5 Ways to Get Rid of the Thoughts Destroying Your Motivation
Your life is okay.
You have a job, even though it’s not great; you can pay your bills; you have friends and family that you see often.
There are things wrong with your life, of course, but isn’t that the way everyone lives?
You just accept them.
No, you don’t have much motivation to do anything differently.
Life just happens, day to day.
What you have is a “settlement” mentality.
And that mentality has been nurtured by a lot of negative thoughts.
And those negative thoughts have destroyed your motivation to push yourself forward to greater heights.
Well, it’s time to decide not to settle for that, so here are the solutions for getting those negative thoughts out of your head.
Negative Thought: There is Just too Much Wrong in My Life – Nothing will Change.
Solution:
Go visit a cancer ward for children; volunteer in a soup kitchen.
Then, think about how much is wrong in your life.
It really seems pretty petty to be taking up so much of your thought.
Make a list of all of the things you have to be grateful for, and read them every day.
What this does is create an attitude of positivity and optimism.
And when you have that attitude, you can make plans to move forward – find a job you will love; lose 20 pounds, or whatever you may want to change in your life.
Negative Thought: I don’t set goals anymore because I never achieve them.
Solution:
Really.
Did you learn to read and write as a kid?
Did you learn the skills you are using in your present job?
These were all goals although you may not have called them that at the time.
Now, you may not have achieved every goal 100%, so you think that having no goal is better than only 75% attainment.
Well, maybe we should tell that to the student who was failing English but now has a 75% in the course.
Is he a failure?
No.
He’ll take that 75% right now, bask in his success, and set a new goal for 85%.
You need to write down your goals.
Once you do that, you own them.
And you need to decide what you can do tomorrow or within the week toward those goals.
Do you want a new job?
Then update your resume, sign up for a course, or get online and see what kinds of openings there are in your career field.
Maybe that’s only 20% progress toward the goal, but it’s your new beginning.
Negative Thought: I have too many obligations so there is no time for me to take on any new challenges right now.
Solution:
You have to learn to say no.
If you are spending all of you time with obligations to others, you are what psychologists call a “pleaser.”
You see your worth only in serving others, not yourself.
This is a negative thought pattern that has developed over time, and it will take time to break.
The other problem with this behavior is that inside you are resentful and bitter about it.
The only way to begin this change is to say “no” one time.
The person to whom you have said “no” may be angry, but s/he will get over it or move on and find another pleaser.
And you will feel just a bit liberated.
Saying “no” will become easier, and you will then have time to focus on what you want.
Just the feeling of great freedom will be a great motivator to take on some “me” challenges.
Negative Thought: I have made lots of mistakes in my life so far. I really need to spend time thinking about those failures.
Solution:
Past mistakes can stall you.
They can make you fearful of trying anything new, because you may make the same mistakes again.
There are two kinds of mistakes – the ones you can correct and the ones you can do nothing about.
Your first step is to divide your mistakes up into those two categories.
If you can fix a mistake, do it.
You’ll have it off your plate and out of your mind.
If you have made mistakes that you can’t do anything about now, how does ruminating on them fix them?
It doesn’t, and you have to move on.
Here’s how to do that.
Reflect on why and how you made that mistake.
Now reflect on what you learned from it so that you won’t make it again.
Once you have your “plan” for not repeating mistakes, you have something new to think about – something that will motivate you to take some risks again.
Negative Thought: If it can’t be perfect, I don’t want to try.
Solution:
There is a wonderful story about a young boy and star fish.
His solution to a problem was not perfect, but it was what he could do, and he took great satisfaction in that.
It’s hard to live as a perfectionist – hard, because no one and no thing that man has created will ever be perfect.
It’s not really perfection you are striving for – it is the motivation to move forward and to improve.
Wayne Dyer, who was a New-Age author had this to say about what should motivate us: “It’s not about being perfect or better than anyone else.
It’s about being better today than you were yesterday.”
So, what is your improvement plan?
What can you do better tomorrow than you did today?
Pick just one thing.
In doing that one thing, you will be motivated to do more.
And a whole new pattern of thought is being developed.
Your Takeaway
You are not going to wake up tomorrow without any negative thoughts and filled with motivation.
But, if you sincerely and genuinely begin to practice the solutions above, over time all of that pessimism will gradually be replaced with the positivity that motivation requires.
