6 Tips to Increase Your Motivation

Something we all wish we had more of. Luckily, there are some ways we can increase our motivation and get the things done.

Motivation is both a very simple and a very complex thing.

It simply means the reason(s) one has for acting or behaving in a particular way. It is the driving force that gets you to do something.

It is very complex because there are usually many different reasons why we do something. With everyone being different and in completely different situations, it makes motivation such a personal and unique topic.

When it comes down to the basics, motivation is all about desire. You must want to do it for some reason, and that want must be greater than the want to do something else.

Your brain has to value one thing over another in some way. Like a scale, there has to be more weight on one side than the other to make it tip to one side. Put more weight on the things that are good because there is a constant weight on the other side that is trying to bring you down. Convince yourself you want it.

How do you learn to want something? Our primitive brain is always wanting immediate gratification, so how do we overcome it and choose to want something else?

If you don’t intentionally and diligently choose what you want to crave, your body will crave the next easiest and most self-satisfying thing, becoming a slave to your primitive brain.

Fill your thoughts and surround your life with that thing that you want. Become obsessed with your goals. Truly understand WHY it is you want that thing.

There are the 6 tips to help you increase your motivation. Test and practice what seems to work for you:

1. Momentum

2. Make/Review Goals

3. Be Accountable

4. Focus on the Positives

5. Use Rewards

6. What is your Why?

Final Thoughts

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Momentum

One important aspect of motivation is momentum.

It is much easier to continue doing something once you’ve already started and especially if you’ve been doing it for a while.

If starting is the hard part that is needing the motivation, then start with doing something small. Start with one push-up, reading one page, or typing one paragraph, and then go from there.

You will find it starts to become incredibly easier to continue doing it once you’ve started, even if it’s barely a start.

What are some very small things you can do to get momentum going?

Make/Review Goals

Review your goals and plans to reach that goal.

Creating meaningful goals will help motivate you to reach those goals.

Look at those goals often.

Create a vision board of your goals and put it in a place you see often.

Look back on and celebrate the progress that you’ve made.

What are some things you would put on your vision board?

Be Accountable

Be accountable to yourself and to someone that will hold you accountable.

You could even make it public and have many people hold you accountable. It’s crazy the things we will do so that we don’t look bad in front of others. Knowing that someone is going to hold you accountable will help motivate you to get it done.

You don’t always have to do things alone, in fact, you rarely should.

Who can you be accountable to? How will you be accountable to them?

Focus on the Positives

Look at the positives.

We are much more likely to do something when it has a positive feeling attached to it. Viewing the positive aspects of a task or goal will make it much more fun and enjoyable, therefore, much more likely to do it.

What are some of the positives you can look at?

Use Rewards

Use rewards, whether it’s someone else giving you the rewards or yourself. Rewards are one of the oldest tricks in the book and for good reason.

Our brains are designed to seek out those rewards and it will make doing the task much easier.

What are some rewards you can use?

What is your WHY?

Keep asking yourself "why?" to get to the root reason why you want to accomplish that thing.

Here is an example: I work to make money. Why? So that I can make money to provide safety and comfort for me and my family. Why? I imagine them without safety and comfort, and it aches my heart, it hurts so much that I would do anything to prevent that from happening.

It’s that deep, raw, agonizing emotion that helps motivate you to action.

What is your WHY?

Final Thoughts

Hopefully some of these processes resonate with you and help motivate you to doing what is best. Remember, the desire to change has to be greater than the desire to stay the same. You will only have motivation to do something once you value that thing more than the thing holding you back.