Motivation
What is one thing you’d like to start doing? Why haven’t you started? If you have, why haven’t you stayed consistent?
Motivation is a weird thing. Some people hear “if you keep smoking, you’ll be dead in a year” and they stop immediately. Other people hear the same thing and they try and try and can’t stop despite feeling super motivated to do so; they don’t want to die in a year.
The same goes with anything people are doing. For some, changing a habit comes super easy and for others they struggle immensely with it. For some, they can change one habit very easily, but can’t apply the same mindset and motivation to change another habit.
Motivation is a weird thing.
We feel motivated to do something frequently when we don’t have to actually take action right now. We feel motivated to get up early and exercise tomorrow morning. We feel motivated to start our diet on Monday. None of those require action right now which means we can feel excited and motivated to make a change without any of the consequences.
Motivation is a start, but it isn’t the end. We don’t need motivation in order to take action. In fact, frequently when we end up taking action, we’re not motivated. But we do it anyway. Other times, something (like fear of dying from smoking) motivates us to take and maintain action.
I am planning a vacation to Europe so I decided to learn Italian. Why? I know it’s nice to know a little bit, but nobody (supposedly) expects me to be fluent in Italian. But I want to learn the language. Italy isn’t the only place I’m visiting, but it is the place that has the easiest language to learn of the places I’m visiting. So I took the easy route!
I am on a 151 day streak with Duolingo right now. I’m also using Babble and Pimsleur (although I am not as consistent with those two) because I’m motivated to learn. I have an end point (if I desire) — I never have to keep working on it after my trip if I don’t want to. And it feels good to see my progress so I’m enjoying it. I found the best time for me to practice is first thing in the morning (like 6AM) otherwise I’m likely to get busy and not get around to it. Motivation helps, but so does routine.
As you may know I have two businesses — a therapy business and a coaching business. Marketing is another difficult habit to get into, especially for someone who wasn’t taught how to market or advertise. Doing marketing outside of putting myself on directories definitely put me out of my comfort zone.
Back in February I decided to be more consistent with posting on Google My Business. I started by doing it a couple times per week. I kept trying to do a bit more until in April I decided to post Monday-Friday. I’m not perfect with it, but because I eased myself into it, it wasn’t as hard as I expected. Again, I found this to be a morning thing (like 5:30AM) otherwise I find all the excuses NOT to do it. It’s habit now. I missed a few days last week but didn’t stress over it because I knew I was getting back on track easily.
These habits started and became habitual in two different ways, but in both cases, I WANT something. I want to learn Italian and I want to be consistent with marketing. But they have different ENJOYMENT levels. I enjoy learning Italian, but I do not enjoy marketing. But, both became habitual. How?
I didn’t look at the big picture; I looked at a week at a time. This helped me focus on my goal today. If it is scheduled for today, do it. If it isn’t, don’t worry about it. Stay laser focused on today, one week at a time. The week thing helped because every week is different and if I want to do my marketing at least twice weekly, I needed to know my weekly schedule otherwise it wouldn’t get done.
I found the time of day that I am most likely to do things — if it is early, I don’t have time to get into excuses or into the day yet. Morning worked best for me.
That is it. Duolingo gives me stats, but marketing does not tell me how many days I’ve been at it. For me, it’s not about “don’t break the chain” as many people use and find helpful. For me, number two above was THE most helpful, followed by number one. But I started with number one as I figured out number two.
Motivation is a weird thing. It’s great when you don’t have to take action right now. I don’t use motivation to stay consistent. I stay out of my head by doing the important things early before I need to find the motivation later in the day.
How about you? What helps you stay consistent with new habits?
Schedule your clarity call with me to learn how to overcome the anxiety and lack of motivation keeping you back from having more success with your goals and in life! If you still need to a bit more time, take a look around my site.