The Winter months can take their toll on your mood, energy levels, and concentration. This combination will always lead to a crash in motivation. Many of us struggle to achieve our goals and find fulfillment in our daily activities, so how can we change that? We’re going to unpack 5 essential steps to unlock your inner motivation and make every day count.
Who are you?
A great way to start is with some healthy introspection. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has been helping people get to grips with their personalities for over 100 years. When you take the test, you’ll be asked a series of questions with a spectrum of answers from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’.
The questions will determine how introverted or extroverted you are, your strengths and weaknesses in work, romance, and your personal endeavours, and even suggest the best career paths for you!
The Myers-Briggs test will display your results using a series of personality types. Each of these types are represented by four letters. ENTJ is the personality type known as the ‘decisive strategist’, this signifies a person who is highly motivated and focused on the big picture. Find out more about the ENTJ meaning and take the test yourself! See what the results say about you, and how close you are to that coveted ENTJ, this can be great to set yourself targets and identify the areas you may need to work on to find your inner motivation.
Get Organised
A lack of motivation will often manifest itself in long, aimless days. A fantastic way to combat this is by setting goals for your day. A simple to-do list will help by giving you a sense of accomplishment every time you tick something off. To help with this, you should add everything onto your list, even straight-forward tasks like showering or brushing your teeth.
Keeping lists and setting goals can be a time-consuming process, and the especially unmotivated might not even feel the energy to start this process. That’s why there are so many daily organiser apps and services which make the planning process easy, intuitive, and even fun!
Sign up to one of these apps and you’ll get friendly reminders to complete certain tasks, pleasant interfaces which make completing your lists extremely satisfying, and you have complete control! Set your own deadlines, and build up to a productive lifestyle at your own speed!
Start Small
Many people struggle to motivate themselves because the challenge ahead of them seems too big to handle. Once you start setting things aside or pushing back deadlines, the tasks can begin to pile up and become intimidating, which fuels your demotivational fire even more.
The perfect way to overcome the daunting prospect of simply getting going is to start small. Make your bed after you wake up, keep your space tidy, wash up your dirty dishes. Completing even the smallest of tasks will give you a sense of completion and a massive boost in confidence. Pick out any task that will take five minutes or less and start with that, following on from your small task will feel easy and natural and before you know it you’ll have spent your whole day productively!
Are You on the Right Path?
Do you spend all day at work staring out of the window and daydreaming? Getting nothing done at work will likely translate to your home life. Once you get into an unmotivated rut it can be very hard to break free. There’s a good chance that your lack of motivation is because you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, so you’re not feeling fulfilled day-to-day.
If this is the case, then you’ll benefit from some brainstorming and meditation on your long term goals. Think about your favourite parts of your day, then do some research into how you could turn that passion into a job. Think about what you want to achieve in five years time, and consider how close are you to that dream now. These simple questions can unlock the correct career path in your mind.
For further help, professional careers guidance is always available, you can speak to a specialist and find new routes and possibilities you may not have known about. There really is a career for everyone, and once you find yours you will be a huge step closer to happiness. Getting yourself on the right path will change your outlook, making your daily grind feel worthwhile and purposeful.
