Staying motivated requires deliberate and conscious control of one’s thoughts, beliefs, environments, relationships, free time, and diet.
Are your thoughts positive or pessimistic? Do your beliefs about yourself leave you energized or apathetic? Have you created a home that is uplifting or depressing? Do you hang out with people who boost your spirits or bring you down? Do you spend your free time doing enriching activities like reading, learning, or exercising? Or do you spend it watching depressing news broadcasts, mindless television shows, and eating junk food? Do you listen to music that is joyful or sad?
Each of these factors plays a role in staying motivated or lethargic. If your thoughts remain on the mistakes you’ve made and your belief that you don’t have the ability to make things better, you will most certainly lack motivation. On the other hand, if you focus on the outcomes you want and hold on to the belief that you can make them a reality, you will generate sustainable motivation.
Staying motivated also requires carefully choosing the environments, media, and people you expose yourself to daily. For example, suppose you have a friend or relative who talks hatefully about anyone who is of a different political party, ethnicity, or religion than they are. In that case, you know in advance that hanging out with that person will only bring you down. Staying inspired will be difficult if you’re in the habit of watching news broadcasts throughout the day, which are always filled with tragic stories. If you do nothing to create an uplifting home environment, you will continually feel a subtle downward pull on your spirits.
What you eat also tremendously impacts your mood and ability to stay motivated. If you consume lots of sugar, salt, junk food, caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol, you will struggle to stay motivated. Eliminating bad habits and adopting a healthy diet make staying inspired much easier.
Everything we think, believe, see, hear, smell, taste, feel, and eat affects our motivation. By staying aware of these areas and how they affect your motivation, you’ll be drawn toward ways to improve them. Once you’ve optimized each one, you will have developed the knowledge and habits for staying motivated.