Motivate Yourself To Achieve Your Goals – How To Live A Happy And Successful Life Part 6

This article discusses how to Motivate Yourself To Achieve Your Goals and is Part 6 of 'How To Live A Happy And Successful Life'

What is Motivation?

When you are stimulated to change your behaviour to achieve a goal, this is known as 'motivation'. It is a decision to take action.

The purpose of motivation is to reduce your mental or physical stress and achieve happiness by reaching your goal. 

Motivation is generally of two types: intrinsic and extrinsic. 

Intrinsic motivation is derived from within - such as your thought processes or even bodily functions. It is highly related to your personal values. 

By comparison, extrinsic motivation is derived from external stimuli such as other people's behaviour and external events.

If someone is strongly motivated to achieve or gain something, they will often stop at nothing to achieve it.

This is the reason why motivation is associated with challenges.

Moreover, our body - physically and mentally - is designed in such a way that it is always ready to accept and face different challenges.

Motivation can be explained further by the following scenario: 

Say you realise that you are in physical danger, then your immediate response would be to take action in order to get out of danger to safety. 

The scenario mentioned above challenges both your personal security as well as your lifestyle - 2 key values that most people have - we all are heavily motivated to act to protect our personal safety. 

Motivate Yourself To Achieve Your Goals - Set Yourself A Challenge

When we have a goal that really inspires us, we also need to set ourselves a challenge to achieve it. It sets our morale and motivation on a higher level so that we do indeed achieve it.  

Needless to say, if you are not motivated, then you will not achieve it!

Facing and overcoming challenges imparts a positive feeling that increases your motivation and self esteem. It also tests your patience and shows you the extent that you can stretch yourself. 

The best way to create challenges in your life is to think of even the most mundane activity as  a challenge.

Take, for instance your daily routine. Think about how you can use it to alter your identity and thinking. 

Similarly, if you have a long term goal, it's best to break it up into smaller goals that you can then achieve daily.

A trick that you can use to help you overcome 'overwhelm' is called 'What Three Plays'. 

• Here you set out your ultimate goal at the top of the page.
• Underneath write out 3 things that need to happen for the goal to happen.
• Under each of these 3 things, also write 3 things that need to happen.
• Continue this process as deep and as wide as you want until you see something that is simple and easy for you to do and which will get you 1 step closer to your goal.

For example you may have a goal to lose 10 kg (or 22 lb). Set this to be the top box.

Divide this into 3: Good Nutrition, Regular Exercise and Plenty of Water

Nutrition could be divided into 'Clean the pantry of fattening foods', 'Create a Food Plan' and 'reformulating your diet'

'Clean the pantry' could then be divided up into 'Remove food', 'clean shelves with a wet cloth' and 'restock with healthy food'

Each of these sub-activities has  a 'level of belief'. As you achieve each part of each level, your level of belief increases and you are further motivated to achieve your goal.

You might also want to look at this video!

Motivate Yourself To Achieve Your Goals - Conclusion

Our general character and personality are formed via learning and practicing the norms and values of our culture (called 'conditioning').

However, we often do not agree with all cultural values and are at odds with our conditioning.

That is why you need to have a correct frame of mind and motivation so that you can create your own values and live by them. 

By continuous re-conditioning of your inner self, you can see everything as a challenge and undergo the change of values that are needed.

Too much relaxing of the brain would make you feel like a laggard so its better to keep the brain in action. 

It might be tiring to keep yourself up to the challenges all the time but when you become used to it, you will master the skill of being motivated and successful.