How to Stay Motivated

Transcript

How do you stay motivated? Are you struggling with motivation right now? This is very common and normal for working professionals. My intention is to give you some information and some tools to help you increase your motivation and sustain your motivation for both your career goals as well as your professional goals.

This is really about having motivation and having willpower and every single day waking up with the energy to accomplish everything that you want to accomplish. I have a certificate in neuroscience from the Neuroscience School and found it fascinating to really understand the neuroscience of motivation and how our brain works. I want you to think about what do you really want. Visualize a goal that you want to achieve in the next 60 days. Something that you really, really, really desire and something that you are going to feel so proud about when you achieve that goal or even better when you surpass that goal.

Picture that goal in your mind. I want you to first understand that we all have this inner work life. Our inner work life is our thoughts and our perceptions about our work, our feelings, and our emotions about our work, and then the motivation that we have. You can have a positive inner work life or a negative inner work life. I want you of course to have a positive inner work life. Out of those three, your thoughts, your emotions, and your motivation, your motivation is the biggest driver to have a positive inner work life.

Let me give you six ways to increase your motivation. Number one, you need to be taking care of your physical body. I say this all the time. You need to be sleeping at least seven hours a night, eating healthy food, getting movement, and meditating. That's number one. That's sort of bare minimum, your foundation. You need to have a healthy, physical wellbeing in order to have sustained motivation.

Number two, you need to have progress in meaningful work. There's two very important components there. One is progress. You're moving forward. You see yourself moving forward. Number two, you need to feel like your work is meaningful. What meaning do you get out of the work you're doing? If you don't feel that your work is meaningful, that's a place to start right there and to really reflect on what about this work gives me meaning.

The third step is I want you to take your goal, your big goal that we talked about before and break it down into small, tiny micro steps. You might have a goal that you want to achieve in the next 30 days or 60 days. That's too big to have sustained motivation. You must break it down into small bite-size pieces, and I'll tell you why.

Number four is the dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter in your brain that is associated with reward behavior. We love the feeling of dopamine. When you have these small bite-size pieces in your daily calendar, every single week, what's going to happen when you accomplish one of those, like today, when you accomplish that small bite-size step, your brain is going to get a shot of dopamine. Why does it feel so great to check off? When you have some [inaudible 00:04:34], and you check it off. You finished it. You get that shot of dopamine. The daily dopamine creates success, and success breeds more success. You must, must take your goals and break them down into small bite-size pieces.

Number five is visualization. Visualization in creating more motivation and in achieving your goals can be really, really powerful. But a lot of people do not visualize the right way. When you are visualizing getting to a goal, this journey of achieving what you want to achieve, you must visualize the ups and the downs. You must visualize the peaks and the valleys in order to achieve a really successful goal. It's not just going to be easy street. You're going to have challenges, and you're going to have successes. When you're sitting down to visualize everything that you want to achieve, make sure that you are visualizing the potential ups and downs. It's really, really important. That visualization is going to help you stay motivated.

Last but not least, number six is self-compassion. People who have high and sustainable motivation are self compassionate to themselves. Human beings make mistakes, fall down, have challenges. In order to not stay down, you have to be compassionate towards yourself and say, "You know what? Today was not the best day. I didn't get everything I wanted to get done this week, but I'm a human. I'm going to start again tomorrow." Or "I'm a human. I'm going to start again on Monday." Self-compassion is huge when it comes to sustain motivation in your brain and staying connected to your goals.

I hope that this video was helpful. I want you to stay motivated all year long. If you like this video, please subscribe to Tia Graham, Arrive At Happy the YouTube channel. There's a new video every single Friday at 10:00 AM Pacific. If you'd like to learn more about how to bring Arrive At Happy into your organization, into your team, go to my website, arriveathappy.com. I hope you have an awesome day. See you here next Friday at 10:00 AM Pacific.