How To Motivate Yourself

7 Tips On How To Motivate Yourself To Achieve Your Own Long-Term Linear Goal So You Don't Burn Out

It's 4:30 am in the morning and there's a loud beeping sound in Jennifer's room. It's time for her weekly 8 mile training run before work. If you're like me, you're probably thinking, "Ugh. Who wants to get up at that hour?" In between working full-time and raising two kids, Jennifer has decided to run a marathon race (that's 26.2 miles for all you running newbies) in 8 months. How does Jennifer stay motivated to get up early and keep working towards her long-term linear goal? Can you learn how to motivate yourself like Jennifer?

What do I mean by a long-term linear goal?

Since I coined this phrase, I should tell you what I mean. A long-term linear goal is a goal where you can clearly see the sequence of steps necessary to get there. The goal is long-term because you can't do it all at once and it's linear because the steps you need to get there are fairly straightforward. For instance, if you want to graduate from high school, you know there is a certain curriculum you have to pass and a certain timeframe to do it in. You might have to take four years of history, four years of mathematics, and four years of science classes in order to graduate. In Jennifer's case, she's following a pre-planned training schedule laid out by her running club. The steps are clear. All that's left to do is execute them.

From personal experience, you probably know that that it's not too difficult to sustain motivation to do something in the short-run, say responding to an email or getting up in the morning (except for maybe work on Monday). But how do you sustain motivation over the long run, especially to do something that's outside your comfort zone the way Jennifer is doing? Is it possible to learn how to motivate yourself and then stay motivated? I know it took me a while to learn how to step up my game to play like the "Jennifers" of the world. Here are 7 tips I followed on my own journey.

7 Tips On How To Motivate Yourself To Achieve Your Own Long-Term Linear Goal

Tip #1: Have a clear vision and commitment not only on the benefits of reaching your goal, but on WHY you want to do it in the first place.
Know exactly why you want to do something and make sure it really motivates you. For instance, when I set a goal of running my first marathon, I knew I wanted to get in better shape (benefit), but more importantly I really wanted to prove to myself I could do it (the big WHY). I told myself, "no matter what, I will cross that finish line even if I have to crawl over broken glass to do it." If you don't really want it, when things get tough, you may not have the motivation to push through the challenges.

Tip #2: Create an environment that supports your goal.
Your environment should support your goal. So going back to the marathon example, on hectic days at work, I always kept a pair of running shoes and a change of clothes in my car so I could go directly to the track afterwards to fit in a training run (because I knew that if I allowed myself to go home first, I might make an excuse not to run).

Tip #3: Create a little social pressure for yourself.
If appropriate, try to find a buddy to achieve your goal with. For instance, if you're trying to eat healthier and lose a little weight, try to find an exercise buddy. In my case, none of my friends were interested in running a marathon so I did the next best thing - I told them all I was going to run one. That way, they would always ask me how marathon training was going and I felt a little pressure to keep training. It also gave me added incentive to complete those 20 mile long training runs so I could then brag that I did it :)

Tip #4: Stay connected to positive influences.
One of my favorite things to do is to listen to some motivational tapes in the morning as I'm getting ready for the day. It helps uplift your mood and reminds you of why you're doing what you're doing in the first place. Wayne Dyer gives some uplifting words of motivation that I listen to in the morning that helps me stay upbeat.

Tip #5: Schedule it.
The big killer in achieving something over the long-run is not making the time to execute the tasks needed to achieve it on a day-to-day basis. Pencil in somewhere in your day the time to do one thing related to your goal each day. For instance, I would make time for marathon training four to five days a week. I learned the value of time and how to apply the word "no" to things that would interfere with my highest priorities.

Of course, one of the things I've found in trying to achieve a long-term linear goal is sometimes even with the above 5 tips my motivation would sag a bit.

So How Do You Avoid Running Out of Motivation As You Work Towards Your Long-Term Linear Goal?

Tip #6: Stay flexible to avoid burnout.
While you're working towards your goal, you may find you have to tweak your strategy a bit to avoid burning yourself out. For instance, I found that trying to run 60-70 miles a week was a bit too much for me. I felt like I was putting a lot of stress on my knees and something was always aching. It was really bringing me down. So I cut back the mileage to 40-50 miles and found this worked out better. Sometimes I even took a whole week off just to rest my legs and joints.

Tip #7: Make sure you enjoy the process to get there, but don't forget to plan on how to deal with the crap factor.
Greg Anderson, author and founder of the American Wellness Project, said “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it." Author Wayne Dyer says something similar: "Never forget that doing what you love is the cornerstone of having success in your life". There's a lot of famous folks out there who say "do what you love, do what you love."

What sometimes gets forgotten in the whole process of motivating yourself is that there is still a "crap factor" in almost every big task undertaken. For instance, when I was training for the marathon, there were days I was a little tired and I didn't feel like hitting the track for a 7 mile run. But I knew that if I didn't, I would only be hurting myself when it came time to run the full marathon. So I made a deal with myself, if after 10 minutes of running, I was still too tired and didn't feel like it, I would stop. I only had to stop once or twice during the few months I was training. Thanks to this "crap factor" plan, the rest of the time I was consistent in my training.

Do these tips really work?

You be the judge. Utilizing the above 7 tips, I did complete my first marathon in under 4 and a half hours (Quick tip: Don't try walking up a flight of stairs right after your first marathon. You may find it's pretty tough. At least I did.) I was proud of what I had done. More importantly, I had pushed myself out of my comfort zone and grew. I had learned how to motivate myself so I could keep up with the "Jennifers" of the world. You can too.

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