Ever find yourself lacking motivation and finding it hard to make progress toward your goals?
As human beings, we fantasize or dream about all of the things we want to accomplish before we ever take action. In fact we can mull and mull for years about losing that extra weight, starting that business, saving for a house, or going back to school. We imagine how wonderful it would feel to drive down the road, hair blowing in the wind, in our new convertible. We envision our sharply dressed alter egos handing out business cards with a fancy new title after getting promoted to our dream job. For years I fantasized about my new and improved bikini buff bod soaking up the sun on the Costa Brava after kicking my sedentary lifestyle to the curb [spoiler alert: the bikini bod hasn’t happened. Yet].
As enticing as our dreams can be, they don’t always incentivize us to make progress toward our goals. While a fantasy or dream is a must-have and precursor for making our wildest visions come true, the reality is that it will take a heck of a lot more time, energy, and planning to bring our dreams to fruition. Like they say, “A dream without a plan is a just a wish.”
You might be inclined to think that you’d have an easier go at it if you dreamt smaller. And yet, anyone who has let their dishes pile up or laundry get away from them knows that tiny goals aren’t more easily accomplished. The size of your goals doesn’t play a role in the timeliness of your actions. While motivation is nice to have and can make the process of taking action more enjoyable, the truth is, if you wait on spirited motivation to jump into action, you won’t likely make any progress at all.
What Is Motivation and Where Does It Come From?
Motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic and is defined as the desire to act in service of a goal. It’s a critical factor in setting and attaining our objectives. A person inspired by extrinsic or outside forces might respond to other people or rewards. Whereas intrinsic motivation comes from within, such as pride taken in doing a good job. [Take a few minutes to read up on motivation and behavioral psychology with a medically reviewed brief overview from Kendra Cherry].
Motivation can also come from a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic forces. Think of how you might compete with yourself and others. In other words, you might have multiple motives for engaging in any particular behavior. As an example, say you enjoy running. Perhaps you want to prove to yourself that you have what it takes to complete a marathon even though you’ve never participated in one before, nor had the interest to do so previously.
After deciding to train for a marathon, you might find that the more you practice, the more you love the feeling of running itself over an extended period of time—as opposed to your quick runs in the past. On the other hand, maybe your old high school buddy bet you that you couldn’t complete a marathon, and that just burns you. So now you’re out to win a bet and take your buddy to the cleaners.
Of course this example is over simplified to make my point, but let’s break down this marathon example further. It would be one thing if you just had to motivate yourself for a one-off activity. But running in a marathon requires you to build up your stamina for mileage, increase your cardio capacity, and reduce the likelihood for injury over a significant training period. There are going to be times when your body aches, it’s pouring cats and dogs or freezing outside, or you’d rather just sleep in. There will come a moment, where you just don’t feel like getting up and running. So when you find yourself hitting roadblocks like this, how do you make progress toward your goals?
[Truth be told, I have no experience with or interest in running a marathon or running at all. In fact, I had to do some basic research to learn how to prepare for a marathon. You should know that my research reaffirmed that I will never ever run in a marathon, let alone take up running. However, I do like to get outdoors and connect with nature. In an inspired perusal of new ways to enjoy the outdoors, I stumbled on this great article about how to train for a marathon. So if you’re interested, you can learn more about the extraordinary art of marathon running and how to train for one if that’s on your groovy bucket list of things to do. Feel free to let me know all about it in the comments. I’m happy to support you from the sidelines].
Make Progress Toward Your Goals: Claim What You Want, Get Up, and Just Do It
All in all, I find the training and preparation to run a marathon grueling. Oddly, it’s not the grueling process that dissuades me from training to run a marathon. I’ll do grueling anything all day because I’ve trained my body and mind to do so. In fact, I’m turned on by the idea of doing something incredibly difficult just so that I can say that I did it. Rather, it’s simply that I don’t have any desire whatsoever to run a marathon because I’m not interested in it. Essentially, there’s no reason for me to add a marathon to my list of accomplishments or things to do. It’s a take it or leave it sort of situation. I don’t need or want to run a marathon. But if you do want to run a marathon, what’s the trick you ask?
Sometimes the only motivation you have, simply, is that you want something. It can be big or small, but you have to want it. You might enthusiastically want it at times, and other times it’s simply a stern non-negotiable. Unfortunately, society has conditioned us to believe that we should feel inspired or psyched to get something done so that we can pursue it fervently. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
The truth is, motivation won’t be accompanied by the Rocky theme song, passionate fist pumps in the air, or warm and fuzzy feelings. More times than not, motivation is a silent and ho-hum, “you’ve got to get this done if you want to make this happen.” So you must train yourself to get up and just do it. Nike’s been telling us all along, and athletes probably know it better than most of us.
Commitment + Discipline Spur Motivation
This is where you suck it up, cupcake. You’ve got a choice to make. Do you want that goal or not? Plain and simple. If you choose yes, you must simply get up [right now—or, preferably, after reading this article] and just do it. No if, ands, or buts. Anything I’ve ever accomplished has been because of commitment and discipline to do so. It doesn’t matter to me how hard something is. It doesn’t matter what sacrifices I have to make. I don’t consider excuses or allow obstacles to get in my way. What it always comes down to is, “What do I want?”
Commitment
Once you determine what you want, it’s time to commit. Commitment comes from creating the time and space to create a plan of action. Once you have a plan of action, you can break your plan down into smaller goals. I always recommend using SMART goals as you’re forced to create goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Now it’s time for the action part. Cue the discipline.
Discipline
If you know you want something and have committed to the achievement of what you want, it’s time to make it happen. I wish I could tell you that you’ll feel amazing about your newfound plan. If I could sprinkle that juju in your coffee or tea every morning, I would [I’d dump some in mine too]. But the reality is that it comes down to one thing and one thing alone. You. Have. To. Choose. Whether you feel like it or not, you have to choose to push through your complacency and follow through. Moreover, once you’ve made the decision to go after what you want, you must avoid drift like the plague. Sustained tiny acts of discipline every day make the difference between you making progress toward your goals and achieving your dreams or squandering your potential.
Motivation
Now I know I said earlier that you shouldn’t expect to feel spirited waves of motivation. That’s not totally true. However, what you might be surprised to learn is that once you force yourself to do a task through commitment and discipline, the spirited motivation follows. The best example I can think of is a screaming child who refuses to take a bath. No matter how you try and lure that child into bath time, they’re not having it. There ain’t no amount of junk food or special toys, or any reward whatsoever that will get that kid in the bath willingly. And yet, like magic, after about 10 minutes in the bath, screaming child transforms into giddy child splashing, hooting, and hollering. That is until it’s time to get out of the bath, and the process starts all over again. You are the screaming child in this example.
The secret is that once you start the dreaded task and give it a few minutes or 10, you’ll find that it ain’t so bad. You might even get a little pep in your step because you find yourself getting in the zone. You’ll LOVE the zone. You’ll settle in and won’t want to leave until you’ve accomplished what you set out to do. That’s great news, right?
Well, remember that feeling. You’ll need that memory come tomorrow when it’s time to do it all over again. I know. If can feel awful in the beginning. Just remind yourself that you’ll get into it once you start. Keep doing it over and over again until you reach your goal. The good news is, it does get easier overtime as your mind, body, and spirit are conditioned to push through and follow through. And the best part is, you’ll no longer be making progress toward your goals because you will have crushed your goals!
How to Figure Out What You Want
Thinking about what you want can take time. Actually, it can take a long time. So much so, in fact, that figuring out what you want sometimes requires a gestation period. And while a gestation period is okay and necessary with lofty goals, you must be careful to avoid inaction on a goal that you truly want to accomplish. If you’ve been feeling stuck and don’t know where to start to get out of a rut, check out this article I wrote.
To get at the root of what you want, I recommend that you start with forming a vision for how you want your personal and professional life to look or feel. A fun exercise is to create a vision board. All you need to do is cut out and paste images from magazines onto a poster board to represent the symbols of what your best life looks like.
After you’ve completed your vision board, take notice of any themes and write them down. The next step is to think about why you aspire for the things you’ve included in each theme of your vision. It’s important that your why be intrinsic because it enables you to gain the best traction. After some thought, write down your why along side your themes. It is your why that fuels your wants and gives you a clear purpose. Purpose sustains commitment.
After developing your vision, identifying your themes, and documenting your why to clarify your purpose, you’ll know what you want. Once you know what you want, it’s time to commit. After you’ve committed to pursuing what you want, you can identify the steps necessary to achieve your goal–which should include the SMART goals we discussed earlier. The key is to level with yourself about your true desires and not get distracted by ideas of what you think you need or what you think you should want.
In Summary
To make progress toward your goals, stop waiting to feel motivated in order to take action. You must be more proactive by engaging a vision for your life. With a clear vision, you can commit and rise to the occasion to fully realize what you envision for your life. It’s critical to commit to a detailed plan with SMART goals embedded. Moreover, you should routinely monitor your progress. When the time comes to take action, be disciplined. Do not allow distractions or drift to interfere with your plans. Get up and just do it. The motivation will follow and you’ll make progress on your goals in no time.
CHECK-IN
1. Where do you find you struggle most with motivation (e.g., discipline, commitment, pushing through, figuring out what you want)?
2. What vision do you have for your life?
3. What is one goal you’ve decided to pursue?
2 thoughts on “Skip Motivation and Make Progress Toward Your Goals”
I do well with the discipline, commitment, pushing through, and figuring out what I want. However, sometimes I let other people’s comments, or unwelcomed opinions get to me (I’m working on it!!!). So, to me is the hardest part of achievng my goals. But like I said, I’m working on it!! 🙂
I can totally relate, Vanessa. One of the biggest hurdles I’ve had to learn to overcome is a bad habit of putting the approval of others and their needs before my own. The voices and opinions from others can become a major distraction and pull us further away from our goals. I try to engage in deep soul searching when I ponder trying something new or strive to get out of my comfort zone. Going back to my “why” and the vision I have for my life has become my best weapon against worrying about the opinions of others. It brings me the peace I need to pursue my goals (and dreams). But to your point, it is definitely a work in progress!
Comments are closed.