PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

3 Ways to Boost Self-Motivation

Last Updated 19 November 2023/ By Zineb DJOUB

Frustrated, dissatisfied, overwhelmed, bored, stuck…….how often have we experienced such feelings or rather when not having them? I do remember my grand Mom’s advice “Life is short, so enjoy every moment”. But, how to get the most out of it? I was always thinking that success is a matter of luck, an internal innate force that nobody can control. Yet, my doubts and questioning pushed me to read and search for what makes this real. I found that self-motivation is the great master key to successful people. It was until then I realized that luck is the excuse of the weak and helpless ones.

Self-Motivation

Self-motivation is the internal drive or desire that pushes you to go forward to pursue your goals. It is not just about feelings but also making efforts and acting to get what you want. Since self-motivation comes from within the self, it remains your own business.

Whatever circumstances you live in, the drive to change and become what you want depends on you. This is because you are the only master of ‘the self’. You know your strengths and weaknesses, what inspires you, and what direction you need to take in your life.

So, do not wait for an external force to awaken your power. Happiness, joy, success, and all those wonderful feelings and states of being are self-created and cultivated not bestowed.

Willing to boost your self-motivation and enjoy more life! Here are 3 ways that can support you to achieve this.

1. Control your Mind

Our thoughts, feelings, and emotions are all dictated by our mind, more particularly, the subconscious mind (Autopilot). The latter controls 96-98% of all our decisions. Emotions and thoughts create us because how we think and feel about ourselves determines how we look at the world, act, and react.

When we are depressed, we look at the world as boring and unattractive and find loneliness a relief to escape. But, when we are happy we like to talk to people and wish time would not stop to enjoy that moment.

These are called mental attitudes: emotional patterns, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. They can be either positive (determination, happiness, courage, self-confidence, etc.) or negative (depression, anger, self-doubt, etc.). However, it is normal, for instance, to experience anxiety or fear in public speaking situations and self-doubt our abilities to do a task, particularly when it is new and challenging for us.

The problem lies in letting those mental attitudes control us and drain our efforts and power. So, how can we make our life work if we have a pessimistic outlook and no sense of purpose?

You may think that circumstances impact our lives. That’s true, we tend to blame circumstances and see them as the external force that shapes our state of being. Yet, they are not the only determining factor.

Our choices and decisions do really matter. Indeed, if you believe that you are not able to succeed or make any step forward to improve your life you will never change it. Even when circumstances are providing you with opportunities for success, your negative mental attitudes repel those opportunities and do not take advantage of them.

What you think can change your circumstances beyond recognition

                                     Louis Hay

 

Therefore, it is important to direct your thoughts, control your emotions, and regulate your attitudes.

Here are some suggestions to master the mind.

Self-awareness

To start off, you must acknowledge that your mental attitudes have a powerful effect on your life. This cannot be recognized unless you reflect on them. Focus on the negative mental attitudes that rob you of all what makes life worth living. You can identify and analyze them by addressing the following questions:

• What negative mental attitudes are dominating my life?
• When/in which situations am I experiencing them?
• Why am I experiencing them?
• How are they affecting my life?

 

Think about what positive mental attitudes you need to use to substitute the negative ones (for example from self-doubt to self-confidence). Write this down and put it up (you can use pictures) to visualize it and remind yourself (mind conditioning). In whatever situation, pay attention to your thoughts (What are my thoughts telling me?), then redirect your mind and focus on those positive mental attitudes.

Interrupt those negative mental attitudes do not let them rule you. Move, go for a walk, exercise…..Motions can change our emotions.

Self-esteem

How do you see yourself? The image you have about yourself reflects your thoughts and emotions about the self. What you come to see yourself is determined by the people surrounding you, and your experiences….Yet it is only you who master the art of designing and refining this image. Therefore, flipping your mind over to positive mental attitudes requires fostering self-esteem. To attain this:

•  Love yourself, which means taking care of your body (caring about your nutrition, fitness, beauty) and soul (food for thoughts: praying to God, reading the holy book, self-help, and motivational books, etc.). This helps a lot in making you think positively about yourself. So, integrate these tasks into your daily schedule. To love yourself you need to be selfish, i.e., not totally ignoring yourself to take care of others. Even if the ‘others’ mean a lot to you, devote certain space for you!
• Be yourself and avoid comparing yourself with others (richer, happier, healthier…than you) and trying to imitate them. You can learn from their experiences while recognizing differences.
• Listen to your inner wisdom or divine intelligence.
• Self-discipline strengthens our willpower as Steve Chandler states in his book 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself “When we resist a small temptation, we take on a small power. When we resist a huge temptation, we take huge power”. Saying ‘No’ is powerful.
• Use self-suggestion (Auto-suggestions), those positive words that energize you and support you to head in the right direction (For example, I am happy, I can succeed, I feel better…etc.). Repeating them frequently, believing in their powerful effect, and feeling their meaning when stating them (or writing them) are important criteria for their success.
• Avoid exposure to tasks, people, and situations that drain your energy. Select environments that will develop your best towards your goals.

