How does one get and maintain motivation? It’s not always there. Sometimes you can simply wake up and be ready to take on the world, other times it seems as if you’re impervious to motivation for weeks on end.
The easiest way it seems to get and stay motivated is to surround yourself with goodness. How you define “goodness” is up to you, but it certainly works. When you stop and think about it, it seems like such a “duh” statement. Of course you want to surround yourself with goodness and avoid the nastiness, but for some reason we don’t always do that. This is especially the case once you’ve already been dragged into the ditch and are feeling low. When motivation is low, energy is low, optimism is low, it’s so much easier to stay in your funk and wallow in the mess. It’s not a conscious effort…it just happens.
Conversely, when things are going right, they just seem to go on a domino effect of goodness. You get more accomplished, you have fun, you come up with good ideas, it all just keeps piling on.
Great…so we’ve established that it’s easy to stay up when you’re up and down when you’re down. So how do we avoid the down?
- Change your scenery – If you’re down one day, down the next, and again…it’s clearly time to change it up. It’s amazing what a simple change of scenery can do.
- Physically move around – Simply getting the blood flowing will help pull you out of your funk and feed your brain with oxygen to come up with good ideas. More strenuous efforts will get the endorphins flowing and that will most certainly have you smiling and feeling good about life.
- Eat good stuff – Did you know apples contain compounds that actually elevate the mood and wake you up? Chocolate has mood elevating compounds too. Eating too many processed and sugary foods actually mess with your system as you get a sudden raise in blood sugar levels and then a sudden drop (along with many other physiological effects)
- Hang out with good people – Again, “good” is defined in many ways…it can be funny friends, caring family, motivated co-workers…whatever the case may be find them and hang with them. Even if you try, it will be hard to stay in your funk.
Easy peasy…have at it. Once you accomplish one thing during the day you’ll feel good and ready to conquer the next. And make sure you do something good for yourself!
ps – I’d be eternally grateful for any donations to the AIDS/Lifecycle ride I’m doing in a couple months. Link/Logo is up and to the left. Thanks!
Motivation is really the key to fietnss and weight loss. Many people fail not because of a lack of knowledge, but simply because they just start forgetting why the exercise or diet in the first place. So many times I have started a new fietnss regime and then woken up one day to realise that I have not exercised for a week, and never consciously decided not to exercise!