Have you experienced driving uphill when half way to the top, you car starts to lose power and slowly slides back? That is how it feels when half way in your project, you start to lose enthusiasm. Your motivation begins to wear off and the chance of you achieving your goal grows dimmer with each step. In times like this, what you need is push just as your car needs an additive mixed with your petrol to boost its power.
Here are some tricks to boost your sagging enthusiasm and stay motivated:
- Unload your stress. Stress bears you down unnecessarily. One effective way to do avoid being stressed is to make a shift in the way you look at things or situations. Perhaps, you cannot do anything about external problems that come your way, Whether they are caused by people or events. However, you have complete control on your reactions towards them. You can choose to do any of these options for your problems:
a) You can ignore them especially if there are no way you can resolve them. Why waste and sacrifice your peace of mind over things you know you cannot do anything about?
b) You can pass them to those you have the ability or patience to solve them. Just do not forget to make up for the inconvenience you caused to those who help you out. Gratitude is an effective stress reliever.
c) You can defer dealing with them. Sometimes, problems unravel by themselves when given enough time.
- Stay away from negativity. Avoid mingling with pessimists and negative people. It is easy to be influenced by them through the process of absorption and osmosis. Do not expect any reinforcing advice from them because they are really too concerned about their own sad plights they hardly have time for you. Learn to discern negative self-talk. Wallowing in self-pity gnaws on enthusiasm quickly and whittles down motivation.
Quit comparing yourself to others. Let others alone and focus on your own business. As the Chinese philosopher advises, “When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.” Constantly looking over your neighbour’s turf to see how he is doing is a waste of time unless you do so to emulate his good example. Otherwise, this is counter-productive. Besides, by wasting your time envying him, you have no time to improve yourself compared to your neighbour. This will cause you to further lose your self-confidence and eventually, your enthusiasm.
- Avoid procrastination. Do not use “careful deliberation” as an alibi to delay action. Actually, this is just a guise to hide procrastination which is the one big enemy of productivity and a sure motivation-killer. Whenever you feel like putting-off doing things, analyze your real reasons for doing so and act on these reasons to get them out of the way soonest so you can move on. Incidentally, laziness goes hand-in-hand with procrastination so make sure you get over this immediately. Procrastination is like cold water that is doused over the flame of enthusiasm and causes your motivation to fizzle out and die.
- Forget time management. Although managing your time is an important factor in working, keeping yourself motivated should be your priority. Otherwise, you will not have work left to manage your time for. Postpone dealing with time management for a while until you reinforce your motivation to move on. On this issue, learn from Sam Levenson, a famous American humorist and writer who says,“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does —just keep going.”
- Review your accomplishment. Every now and then, look back on what you have a done so far. Appreciate and celebrate your progress. Look at how far you have come, not how far you will still have to go. This will restore your enthusiasm and will motivate you to do more.
Practice patience. Rome was not built in a day so why should you have to rush things yourself? Impatience does not make any work easier or faster. In fact, it may cause further delays because mistakes are more likely happen. The more errors you commit, the more frustrated you become. Soon these affect your enthusiasm and motivation. Visualize success on a daily basis. Take things in stride and go easy on yourself. Respect your limitation. Otherwise, you may suffer from energy burnout prematurely that can render your motivation useless. Move on slowly towards a bigger goal by making smaller, realistic goals along the way.
- Be grateful at all times. Gratitude has been proven by psychological studies to be an effective stress buster. The feeling of thankfulness provides positive value in coping with daily problems, including stress. Grateful people tend to have a more optimistic attitude which is associated to better immune function. Be thankful for where you are and what you will be in the future.
These simple tricks are sure to boost your enthusiasm. They will help you to stay motivated especially when your energy is sagging and feel like giving up.