Motivation Comes and Goes: What You Can Do Instead

Regardless of whether your goal is to increase your business’ profit, lose 20 pounds, read The Lord of The Rings trilogy, or build a successful blog with hundreds of thousands of visits per day, there are times in your journey to reaching your goals, somewhere along the line, your motivation wanes.

Most people set goals and they have something that they want to achieve in their lives. This isn’t a flaw in your character.

According to a study done by professor Andrea Bonezzi from the Stern School of Business, the motivation slump, or the moment when your motivation fades is a very natural and predictable part of goal-setting. It happens to almost everyone.

So if this is happening to you, don’t worry because it is a normal pattern. It is not because you are lazy or don’t have what it takes.

Rest assured, my friend. If motivation comes and goes and somewhere in the midway, our motivation wanes, what can we do? Is there a way to prevent our motivation from going away or is there a cure to this?

The good news? There’s a solution to keep moving forward when motivation wanes.

Stop Waiting and Relying Solely on Motivation

I’m not saying that motivation isn’t important. In fact, motivation is one of the keys that determine your success in life, but we cannot solely depend on motivation itself because it comes and goes.

What we can do is rely on other ‘systems’ so that we will take action and work on our goals even when we don’t have the motivation to do it.

If you are relying only on motivation to work on your goals, what if you don’t have the motivation? What if the motivation doesn’t come? Are you going to procrastinate? How many times and days are you going to procrastinate?

This is the problem that most people face when it comes to achieving their goals because they rely solely on motivation to work.

Your motivation works just like your emotions. You can feel extremely motivated in the morning, but when it comes to the afternoon, your motivation fades and you are immediately hit with a slump mood.

There are many reasons why your motivation wanes, one of the main reasons is the result.

Imagine you are feeling totally motivated to start a blog. You feel good about it and you imagine all the success that you are going to get from your blog.

In the beginning, you are so driven and you write 3 articles in one go. After a week has gone by, you check your traffic stats and notice that there no one is visiting your blog.

So you started to doubt yourself. Your motivation started to fade because you don’t see any significant results after pouring in your hard work for a week.

In the second week, you put in less effort thinking that no one is going to visit your blog anyway. And the cycle continues.

Read: Success Cycle: How to Leverage Small Success to Build Bigger Ones

You put in less effort and you get even lesser results. And when you see that you have fewer results, you feel dejected and totally lose your motivation to work on your blog.

In the end, you give up and quit, and say that building a successful blog is difficult, so you continue your journey to look for another shiny opportunity.

Does this sound familiar? Did it happen to you?

Regardless of whether it is building a successful blog, losing weight, writing a book, creating a life-changing product, etc, the same cycle can happen to you.

This is why solely depending on motivation to reach your goals can be very challenging.

What you need to do is NOT rely on just motivation. Motivation is good when you have it, but what should you do when you DON’T have it?

What you can do when motivation doesn’t come knocking:

Effective Discipline Strategies to Stay on Track

1. Build a life of discipline based on habits

We have all heard it, don’t rely on motivation, build habits instead. And this is true.

We know that motivation comes and goes, but what about habits? Yes, habits come and go as well, but not as often and as quickly as motivation.

You can build a habit and it can stick with you for life, especially once the habit has been deeply ingrained in your subconscious.

Think about the way you drive, sit, brush your teeth, bathe, and wear your shoes each day, you are performing these actions in the same way, isn’t it?

Thus, habits are more consistent than motivation. Habits are something that we do day-in and day-out, and we don’t need much motivation to perform our habits.

Do you need to be extremely motivated to brush your teeth or to put on your shoes when you go out?

Not at all. Habits require less motivation to perform, and thus, is a better system that we can leverage to reach our goals.

Therefore, if you want to build a successful blog, don’t just rely on motivation to do this, build habits that support this goal.

Make it a habit to write daily. For example, you can make it a habit to write 1,000 words every morning before you go to work.

And when it has become your habit, you will do it without question. You will never think about whether should you do it or not, you will just do it.

Once you have made writing 1,000 words your habit, rest assured, because eventually, you will have a blog full of good and updated content.

Michael Phelps, the Olympic gold medallist made it a habit to swim each day and kept himself in the water most of the time, and that is why he is such a good swimmer.

The same goes for Kobe Bryant, one of the most successful basketball players of all time. Kobe made it his habit to hit the court and practice every day, and that is why he becomes the best.

Read: The 7 Keys You Must Possess To Become An Expert In Your Field

Now that you understand that habits are more important than motivation, what can you do to develop habits that are helpful in reaching your goals?

Here’s my suggestion. First, read this article:

How to Form a New Success Habit and Make It Stick

And then use the Jerry Seinfeld Calendar Method to keep your consistency.

Being consistent is crucial when it comes to building habits. You want to make sure you are performing the habit every day at the same time, in the same place, and in the same manner.

2. Leverage your environment and surroundings

The second thing you can do besides building habits is to leverage your environment and surroundings.

We all know that our environment can shape our life and so with the people we mix with most of the time.

If you mix with people who always complain and play blame games, guess what, you will eventually think like they do and become part of them.

On the other hand, if you spend most of your time talking to highly successful people, you will be influenced by their thinking and beliefs, which eventually will give a positive impact on your life.

Thus, the environment you are in can grow or destroy you.

And if you want to maintain your motivation to achieve your goals, build a supportive environment that is helpful to you.

For instance, if your workplace is noisy and very distracting, it is difficult for you to sit down quietly to write a blog post. What you need to do is to change the environment.

What you can do then is to either create a bunker and prevent yourself from being distracted, or get to somewhere where the environment helps you in writing the article.

There are many tips and tricks on how you can change your environment to help you in reaching your goals.

I strongly suggest you read this post:

10 Tips How to Change Your Environment for Greater Motivation

Learn the hacks and tips about how you can change your environment to build stronger motivation to succeed.

Do you know that studies have discovered that a clean and organized desk promotes productivity and focus?

And do you know that motivational posters are not the only feature that can drive productivity and motivation to work?

According to InspirationFeed, here are the other things that can influence your level of motivation: