Hey you! Finding motivation in life for you daily/weekly/monthly tasks isn’t always there. I know, I've been there, and done that… But what if you’re not motivated enough? What if you can’t disciple yourself? What if you tried for a few days then completely ran out of juice and sat around instead?
If there’s something we all have in common is finding that piece of motivation in our day. See I was reading an article on how to develop habits, and one critical point stood out to me. This article argued that one of the reasons why we fail to develop “good” habits and do away with “bad” ones is because our bad habits “feel good”. Sort of like a feeling of having a “better” reward. If you’ve ever heard the song Addiction by Kanye West you know what I’m talking about.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you decided to exercise daily (good habit), and do away with junk food (bad habit).
It’s easy to start exercising daily if you start strong by making it part of your daily agenda. Setting a time leaves you with no excuses. Meanwhile you’ve stashed junk food away or threw out. You start fresh Monday anyway right? Lol And oh yeah this week you buy more veggies than usual. Great start, great everything, everything is going according to plan…. or so you thought. After a few days you have rough days at school/work/home and you sleep poorly. Maybe another day you woke up cranky and didn’t feel like exercising, or exercised at another time. Then another day you had a fight with your best friend and/or boyfriend/girlfriend… nothing matters >> fast forward ended on the couch with a tub of vanilla Haagen-Dazs ice cream.
See, eating junk food (which remember this is your bad habit) became rewarding the moments you “needed” it most. You got the sugar rush when nothing else matter. You felt satisfied maybe even happy. You were stressed out and now you feel better. Exercising (remember? This is your good habit) didn’t have an instant reward. You go up early, did your thing, worked really hard during the day, and then you come home, homework/or get ready for the next day, sleep, and get up to do it all over again tomorrow. You automatically feel no fun in that! We tell ourselves there is a reward in exercising in the long run. We’ll achieve a healthy “better” looking body. But it isn’t enough because you need motivation.. but really sometimes telling yourself that isn’t enough to get you going.
So basically this article was saying motivation isn’t some magic field that just happens. Really, you have it or you don’t. It has to come within you. You must want it bad enough. While maybe at times its difficult obstacles in your day shouldn’t stop you for achieving your very best. Allow your mind to relate the satisfaction you get from accomplishing a task as a reward so that later on it doesn’t feel like a chore. Remember your motivation can always begin from something small. It’s really anything you want it to be. Here are three awesome motivation rules I found online you can follow.
The Motivation Reward Rules
There are only three rules for your motivation:
Try it for a couple of days and hopefully this reward motivator technique helps!
If there’s something we all have in common is finding that piece of motivation in our day. See I was reading an article on how to develop habits, and one critical point stood out to me. This article argued that one of the reasons why we fail to develop “good” habits and do away with “bad” ones is because our bad habits “feel good”. Sort of like a feeling of having a “better” reward. If you’ve ever heard the song Addiction by Kanye West you know what I’m talking about.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you decided to exercise daily (good habit), and do away with junk food (bad habit).
It’s easy to start exercising daily if you start strong by making it part of your daily agenda. Setting a time leaves you with no excuses. Meanwhile you’ve stashed junk food away or threw out. You start fresh Monday anyway right? Lol And oh yeah this week you buy more veggies than usual. Great start, great everything, everything is going according to plan…. or so you thought. After a few days you have rough days at school/work/home and you sleep poorly. Maybe another day you woke up cranky and didn’t feel like exercising, or exercised at another time. Then another day you had a fight with your best friend and/or boyfriend/girlfriend… nothing matters >> fast forward ended on the couch with a tub of vanilla Haagen-Dazs ice cream.
See, eating junk food (which remember this is your bad habit) became rewarding the moments you “needed” it most. You got the sugar rush when nothing else matter. You felt satisfied maybe even happy. You were stressed out and now you feel better. Exercising (remember? This is your good habit) didn’t have an instant reward. You go up early, did your thing, worked really hard during the day, and then you come home, homework/or get ready for the next day, sleep, and get up to do it all over again tomorrow. You automatically feel no fun in that! We tell ourselves there is a reward in exercising in the long run. We’ll achieve a healthy “better” looking body. But it isn’t enough because you need motivation.. but really sometimes telling yourself that isn’t enough to get you going.
So basically this article was saying motivation isn’t some magic field that just happens. Really, you have it or you don’t. It has to come within you. You must want it bad enough. While maybe at times its difficult obstacles in your day shouldn’t stop you for achieving your very best. Allow your mind to relate the satisfaction you get from accomplishing a task as a reward so that later on it doesn’t feel like a chore. Remember your motivation can always begin from something small. It’s really anything you want it to be. Here are three awesome motivation rules I found online you can follow.
The Motivation Reward Rules
There are only three rules for your motivation:
- It has to be personal. If this isn’t something you really want, you won’t want to work for it. Don’t decide to do the glass of wine if you could care less about the glass of wine. Choose a reward that works for you, something you really desire, guilt-free.
- It has to be something you can enjoy immediately after completing your task. This is crucial, because you want to attach your reward firmly to your effort and build association. Your mind will subconsciously connect those two together. It’ll start thinking, “Well, I don’t want to write, but I really do want to go watch the next episode of House, so let’s get this over with.”
- It has to be something you won’t do otherwise. If you make your reward something you indulge in all the time, it won’t be special. It won’t be a motivator. Your reward can be something you used to do intermittently, but once you decide on it as a reward, don’t do it at any other time than after your done with your task.
Try it for a couple of days and hopefully this reward motivator technique helps!