It’s easy to lose focus on your goals and to get stuck in the relentless routine of working to survive and surviving to work. The day-to-day rush of life can be exhausting and leave you with little time to sit back and think. If you’re wondering how to stay motivated, especially in challenging times, here are some tips.
Remind yourself everyday
A great way to stay focused on your goal is to remind yourself of it every day! Try one of these ideas:
- Create an image to save as your background on computer or other device.
- Get creative and make a hand-drawn poster stating your goal. Stick it up somewhere.
- Type it up in a word processor and print it out nice and large to display.
- Create a business-card cut-out that you can keep in your wallet.
- Display your goal on a small sticker on the inside of your windscreen so that you see it as you start driving.
- Use post-it notes around the office or house.
Remember why
We generally set goals to improve our situation. Be it health, fitness or money. Why do you want to do it though? Really spend some time thinking about why you want to put in the work and effort to reach a particular goal. Think about the end and how you will feel when you achieve this.
Remember this feeling when you are lacking motivation.
Track you goals
Visually track your progress. Either with a spreadsheet or a hand-written poster. I like to track my goals by months (years or days) left until the “due” date as well as a percentage of achievement. Financial goals are generally easy to calculate progress – if you have an amount and a number of months you can quickly work out a percentage of progress. This doesn’t work for all goals, but you definitely need to be able to track your goal else you’ll never know if you achieved it!
The sticky notes above are my count-down until I “retire”. Well, this is no longer my main goal as circumstances have changed and my mindset has changed. That is fine. You should only focus on goals that serve a purpose for you and when things change, so too should your goals.
Stay motivated by sharing your goals and progress (and your “why”)
It’s vitally important to discuss your goals and progress with someone you trust. If you’re married this really should be your spouse as financial goals affect you both as a unit. But, you could with a close friend or your financial advisor or a family member.
Talking about your goals make them “more real” and helps you to stay focused as you are now accountable to someone.
Community
Find a like-minded community of people who can encourage you and keep you motivated. Real-life relationships are best, but an online community such as Twitter or Facebook can be very useful too.
You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with
Jim Rohn