It’s easy to lose your focus and motivation and it happens to us all from time to time. How to stay motivated? Well, sometimes we’ve no idea how we lost focus, other times we’re kind of aware but don’t know how to do anything about it.
What happened to all those goals we were bent on achieving? And of course, the more we start beating ourselves with that stick the worse it gets.
One of the best way to beat this is to be aware of the reasons that might be behind your loss of focus and motivation. Once you can identify this you’re already 3/4 of the way there to getting your motivation back.
Drastic Lifestyle Changes
These can come in many forms:
- house move
- relationship break-up
- death in family (or of a friend)
- birth of a baby
- health issues
- money problems
Of course, there are more, any big lifestyle change can effect you negatively. No matter how focused you’ve been, a major life event can definitely cause loss of motivation.
The worst thing you can do at a time like this is beat yourself up. These are times when you need to nurture yourself and seek the proper help, for example, in the case of a death, bereavement counselling. For me, (helpful chick Kathy) after the death of my own husband, it was bereavement counselling that helped to get me back on track. If you’re suffering from depression get help, don’t try and muddle through on your own.
Life is always going to put obstacles in your way. To navigate round and over these obstacles means acknowledging them first, then taking the right action.
You don’t see results fast enough.
This is a biggie! You know the script, something new and exciting, you’re all fired up and go at it all guns blazing. A few weeks in and nothings happened…..
What now? Well firstly, being realistic. No business becomes a success overnight or in a few weeks. If you look at the background history of the successful businesses you’ll see this. Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon certainly wasn’t an overnight success.
One of the tricks to keeping your motivation going when you don’t see results fast enough is to break down your goals into smaller chunks.
These don’t need to be monetary goals. One of your goals could be to write 2 posts a week for a month. Or set up a Facebook or Twitter page, Be realistic, if you work full time, don’t burn yourself out.
When you see yourself meeting these smaller goals it gives you the motivation to keep going
You’ve lost your focus.
For any achievement, no matter how small, focus is required. If you can stay focused, you’ll stay motivated.
This is kind of repeating what I said earlier, but identifying the loss of focus is important. Also, setting those smaller goals will help to keep you on track.
One trick I use if I find my focus is wandering is to put on some upbeat music, go get a drink, take a break for 10mns, then come back to the task in hand. The upbeat music works most times for me!
Your original motivation came from an outside source.
Well firstly, what does this mean? Well you’ve probably heard of self-motivation, any great achievements are usually self motivated.
If you’re doing what you’re doing just for someone else, in other words, your motivation is coming from the outside, then long term you’ll find it difficult to achieve your goals.
The BIG question to ask is WHY you’re doing what you’re doing. It needs to be for yourself and no, this isn’t selfish. All the great philosophers will tell you you need to see to yourself first. If you’re right then you’re in a pretty good position to achieving your goals, which in turn will help your family/friends etc.
Priorities can change.
Changing priorities can be a major factor in losing focus and motivation. You’ve got your goals set up, are trundling along nicely when suddenly you find yourself having to nurse a spouse or partner through an illness.
These kind of things are out-with your control, accept them and adjust your goals accordingly. Don’t try and continue with the same goals when it’s not realistic to do so.
Another scenario is planning to pay of credit cards by a certain date. Your schedule is made, action is being taken then you’re made redundant and lose your job. Again, adjust the original goal accordingly. You can always adjust to the original schedule when your circumstances change again.
Finally, most of all this, when you read it, is common sense, however, when events spiral out of control it’s easy to lose your common sense!
Always remember that nothing is fixed and plans can be changed, Keep an article like this handy, it does help to read a few words of advice to get you back on track.
How have you dealt with loss of focus and motivation? Leave your story in the comment box below, the more tips we have to help us the better!