How To Find Motivation When Things Get Tough 27 May, 2022   

This post was developed via a partnership with BetterHelp.

You may already be on your way to achieving your goals – or perhaps halfway there. There are obstacles and difficulties that you didn't expect between the top of the mountain and where you are now. You begin to lose interest. Your aspirations have lost their allure. In addition to your ambitions, you have doubts about your own ability to achieve them.

Attaining our objectives rarely comes easily. It's for this reason that learning how to stay motivated is so crucial to long-term success. To make matters worse, in today's environment, there are more ways than ever before to become distracted — from nonstop computer access to continual texting — making it even more difficult to maintain concentration and productivity while avoiding temptation. Here’s how to remain consistently motivated throughout your journey:

Focus on Compassionate Acceptance of Yourself

Because of our innate proclivity for social comparison and our culture's obsession with perfection, our ambitions may appear illusory. The dread of failure paralyzes us, preventing us from moving forward. However, there is a workaround! Becoming kinder to oneself has been found to give one the courage to confront one's worries, real or imagined. Putting your hand on your chest and saying a few encouraging words to yourself will help you stay present in the moment and silence your inner critic.

Keep In Touch With Others

Our support network is the largest source of our resilience, prosperity, and happiness, according to numerous studies. To get back on the field when we lose touch with our objectives, having a dependable friend to remind us of those aims is essential. You can open yourself up to constructive comments and support by cultivating strengths like love and appreciation, both of which are vital to achieving your goals. Read more about the importance of having social support when you’re trying to achieve your dreams here. 

Change Your Habits

Most of our lives are spent "mindlessly" said Ellen Langer, a psychology professor at Harvard. When it comes to our behavior, we do so as a result of our childhood conditioning, or as a result of actions that worked out successfully in the past. Old habits may no longer be helpful when we start a new project, or they may actually work against us.

Are you being held back by old habits that are undermining your desire to succeed? To avoid wasting your brain's limited supply of fuel, think of activities that can help you on your path and turn them into habits.

Break Down Objectives

The dopamine system plays a major role in our motivations. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is released when we achieve a goal. Fueling oneself with self-assurance is like driving with no gas in the tank. Fortunately, the dopamine rush we get from physically completing the work we set out to complete keeps us motivated to keep going.

You don't want to make the chores so difficult and time-consuming that you give up before you see any results. The key is to break things down into manageable chunks so that you can do them even when you don't feel like it.

Enjoy Your Success

Remember to savor and appreciate what you've accomplished and everything that's good in your life as you progress. The kind of memories that foster expertise and resilience cannot be built unless we take the time to reflect on our accomplishments, appreciate our efforts, and allow the pleasant warmth of a job well done to filter down into the deep depths of our neurological structure. Instead, we'll dwell on the mistakes we've made and construct a memory bank marked with failure.