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Its hard to feel motivated sometimes you feel mentally exhausted. That’s why you need a strong reason as to why you want to accomplish your goals. Humans are a species that is driven by emotion, the emotion of love can make someone motivated to take their last cent to help someone they care about. The emotion of pain will motivate someone to become stronger so they never have to experience that in their lives again.
Finally, the emotion of fear can drive a man to do anything he can to avoid that fear. It may be fear of failing in a class, in that case he studies harder. He may fear being so he learns everything he can on how to be rich. Often in life fear and pain are strong motivators. As humans, we do not like feeling uncomfortable. We seek instinctively to conquer fear and pain.
You can use emotions to drive your motivation. This comes from knowing yourself.
Controlling what you feed your mind
A big part of feeling motivated is what you put in your mind. If you listen to, watch, or read what is negative, this has an effect on your emotions and allows you to feel demotivated. You have to water your mental garden for it to grow.
There are many motivational books that you can read today to put you mind in a positive state. You can listen to audiobooks and you can watch inspirational stories. Your mind is a muscle and it needs exercise. How you train it is not by Lifting weights, but by feeding it information to form positive neural connections. These connections will build over time until your thoughts become positive. This usually leads to you being more motivated.
The opposite is true if you feed your brain negative information. It will develop negative associations.
Practice Affirmations
Affirmations are one of the most powerful tools to help you become motivated. Remember you are in whatever state you tell yourself you are in. There is a saying that goes: “speak positive words to yourself, because, you are always listening “.
Scientists have proven that the brain perceives things that you can see, smell, touch, taste, and hear as real. To quote the character Morpheus from the matrix ” What is real? How do you define real? Real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain”. What we perceive with our ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and tongue over a long period of time becomes our reality.
I read about this story of a son whose father did some very bad things and ended up in jail. The mother who became the sole custodian of the boy would tell him day in and day out that he would not amount to anything. She would tell him that he was just like his father. Over time these words manifested itself and he became a renowned criminal. He wound up exactly where his mother said he would, in jail.
We are what we tell ourselves that we are everyday. Every morning when you get up look in the mirror and practice in yourself. Tell yourself you are confident. You are competent and smart. Find as many qualifiers that you can to put yourself into that positive state. You are writing your own reality.
That is how you handle internal Affirmations. Now you must manage external Affirmations. Remember the story of the mother and her son? what he was experiencing was external affirmations. she was telling him what he would become it was like a form of hypnotism. Hypnotize yourself by listening to affirmations.
Infest in a good set of earbuds or earphones and listen to Affirmations daily. Turn it into a morning ritual. There are a plethora of apps available for your smartphone that will help you to listen to Affirmations daily. These small words will feel silly at first but you will find that over time you feel more motivated. You have put yourself into a positive mental space.
Your mental state is the key to your success in life. After all if you don’t ever feel motivated to do anything you won’t end up feeling fulfilled. If you want to take affirmations to another level you can start meditation. Meditation has many benefits that most people are unaware of. Many people live their lives so fast they get up, have a shower, brush their teeth, have breakfast then leave for work. They don’t spend the time to condition their mind for the day. whether it is positive affirmations or meditation. Something that can take you five minutes you must put yourself in the best state for the day.
Here are five affirmations you can tell yourself every day.
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I love myself, I believe in myself and I support myself
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I am becoming the best version of myself
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Nobody controls how I feel, I am in control
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I am at peace with my past because it made me who I am
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I have enough, I do enough, I am enough
All successful people affirm themselves every day in one way or another. They do not have time to dwell on negative thoughts.
Write down your goals
Knowing what your goals are is one thing. Actually writing them down is the key to staying motivated to achieve them. When our goals are vague we tend to flounder mentally. Our minds try to grasp what the next step is to move us forward toward our goals.
Keeping goals in digestible steps helps you to take action faster and feel more motivated. You may have a large goal but the only way to accomplish it is by breaking it up into smaller goals. Otherwise, the only way to materialize something is if you had a magic wand. This is one key to a motivated mindset.
Get adequate sleep nightly
Sleep is not only the body’s way of healing itself physically and mentally. It is where we get energized for the day and without energy, you cannot have a motivated mindset. Energy drives each action we do so it is very important to get enough of it.
You can buy a sleep tracker to discover if you are getting enough sleep and also the quality of the sleep. This will help you to adjust your sleeping habits to get as much energy as possible.
You should also know that oversleeping can also make you feel lethargic and unmotivated. The key is to get an adequate amount of sleep.
Eat the right type of foods
I don’t know about you but for me, junk food has always left my mind feeling unfocused and unclear. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables and leave you feeling more energized.
Drinking a cup of coffee in the morning may be a good idea because it peps you up for the day. If Coffee drinking makes you crash later in the day it might be best to rely on something different for that morning pep. Try drinking tea and eating a solid breakfast to keep that brain fired up.
The food we eat has all the nutrients our brain needs this is why breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Its the fuel that drives your brain for the first half of your day. How you start your day affects how motivated you feel during the day. Skimping on breakfast should not be a habit although many people do it. Your brain needs the proper fuel to function and even though you may not take it seriously here are some nutrients and their effect on brain health.
Eating some leafy green vegetables like spinach in the morning is said to slow brain aging. Foods that are rich in folic acid will also do the job. Folic acid is a very superb nutrient for brain health. It has also been shown that a healthy dose of folic acid is required for babies during development. Always consider your diet when trying to develop a motivated mindset.
Avoid notifications in fact just turn them off
Studies are showing that social media has a negative effect on your mental health. In fact, long-term use of social media has been linked to radicalization and in some cases suicide. That sounds like a drastic statement but if you have any doubts I recommend you watch the Netflix documentary “social dilemma ” and keep an open mind.
In the documentary, former executives of social media platforms talk about its effect on mental health. Through the feeding of negative stories etc. These platforms demand our attention. Also how the algorithms that run them make us addicted to our screens.
If you want to develop a motivated mindset, you have to unplug not from your phone entirety, but from notifications. If you think about it we never evolved to take in so much information all at once. It is like standing at a crossroads and having someone telling you to go north, south, east, and west at the same time. This cannot be good for your mental health because even a computer will get overloaded if you give it too many instructions at the same time.
A brain that is constantly overloaded will find it hard to be motivated because it is being pulled in too many directions at the same time. You have to learn how to develop a focused mindset. People who are effective are people who are motivated and who control their attention, they budget their time.
Find people who have a motivated mindset
Show me your friends and I will show who will be or so the saying goes. The final but possibly the most important topic we will discuss today that affects your motivation is peer pressure. Humans have always been social creatures. We seek validation from the group, some subconsciously others more overtly. What happens when the group you are seeking validation from is unmotivated and aimless in life? You become a part of that aimlessness.
This is why you need to surround yourself with people who are motivated. That way you become motivated by osmosis when all of the above fails. We need companions in life so it is better to align yourself with people who have a plan in life, it is like using peer pressure to your advantage.
Conclusion
Having a motivated mindset is the key to success, if you are not motivated towards a goal you won’t have an urge to achieve it. There are a lot of things that can influence how motivated you feel and it is up to you to use this information for your benefit. You must have a strong will to make your dreams a reality and motivation is the engine that will get you there.
So what do you do to develop a motivated mindset? Share them in the comments below. In the meantime why not try reading our post on how sleep deprivation kills your mental performance.
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