7 Tips to stay motivated and become successful
Today we’re sharing a slightly different post… Today Pedro is sharing with you some of his best tips to stay motivated and become successful. Enjoy!
I found it difficult to stay motivated, especially when the goal for all the hard work that I put in looks so distant. There is always a "little voice" in the back of my head asking "Is it worth it? For what?", and it's hard to not listen to that voice always questioning your commitment and compromising with what you have to do to succeed.
Everyone knows what they have to do to thrive in life, that is not the problem, and there isn't a formula for success because everyone has different lives, different experiences, and are inserted in different "realities". The problem is how do we stay focused and committed to our goals, and this is the point that I want to touch on in this blog post.
Although I'm not going to give you the "perfect formula" for success, I'm going to list some behavioral tips that you can put into practice to help you achieve your goals both in life as well as in your business. If you start changing your behavior and you stop listening to that annoying "little voice" in the back of your head always nagging, you will be much closer to getting where you want to be.
7 Tips To Stay Motivated And Become Successful
1. Use the "little voice" as a trigger to take action
This might sound contradictive but let me explain. When you start having those negative thoughts, that is the right time to take action. Normally those thoughts intensify when you start to feel like you are procrastinating on something that you should be doing, and the more you procrastinate the more intense those thoughts are.
So the best way to use it to your advantage is to take action when you start to hear the "little voice", and the sooner you realize that it is starting to nag you, the sooner you be able to take action and do the things that you are supposed to be doing.
You don't need to listen to what the "little voice" has to say, you just need to recognize that you are hearing it and take action. If you do that, soon enough you will realize that those negative thoughts will be less and less predominant during your day.
You will feel much better about yourself and stay motivated not only because you are active and doing something about it but also because you will see your goals getting closer and closer.
2. Schedule your day
One of the best ways to keep your mind free of negative thoughts is to have a routine. If you have your day planned out and you stick to it, your brain will not succumb to the dark side because you are keeping it busy.
You might already have noticed that the annoying "little voice" intensifies when you have dead times. For me, the most common times are in the morning when I have to wake up and after lunch. These periods, before I put the work in are the worst in terms of having negative thoughts but since I started planning my daily routine, those thoughts started to become less and less intense. I still have those low moments but they became much less predominant during the dead times.
So, schedule a routine the previous day or do it weekly to keep your mind busy and focus on what's important. Not only you will feel much better at the end of the day but you will also start seeing your goals become closer and closer.
3. Do the most boring things first
This is another tip that I implemented in my life and it's working wonders. Throughout the day you have tasks that you enjoy doing and others that, if you could, you wouldn't do at all. Well, I found out that the best way to treat those boring tasks is to do them first. This way you will free up the rest of your day to do things that you like to do!
Let me give you my example, I hate to work out, although I love playing sports, I hate running just for the sake of it and I hate to lift weights. And another task that I really dislike doing is writing.
So those are the two first things that I do as soon as I wake up. I wake up every day at 7 am, I give myself 30 minutes to have breakfast and take care of my hygiene, and at 7:30 am I work out for 30 minutes. Yes, I want to increase this time to 1h but for now, I'm comfortable with only half.
Then I take a shower and the first thing that I do once I sit at my desk is write for 30 minutes, whether is writing for our website or blog posts like this one that you are reading. Once again, I want to increase this time to 1h but you shouldn't be forcing yourself to do things that you hate for huge amounts of time, start small and increase the time load little by little.
After you are finished with the tasks that you hate you will have the rest of the day to do the tasks that you enjoy the most and even have your brain fresh to learn new things expanding your knowledge.
4. Stick to a sleeping schedule
For the longest time, my sleep schedule was all over the place. Some days, I would go to bed at 3 am and wake up at 9 am while on other days I would go to bed at 10 pm and wake up around the same time 8/8:30 am.
Because of these fluctuations in my sleep schedule, I would wake up tired and not motivated at all to tackle the day with the energy that was required. Even the most insignificant task would feel like the most intense activity ever. My most permanent thought was "I just want to die so I can rest…", so something needs to change.
Now, this doesn't happen anymore. I go to bed around 11:30 pm and wake up at 7 am every day, and the difference is huge. I wake up a completely new person with lots of energy and reinvigorated.
I'm not going to tell you that I don't have days that, when the alarm goes off, I just which to sleep for another hour but, going back to the first point of this blog post, when the "little voice" starts nagging it's time to take action and get out of bed.
Our body, and especially our mind, need to rest (at least 7 hours, although this varies from person to person), and it needs to be quality rest time.
To achieve this quality rest time I'm going to leave you some tricks that work wonders for me:
No screen time for 30 minutes before going to bed, reading a book is an excellent way to fill up that time;
Don't drink coffee or other beverages with caffeine after lunchtime, if you like the coffee taste try decaf in the afternoon;
Make your room as dark as possible, this way, in the morning your deep sleep will not be disturbed by the light coming through the window.
If you stick to a sleep schedule, you will start to notice the differences. You will wake up more energetic, with a better mood, and motivated to face all the tasks that you have for the day.
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5. Eat healthier
You don't need to become a nutrition expert but if you start eating healthier food your body and mind will start responding positively, giving you the energy and focus necessary to stay motivated to accomplish your short and long-term goals.
