Motivation in learning

If you’re feeling uninspired at work or in life and need a little extra inspiration, there are plenty of ways to boost your mood and productivity. Whether you are overwhelmed with stress and need to hire a virtual receptionist or lack direction and need a mentor, you don’t have to feel stuck. Here are seven ways to boost your motivation and take ownership of your life today.

1. Hire Help

Many people avoid delegating tasks out of fear of high costs or inexperience with finding help. With the rise of virtual assistance platforms and other digital tools, these common fears don’t hold the same weight that they once did. Calculate the actual costs of your job by determining your real hourly wage. Then, you might find that hiring help would actually free up your time or reduce your travel enough to be well worth it. By getting help, you can focus on what you love to do, decreasing stress and increasing enthusiasm.

2. Get Moving

Mel Robbins is famous for promoting the 5-second rule. The 5-second rule prescribes that when you have an impulse to take action, you must take action within five seconds before your brain has time to come up with excuses or become distracted by something else. Training yourself to get in the habit of acting more quickly on your positive impulses will begin to break up your stagnant energy. Then, once you start and complete tasks more often, more motivation follows as you increase self-confidence and feel a sense of accomplishment.

3. Look at the Big Picture

Sometimes it is easy to get hyper-focused on one area of your life and neglect the others. Work, family, home, health, spirituality, social life, and emotional development are all areas to remember when setting goals for yourself. If you lack motivation in one area, you may want to take a more holistic approach to setting objectives for yourself. Often, when you lift up areas you have been neglecting, you can begin to bring that positive energy into the area where you had exclusively placed focus previously.

4. Make a List

It’s good to keep a general to-do list of all the things you need to get done, but often this leads people to get bogged down with menial tasks and neglect the important ones. Sit down each night and select 3-6 tasks to get done the following day in order of importance. Then, you can be sure you’re moving toward your bigger goals, and the feeling of purpose that comes with completing valuable tasks will compound over time.

5. Find Some Role-Models

By seeking advice from colleagues, mentors, or public figures you admire, you can begin to understand how to apply some of their successes and habits to your own life. No two journeys are exactly alike, but you can take encouragement from others and use your imagination to continue on your unique path. If you’re feeling stuck, you can check out the biography section at your local library or bookstore and see if there’s anything you gravitate towards.

6. Imagine Your Future Self

To take a more creative approach, you can sit down with a pen and some paper and visualize how your ideal future self might look, act, and feel. Don’t censor yourself. Let your passion take over as you imagine your ideal life. Once you’re done writing, you can look at how your future self differs from your current reality and figure out what steps you need to take to make your visions come true.

7. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

Often, stagnation comes from a fear of change or challenge. Whether this is unconscious or conscious, ask yourself what worries may be holding you back from making progress toward your goals. As the saying goes, “feel the fear and do it anyway.” Don’t make the mistake of waiting for your fear to dissipate to take the next step. Take it anyway, knowing that even if you fail, you are still one step closer to finding the correct course for you.

Motivation can be a tricky subject, but that doesn’t mean you have to sit around and wait on it to appear. In fact, the opposite is usually true. When you take action, motivation often follows. If you feel stuck, try some of these tips and move towards a more fulfilling life today.