Stop de-motivation! Learn how to eliminate motivation killers

It’s not always easy to stay motivated. We might start out strong, but somewhere along the way we may falter. Even if external factors cooperate – we don’t lose our job even though the economy tanks, we have a boss that supports us in reaching for goals and we have colleagues, family, and friends that help to keep us focused, we can still struggle to stay positive and moving forward. It’s part of being human to face anxiety, uncertainty, or even depression.

But what separates the truly successful person from the average person is the ability to understand why you are feeling de-motivated, respond to that reason, and then keep on moving forward.

The 3 main ‘motivation killers’

There are three main reasons that people tend to lose motivation from time to time. You can refer to these as ‘motivation killers’. These are:

• Lack of self-confidence – why would you continue to try to do something if you don’t believe that you can do it?

• Lack of focus – you don’t know exactly what it is that you want, so why should you take action until you do?

• Lack of direction – if you know what you want and you believe that you can do it, but you just don’t know how to get started, you can get stopped instead of motivated.

In the following sections we will examine how to improve our self-motivation by addressing each of these ‘motivation killers.’

Addressing lack of confidence

• Focusing on what you already have rather than what you lack.

• Create your own personal positive mantra that you can tell yourself to boost yourself up.

• Repeat things that you already know to help remind yourself of what you’ve already achieved.

• Think positively even if you don’t yet believe what you are telling yourself – eventually, you may start to believe it.

• Learn to accept a compliment from others – and actually enjoy the feedback.

Addressing lack of focus

It’s so easy to lose focus on what we are trying to achieve in today’s busy work environment. There is so much going on that we can get anxious, distracted, and lose our ability to focus. We end up suffering from what is called ‘fear-based’ thinking. We are afraid to lose our jobs because we are afraid of being poor. We are afraid to speak our mind in a meeting because we are afraid others won’t like what we have to say and they will hold it against us in our relationship with them. We are afraid of taking a risk at work because we can’t guarantee that the outcome will be positive.

This kind of fear scatters our focus and makes it difficult to achieve anything because we get stopped by the fear. The way to defeat your lack of focus is to set goals for yourself that are clear and achievable. The very act of setting goals puts some structure around your random thoughts and gives you something specific to focus on. Instead of worrying about random possible events in the future, you can focus on what you can do at the moment to improve your situation.

Addressing Lack of Direction

Let’s say that you have developed your goals so that you have something to focus on, and you feel pretty confident that you can achieve the goal. But still you find it difficult to find the direction that you need. You might be procrastinating instead. This motivation-killer can be a difficult one to overcome, but it is not impossible.

It requires taking your goal and breaking it down into the daily strategy that you will use to achieve it. You should literally have steps written down in ‘to-do’ lists so that you have specific tasks to focus on each day. When you sit down to work, pull out your to-do list and get started and you will find that you now have a clear direction to move forward in.

You can learn a lot more about motivation and related topics by downloading the free eBook “Personal Confidence and Motivation” written by MTD Training.

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