Inspiration

Inspiration opens up your thinking and frees your curiosity and creativity, makes you think out of the box, and presses your button. Search for your source of inspiration:

• Read self-help or motivational books or you can listen to audiobooks, and podcasts wherever you go. Attending motivational speakers, conferences, and coaching sessions can also help you get inspired.
• Identify yourself with an image that will inspire you to make the right decisions (picture, symbol, statement,). Ask yourself: what will the picture say to you?
• Rewind those ideas/beliefs you want to live to remind your mind through setting visual traps.

High expectation

Because you are unique and you were born to be successful, never underestimate the power of your mind and have a higher expectation. To achieve this:

• Think about your potential. Ask yourself: What am I good at?
• Set your goals by identifying where you are and where you want to be. To learn more about how to make your goals more powerful, check out How to make your goals the power of your success.
•  Engage in planning to be more in control, save time and energy, and get more motivated to pursue your goals.
• Expect the unexpected and plan for renewal to prepare yourself for the upcoming challenges and deal with them more successfully.
•  Trust in God or have faith that God is good for you if you work hard and be good to yourself and others.
• Be hopeful, expect positive outcomes, and believe in your abilities. This supports you to live in peace, clear your doubts, and shake up your life.

Learning

Learning is essential for mastering the mind. It helps you develop new conceptions and rituals associated with positivity. So, learn about what ideas and behaviours invite positive mental attitudes and equip yourself with the ‘know-how’. Search, read, listen, and practice to recreate the self. This learning can cover these suggestions:

• Learn how to look at your world with fresh eyes, see the opportunities at hand, and think and plan for the future.
• Consider problems as opportunities for learning and growing. So learn the know-how of solving issues.
• Learn to change your worries into actions
• Learn to convert the negative kind of satisfaction into inspirational dissatisfaction. Do not resist failure, study, think, plan, and learn more.
• Learn to adapt to changes and develop a flexible mind.
• Learn to seek other’s support, listen, and interact with them.
• Learn to forgive and free yourself from all past hurt and focus on the present.
• Learn to take responsibility for your decisions and actions. Whenever you have a problem start with yourself, avoid pointing fingers.

 

Positive mental attitudes are the stimulus for self-motivation while actions remain the executing force for its generation. It is essential, therefore, to act and react to get things done, meanwhile maintaining self-motivation sustained or in a higher state.

2. Get Things Done

Because of motivational speakers, books, or whatever inspirational source you got exposed to, you might have felt your energy has been set on fire and your inner voice has raised calling for you to pursue your goals. However, over the course of time, that energy might have drained with negative attitudes flowing over you.  Why? Because you did not act and you let those energizing feelings and positive impulses pull you down.

Self-motivation is not just a matter of desire or willingness but it has to do also with making efforts and acting beyond our comfort zone. It is necessary, therefore, to force ourselves to break those habitual patterns or rituals that screw up our lives and stand against our goals.

This may seem difficult, mainly at the beginning. However, there is a need to train our brain to direct our thoughts and actions towards executing our plan (commitment).

3. Elevate your self-motivation

To achieve your objectives, what matters most is not how self-motivated you are currently, but how you would keep up its engine and struggle on despite tragic or challenging moments. Your self-motivation is likely to drop down if your energy drains and you lose sight of your goals. So, having clear goals and constant energy for thinking, studying, planning, acting, and trying is necessary for sustaining its growth. How?

Expand your goals

Self-motivational ideas grow from the seeds of thinking and creativity. To this end, think always big and never stop at what you have reached, challenge yourself to go further. If you are making a business, think about doubling or even tripling the income, expanding your horizon, ….plan for and actualize it.

Keep on learning

Studies suggest that learning seems to have a positive impact on self-esteem and self-efficacy when learners find it relevant to their needs and benefit from it in their own lives. When you are pursuing knowledge through lifelong learning─ learning a new language, an instrument, new technology, etc.─ you are facing a challenge and increasing your skills.

This psychological state which is known as ‘flow’ does not only provoke a feeling of accomplishment but also enjoyment. As you learn, you become more curious, creative, and self-motivated to do more.

Develop motivational rituals

Because your life is your own creation, find yourself rituals or actions that boost your self-motivation. Ask yourself what motivates you to be creative, find a solution to a problem or do any job. Is it walking, driving alone in your car, talking to yourself, writing….? This ritual stimulates your conscious mind, making you think attentively and create.

To overcome life pressure and keep your self-motivation higher, there is also a need to free your mind from those recurrent thinking patterns, refresh it, and charge up. To do so, think about active relaxation rituals (for instance, meditation in the early morning).

Success, happiness, wealth, or whatever thing you want to achieve, you are powerful enough to bring it into your life. So, control your mind, take action, and elevate your self-motivation.