Bottling Motivation

Wouldn’t we all just love to be able to capture and bottle motivation?  This blog post is all about how to really harness and use the motivation we all have and setting achievable goals.

So in the last two blog posts we’ve considered that in attempting to diet we can often, metaphorically speaking, go the supermarket, purchase lots of low fat or low sugar foods but forget to put motivation on our shopping list.    How do we go about harnessing that Motivation we really need? And remember this applies to any goals, weight loss is just an example.

Firstly, let’s be clear about our goal.  Goals such as I want to loose weight can be a bit wishy-washy.  It’s also using “Away From” motivation and that in itself can limit potential.  Let’s imagine for a moment we set a goal of loosing weight.  How do we know when we’ve achieved it?  Two Pounds would be a weight loss.  But if we have our heart set on getting into clothes two dress sizes smaller then it’s not really going to cut the mustard!!

So what we could say is that “I’d like to be a size 14 by 1st December”.  The goal is very clear and specific.  It’s also a “Towards” motivation goal.  So when we’re fed up of dieting in 4 weeks we know exactly how far we’ve come in terms of achieving that goal.

Also, once we have that goal in place, we can make the end results seem a lot more real.  Can you imagine yourself wearing that size 14 party outfit?  What can you see?  Is it a beautiful thin version of you?  What can you hear?  Are people saying how nice you look and how well you’ve done to loose that weight?  How are you feeling?  Do you feel thin?  Have those bulges you didn’t like disappeared?  It’s about understanding your own intentions, making them clear and giving yourself something very clear to focus on during your diet.

Of course this applies to any challenging goals you want to achieve.

In summary:

• Be clear about exactly what it is you want to achieve.
• Make sure you have set yourself an achievable and realistic deadline.
• Ensure that you need to move toward your goal not away from it.
• Know what it will look/see/feel/sound like when you’ve achieved it.  Hold that in your imagination for when you need it.
• Finally don’t get upset if something stops you achieving it.  Sometimes outside forces come into play and there is no point beating yourself up over it.  Simply set yourself a new goal.