You know you want it, but getting started is not that easy… The further away the reward is, the less motivation we feel. Nevertheless, there are ways to trick your mind and experience more motivation and drive to start your journey towards that goal.
Write down your Goal
Writing down your goal is the first step towards creating a commitment for yourself. It also helps you to clarify what you want to achieve and how you are going to achieve it. Make sure you write down your goal in a clear, measurable and actionable way.
Good examples are:
- I want to weigh 80kg at the end of 2023
- I am going to weigh less than 85kg at the end of every month in 2023
- I am going to finish the New York marathon of 2023
Bad examples are:
- Lose weight (not measurable)
- Never smoke again (can’t be finished)
- Challenge myself more (not actionable)
To experience an ever deeper emotional feeling with this goal, you should think about why you want to achieve it. How will your life change once you’ve achieved this? What or who inspired you to start this goal?
Working on your goals costs time, and currently you’re spending this time on other activities. So in order to make progress on your goal, you will have to replace certain activities. Which activities are going to be replaced? And is it worth it for you to give up, or at least spend less time on those activities?
You can write your goals down on a paper and put it in a place where you are regularly reminded of them, or you can use apps like Strive Journal to write your goal down digitally and receive automated reminders.
Visualize the end result
Imagine yourself at the end of the journey. How has your live changed for the better? This exercise clarifies the target you are working towards and the what you’re doing it for. Without this clear target, you don’t know when you’ve achieved it.
Optionally you can create a vision board. Collect images, whether digitally or from magazines, assemble them together and now you’ve got a broad visual representation of where you’re heading towards. This is the why you’re doing it for and it should ignite a spark inside of you to start pursuing this goal.
Visualizing the end result helps you to find reason to start working on your goal. However, studies have found that it is not useful for motivating yourself during the pursuit as it creates a feeling of satisfaction like you’ve already have achieved it. For this, it is more effective to visualize the scenario where you wouldn’t achieve your goal. As this blog is about getting started, not about staying focused, I will direct you to the blog where we go more in depth about this with this link.
If you chose Strive Journal to write down your goals in, then you can also add your vision board as an image for this goal.
Break your goal down
At the moment you are standing at the bottom of a high mountain. It can give an overwhelming feeling to know that you have to get all the way to the top of the mountain. But like every journey, it starts with one step. Thinking about this one step, isn’t overwhelming. Achieving this one small step, already released some dopamine for motivation.
Now how small should these step be? This is dependent on your goal but optimum is around 1 week. For example, this week I am going to run 4 times, one of which is more than 10km. After this week you should reassess how it went, what went well, and how you can improve the next week.
Important is not to aim too high. It is much easier to continuously motivate yourself if you succeed. Once achieved, you can still overshoot if you want to do more.
If possible you should change habits instead of focusing on the outcome. Success is the product of daily habits — not once-in-a-lifetime transformations. So when you want to run a marathon, make it a habit to go for a run 4 times a week in the morning. Or when you want to build a business, spent daily 2 hours of focused work. Or when you want to lose weight, stop eating cookies at 10 am. All the changes in small habits will eventually accumulate and you goal will be reached.
Dream big but start small.
If you chose Strive Journal to write down your goals in, you can create a roadmap to also write down these smaller steps.