How Do You Keep Motivated?

What do you do to keep yourself motivated, to keep yourself moving forward, constantly looking to improve and be better than you were yesterday?

I know this is a struggle that many face, me included, and I was wondering what others did to help them address this.

Procrastination is an easy trap to fall into, to have that manana attitude is all to easy. We have plenty of tomorrows, so why not leave it to tomorrow.

This is something that I have had to overcome with my running. Just running for running sake is not enough to get me out on a cold morning and do a quick 5k let alone anything longer. Even though I know there are health benefits, even though I know that my level will fall back if I miss out on a weeks training, these are not enough to get me to do it.

The only thing that gets me out running is to have a challenge, another race book, a goal to train towards. I find its goals that motivate me, and once I have achieved one I need to set another or I will lapse back into my comfort zone and the easy life.

I didn’t run much for a quite a while because I had nothing booked, but as soon as I signed for the York Marathon I was like a man on a mission and quickly fell back into the habit of training 4-5 times a week.

This is why having goals is important. They don’t always have to be bigger and better although they should require some effort to achieve them. If you can just turn up on the day then they are not likely to inspire you to train for them.

As I sit here writing this, I have noticed that over the past 6 months my writing has actually reduced considerably, not having deadlines for Inc, or the goal of writing for another publication has let me slip back into the habit of not writing.

Of course, I want to write, but just wanting is not enough. I have already got a first draft of my next book ready, but I like the drive to keep working on it.

So I guess I need to set a goal and then go about finishing that book.

But what goal should that be? I have already written 4 books, so just adding one more to the list isn’t a big motivator.

I think to help me get this book to where it needs to be I need a bigger goal.

So I am now going to set myself a goal of getting published by a mainstream publishing company and achieve best seller status in 2019.

I appreciate that normally people set goals at the start of the year, but I also like the idea of starting early

The book is going to be about the 20 Habits of Highly Unsuccessful and Ineffective Leaders – which is something we are seeing a lot of right now, and maybe the timing is right.

What about you, what do you do to motivate yourself. I’d love to know.

Do you need to set yourself goals? If so do they have to be big goals, or are you able to keep yourself motivated without them?