I don't know much about nutrition but I can give you some tips that come from common sense, so let me give you my 2 cents.
Let's start with reducing your sugar intake. Products that have a lot of sugar but lacking in protein and fibers, not only can cause you long-term health problems like weight gain, diabetes, and heart diseases but also in the short term it can give you a quick spike in energy but after a while, your energy levels will crash. Those fluctuations will drain you during the day and keep you from performing at your full potential.
My next tip is to drink a lot of water. Your brain needs to stay hydrated to perform so always have with you a bottle of water and keep drinking it. Stay hydrated is excellent to stay at your best mentally and physically but it also brings other benefits like helping with weight loss and treating some health problems like headaches and constipation.
Another obvious tip is to eat your veggies. Vegetables are a great side dish, they can be combined with anything and they are also good for you. They are filled with good nutrients that will help you tackle a long workday and just like water they will take an important role in maintaining your hydration levels. So put those chips and cookies down and eat some broccoli!
One thing that helped me a lot with eating healthier is to prepare my meals. On Sunday is cooking day here at home, my wife and I will prepare our lunch meals for the entire week so we don't have to waste our time cooking during work time.
Tell me if you recognize this behavior, you're at work, you are having a very intense day but it's lunchtime and you are hungry so you say "Let me just go there and quickly grab something to eat" and you stuff your face with a sandwich full of mayo and fries to go along with it. I did this for a long time and I felt the negative impacts, especially with my weight and energy levels.
So preparing healthy meals was the solution that I came up with, not only did it help me be more energetic but it also saved me time that I could spend working and getting things done. There are a lot of benefits to eating healthy, you just need to put your mind into it, find the healthy foods that you enjoy and be consistent, don't fall into temptation.
6. Take time for yourself
Not everything in life is about work, and taking time to spend on yourself is very important to refresh your brain and let it rest.
Sometimes it might seem impossible to disconnect from all the tasks that you have to do, you might have an important deadline that you need to meet and you still have so many things to do that you can't put your head around it. You might have kids, and they consume a lot of your time because you need to take them to school or football practice or other extracurricular activities, and in the middle of all of that you can't seem to find a little break for yourself.
Well, you need to think that taking time for yourself is one of the most important tasks of your day, you need to always find the space on your schedule for you.
Set aside at least 1h a day (start with 30 minutes a day if you feel like you can't find the time right now) to do the things that you like to do.
There are a lot of different activities that you can do to release yourself from work like for example read a good book, watching an episode of your favorite show, playing some video games, going to the gym, or just laying down in your garden contemplating the stars.
This time is essential for you to reset your brain, this way you will be able to accomplish your goals much easier because now, you took a break from all the everyday madness, and you will be able to look at things with a clear head and a new perspective. You will be much more productive and you will finish your tasks in less time just because you let your brain rest.
Think of your brain like a muscle, if you don't let it rest it will not develop. Taking time for yourself is not selfish, it's simply necessary.
7. Believe in yourself
To be successful, the person that needs to believe in you is yourself. Of course, it's satisfying when someone else believes in you but if you don't do it for yourself the chances are that the others will not push you to succeed.
You are the one in control, you are the one that can see the path to success, and the fastest you realize it the fastest you will put your mind to work to achieve your goals.
There will be times where you will start to doubt what you are doing "Why am I putting in all this work if I can't get the results that I want?", and when these times of thoughts start to go through your mind just remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint.
If you work hard, you are consistent and you stay motivated sooner or later your goals will be achieved and you will feel like the king of the world.
Another great thing about believing in yourself is that it is contagious, so if you feel like you can do it the others around you will believe in it too. You will be surrounded by people that will encourage you and this is a snowball effect, you will feed on that encouragement and believe in yourself more and more.
Even with all of this, if you start to feel a dip in your belief let me give you a tip that helps me a lot and that might help you as well. Reward yourself for the small wins. If you start to get discouraged because you see your goals too far away, start rewarding yourself for the smaller victories. You were able to complete an important task, reward yourself by getting something that you wanted for a really long time. This might help you stay motivated and believe that you can accomplish your long-term goals just because you feel rewarded for the smaller milestones that you achieve along the way.
Your state of mind is the more powerful tool that you have to become successful, and if it is filled with belief, it will be much easier to get where you want to be.
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Final Thoughts
Not long ago, I was in a bad place in my life. I wasn't motivated to achieve my goals, I was blaming everything and everyone and that made me spiral down into a negative state of mind.
Now, after I implemented in my life these tips that I gave you throughout this blog post I feel rejuvenated. I'm working hard, I'm losing weight and I do all of it with a smile on my face.
Although the advice that I shared can help you get back on track, there is one extremely important point that needs to come from you. You need to have the willpower to change. If you don't put your mind to it, you will not be able to be successful, you will not be able to turn your life around but if you commit yourself to change you will come out on the other side victorious.
There will be tough times, you will feel exhausted, you will feel overwhelmed but you just need to be stronger than that, don't fall into the same traps that I did for a long time, and become the best version of yourself every day.
Everything is on your head, you just need to be persistent, consistent, and committed to turn your life upside down and achieve everything that you set yourself to achieve.
If could do it, anyone can and I believe that you have everything to be successful!
