face hardship than people who believe that their skills and abilities are fixed or limited.

Motivating yourself starts with having the right state of mind. People who treat every failure as the end of the world never achieve sustained motivation. On the other hand, people who treat failure as a learning experience and focus on getting better in pursuit of their goals every day have a much better chance to rise when they encounter failure, because that failure is part of the process.

If you are having difficulty fostering a growth mindset, try to focus on the process. There is an end goal, but the real joy should come from the daily satisfaction of getting better and stumbling as you get closer to achieving your important goals. For example, if you want to write a novel, focus on the daily accomplishments.

2. Start with an end goal in mind:

Once you have a solid foundation and consistently exhibit the characteristics of a growth mindset, the next step to motivate yourself is to not forget your ultimate goal. You must be interested in motivation because you want to be motivated to achieve a specific goal. However, with time it becomes easy to forget your ultimate goal and lose motivation. Daily tasks become tiring and unbearable.

So, to face this dilemma, you need to set a long-term goal as this goal acts as a guide that guides you to stay on the right track, and helps you avoid feeling bored with the daily actions you take to achieve gradual improvement towards your larger goal. Your goal should be specific enough to be actionable, as well as variable enough to allow you to adjust it after you discover which actions contribute to your success and which ones don't.

For example, if you want to start a business, your goal may be to get the equivalent of $100,000. If you are interested in becoming an actor, your goal may be to star in a movie. Those goals give you the ability to determine your destination to move towards, but it is not so fixed that it does not allow you to modify it in case you fail at some stage before achieving it.

Then, if you get bogged down in making daily sales calls or investing in acting lessons, you won't lose motivation because you have a guide to keep you going. Add to that a growth mindset and all your failures become learning experiences as you make progress towards your goal.

3. Divide the goal into small goals:

Now that you have set a big goal that will keep you on track to maintain motivation and momentum in the future, you need to break down your long-term goal into smaller goals. These small goals are more manageable when compared to your big goal, but they build on each other to help you get practically close to achieving your final wish.

One of the main reasons for this is that although your big goal acts as a guide for you and helps you stay on the right track, it is big enough to cause you to feel discouraged. Imagine if your goal was to direct a film. While you may feel naturally ambitious and motivated at first, actually trying to do so  can be a daunting task. This is why it may seem impossible to become a feature film director because the task of doing so quickly becomes discouraging and frustrating.

However, if you break down your big goal into a series of more achievable goals, you can create goals that help you progress, stay motivated, and stay on track to achieve your long-term goal. For example, if you want to direct a film, start backwards from your big goal. To become a director, you need an agent. To find an agent, you may need to appear in a competition for short films. To participate in the competition, you must search for or write a story to shoot as a movie.

So, your goal series might look like this:

• Your big goal: Direct a movie.
• Objective 4: Sign with an agent.
• Objective 3: Participate in a competition for short films.
• Objective 2: Produce a 5-minute short film.
• Objective 1: Find or write a short story.

Set goals that start from the end and go towards the beginning, but work on them from start to finish so that each goal leads you to the next goal and helps you achieve your ultimate goal through goals that are more manageable and understandable.

For example, you can set a big goal, which is to sell a scenario in certain areas of life, such as business, health, and writing. After that, set annual goals that help you achieve your big goal. Then determine what you need to do throughout the year to achieve your annual goal by the 31st of December of the year. In this way, you will have a big goal that guides you, an annual goal associated with it to achieve it, and monthly goals to get what you want.

4. Understand the reason:

You have now fostered a growth mindset, defined your big goal, and set a series of goals that will help you reach your big goal. While this is a good foundation to motivate yourself, it is not enough to avoid completely demotivating you. So, to keep yourself motivated and moving in the right direction, it is important that you always understand why you want to achieve the thing you are trying to motivate yourself to achieve.

If you don't have a clear and solid reason behind your actions and intentions, you will never be able to maintain any great motivation. Many times, when people lose track of their goals or get off track, it is because they didn't want to achieve their goals anyway. Those who have a strong desire to achieve something remain motivated because they are pursuing something greater than themselves, as their momentum has a clear and motivating reason to continue.

For example, if you want to start your own business, the reason “to get rich” might be less motivating than “to create a green company that will help the environment”, and the desire to star in a movie “to be famous” might be less motivating than “to create a platform to make a difference in society.” If you want to motivate yourself, give your big goal and associated goals a clear reason to go for it.

5. Get an accountability partner:

Focusing on a growth mindset and setting the big goal and a series of associated goals are the basic principles of self-motivation. Your mind becomes a source of positive thinking, your big goal acts as your guide, your goals break down your desires into more manageable parts, and you clearly understand the reason behind the whole thing. At this point, the road is clear. Now is the time to move and prevent the resulting momentum from stalling.

To help with this, find an accountability partner who is trying to achieve similar goals, or someone who can help you keep chasing your big goal. For example, if you want to run a marathon, find someone who is willing to do the same to train and run with you. If you miss a day of running, it will push you to take responsibility. Also, if you want to start a business, schedule a weekly cup of coffee with a fellow aspiring entrepreneur to talk about business.

If you can't find someone who thinks like you, find someone who can help you stay honest by forcing you to give them or her constant information about your progress. A family member might want to take a weekly call to check on your quest. This is by seeing the progress you make on each call.

6. Celebrate small wins:

While you try to stay motivated in pursuit of your big goal, there will be times when you find the task too big and the obstacles insurmountable. To release this frustration and motivate yourself, make sure to celebrate the small wins along the way to success; That is, the achievement of your quarterly and yearly goals, and the daily process of getting better.

Celebrate that you went to the gym today, and that you got up early to work on your plan this week. These small tasks may seem easy to accomplish, but they are essential to getting you closer to your ultimate desires. So, be sure to celebrate them.Celebrating these types of daily actions and commitments will help you stay motivated, rather than waiting for a reward many years later to celebrate.

7. Focus on learning:

When you focus on celebrating small wins, also focus on learning along the way. People with a growth mindset know that getting better is a necessary part of the process, and that you may encounter some obstacles or take a wrong path in life.

In these cases, there is usually a lesson from failure that will help you achieve success later. Instead of wallowing in your failures and letting yourself get frustrated, analyse those failures and use them as motivating learning experiences that help you grow and improve. On the contrary, even your successes can give you experience that helps you achieve successes in the future. That is why it is important to focus on daily gains and knowledge that give you useful information which can help you stay focused and motivated for the long term.

8. Never lose focus on the end goal:

In the end, when you're trying to motivate yourself, don't lose sight of the end goal. It's easy for life to become overwhelming, and while it's helpful to focus on everyday matters, we can't do so at the expense of the bigger picture. So, remember that we started this discussion of self-motivation with a focus on the end goal and the reason behind that goal.

There is a reason why you want to motivate yourself to take action. Sustained motivation comes from identifying a strong cause and never ignoring it. When it is early in the morning and you don't feel like getting out of bed for a little run before going to work, all you have to do is remember your purpose, and that makes getting out of bed much easier.

Questions and answers:

1. How do you motivate yourself at work?

Motivation usually comes from an internal or external motivator. When you need to motivate yourself at work, you can do so through compensation, such as getting a higher salary, or motivating yourself internally by enjoying the work itself, for example by helping others.

2. How do you motivate yourself to exercise?

Motivating yourself to exercise happens through internal or external motivators as well, which translate into goals. For example, if you want to lose weight, you can set a specific weight loss goal and track your progress weekly, or you can plan a beach vacation after 90 days to encourage yourself to go to the gym constantly.

3. How do you motivate yourself to clean?

Make sure to align your internal and external motivation with the frequent cleaning task. Maybe you are someone who likes a clean house and is intrinsically motivated to keep it tidy. If not, try throwing a dinner party or something similar. This will force you to clean the house before your guests arrive.

In conclusion:

While self-motivation seems difficult, there is a systematic approach that must be followed. So, use the previous steps as a guide to motivate yourself. Over time, write down what worked for you and what didn't, and refine those steps to suit your personal needs and personality type.