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Venoms that kill your motivation and their antidotes
It’s hard to keep motivation alive sometimes
Here’s a short story that may or may not sound familiar. One day an enticing and fresh idea knocks on your door, you welcome it into your life and soon it blossoms into an exciting new project you can’t wait to start working on.
So you get down to business! All hands on deck. You feel good, motivated, unstoppable and inspired. Everything goes well…at least for a while.
Somewhere along the way, things start to go south. The motivation that fuelled you at the beginning is gone and without it your project can’t survive much longer.
After this, a wave of frustration invades you. You don’t know what went wrong and honestly you are too disheartened to perform an autopsy on the ‘dead project.’
After grieving for a while, you move on to the next one, excited and motivated like before. But soon afterwards the next project dies too! And before you know it, you have a pile of dead projects buried in your backyard.
At this point you can’t help but wonder why it is so hard to keep motivation alive? Most of the time the cause of death was one (or a concoction) of these venoms listed below.
SELF-COMPARISON
Nothing drains your energy more than comparing yourself with others. Seriously, it’s an incredibly exhausting task. That’s why it’s no surprise that at the end of the day, you have no energy left to invest in your projects and personal goals.
Comparison is a natural process the human brain has been doing for ages and it’s a key feature of our species.
If you want to achieve the objectives you have set for yourself, the first thing you have to learn is how to be energy-efficient and reserve your precious and limited mental energy for the things that really matter and that will bring you something useful or productive in the long run.
For example: comparing a stunning shot of an Instagram model basking in the sun on a tropical island against ourselves on a Sunday morning is not only unfair and irrational, but also unfruitful, pointless and incredibly toxic.
And it’s called self-destructive comparison. That’s the type you don’t want to engage in.
On the contrary, comparing your habits and lifestyle with a well-planned nutrition and fitness programme, actively seeking and identifying our weak spots and be willing to improve them in order to live a healthier life, is meaningful and productive and it’s self-evaluation or constructive comparison. And that’s the type you’ll want to invest your precious and limited energy in.
In short, self-destructive comparison weakens our motivation while constructive comparison nurtures it.
STAGNATION
Think of motivation as a house plant. You need to constantly water it and nurture the soil for it to grow healthy. It will wither slowly and eventually die if you don’t dedicate time to take proper care of it.
“So what can I do to stimulate my motivation every day?” you may ask. The answer is pretty straightforward and it’s something you probably have heard about before: vision boards.
Remember that humans are visual creatures, so it’s no surprise that sometimes we need to see the things we want to achieve in order to keep moving forward. And what vision boards do best is helping you visualise your goals.
So what about creating one? They are incredibly simple to make on your electronic devices or you can even go to greater lengths, print it and hang it on your wall so you can see it everyday.
IMPATIENCE
We have to come to terms with the fact that good and worthwhile things take time and it’s imperative that we learn to cultivate the increasingly rare virtue of patience. Sometimes, especially when we are just getting started on a new project (which could be referred to as the “honeymoon period” of our projects).
While being high-spirited is important, things get dangerous when we start setting unrealistic goals.
Feeling constantly disappointed for not being able to reach the unreasonable milestones we set for ourselves, creates a sense of defeat that gradually weakens our motivation and causes us to get frustrated, disheartened and end up abandoning our projects altogether.
So what can you do to protect your motivation from the devastating effects of impatience? Start by allowing yourself to work slowly but surely by dividing tasks into small chunks and while you are at it, remember to watch out for the goals you set. Setting unrealistic goals can end your whole career before you even start.
Make it a habit to acknowledge and praise your progress, no matter how small the victory. Because seeing how much you have accomplished can give you the reassurance you need to know you are doing things right, and this knowledge helps keep impatience at bay.
PERFECTIONISM
Perfectionism slows you down and puts an unnecessary amount of pressure on your shoulders. It’s extremely time-consuming. Perfectionism affects your motivation the same way impatience does.
So, instead of sweating every little detail, worrying about every tiny thing and overthinking every small aspect of your project, try to focus on what’s really important.
Focus on the things that will really pay off and make a difference in the long run.
Being detail-oriented is a good thing, but don’t overdo it. When it comes to achieving your goals, the most important thing is to be consistent, not perfect.
Perfection is an illusion we can spend all our lives chasing after and never achieve. Instead, strive to find satisfaction in knowing that you are doing your best, learning and improving every day.
Source : Pickthebrian