10 Tips to stay motivated

Speak Spanish fluently, run a marathon, pass a tough exam, or finally save enough money to travel to Germany. Please make sure that you can’t achieve your goals overnight. Instead, it takes a long breath to stay motivated.
But how do you manage to stay motivated? You certainly know the feeling of being very motivated, especially at the beginning. In the first week, you lace up your running shoes every day, research how you can improve a technique, and buy new running shoes.
However, at some point, there will come a phase in which you believe that you will no longer make any progress. The motivation drops, and you doubt whether you will ever achieve your goal.
Don’t let these motivation lows stop you from realizing the dreams on your bucket list!
In the following, I will give you tips on how to stay motivated and how to get back on track if you are sagging.

Tip 1: The first step is crucial

The first step is crucial. If you’re planning on participating in a 3-mile run, put on your running shoes and take a walk around the block. That’s enough. You don’t plan on anything more, to begin with. Even if you haven’t run yet, you’ve put your shoes on and moved. You have achieved a lot more than if you had stayed on the sofa.
Is learning Spanish your goal, but with the best of will, you can not bring yourself to attend a Spanish course: start by studying 5 Spanish words a day or briefly reviewing those from the previous week. This task takes a maximum of 10-15 minutes of your time. After a week, however, you have already learned 35 vocabularies, making 140 a month!

These baby steps are less terrifying and demotivating than the big picture. If your focus is on the big picture, procrastination is inevitable. Every milestone, as small as it is, brings you closer to your goal. Even more: After you can show your first successes, the next step’s motivation is much higher.
If your goal is to marvel at the Northern Lights, your baby steps might look like this:

• Research where you can see the northern lights
• Find out when you are most likely to see the Northern Lights there
• Check the estimated costs
• Apply for leave
• Research and book accommodation, tours, and flights
• Buy suitable winter clothing

Another example: You want to share your knowledge about indoor plants with the world and start a blog about it.

Possible baby steps are:

• Research blogs on related topics
• Become clear about your main topic and your unique selling point
• Find a blog name and domain
• Design a logo
• Choose a blog platform (CSM content management system)

(My tip: stay away from Blogspot, Wix, Jimdo, and Co. and choose WordPress)

• Compare hosting providers and choose one.
• Install WordPress
• Familiarize yourself with WordPress (e.g. Vhs course, online course)
• Configure WordPress
• Consider website structure
• Find a theme
• Create important pages (imprint, privacy policy, about us)
• Write the first post.
• Create social media channels

If you’ve listed baby steps for your goal, create a second column. Here you enter a date for each intermediate step. Get started with the first step today! Otherwise, the risk is too significant to produce one more list, which will then disappear into oblivion. Thus, it is crucial that the first step is really in the baby’s shoes and can be done within 24 hours.

Tip 2: Positive visualization

When you finally bring more than just a kalhmera to your lips on your next vacation in Crete. What will the waiter’s puzzled face look like when you put the English menu aside and order in his native language?
Or how will you feel when you finally get an internship in New York, the city of your dreams. Imagine relaxing in Central Park for lunch and enjoying a cocktail in a rooftop bar in the evening.

Try it!

If you are a little creative, I advise you to have a vision board to achieve your goals (Pinterest does it too if necessary). Vision boards are collages on which your dreams and goals are visually presented in the form of photos, quotes, or drawings.
Let’s stick with the New York example. You could print out pictures of your favorite sights or draw them yourself, a few lines from Frank Sinatra’s songs, a movie scene, a city map, or the metro map.
It doesn’t matter whether it is pinboard, picture frame, whiteboard, bullet journal, or created in Photoshop. It doesn’t matter and is entirely up to your taste.

Your vision board mustn’t disappear in the drawer or under a stack of magazines. If you see your vision board every day, your subconscious will be triggered all by itself.
Vision boards help me not lose sight of my goals and be reminded of why I want to achieve them. When I am unmotivated, my vision board’s look usually helps me let the motivation come back to me.

Tip 3: Don’t keep your plans to yourself

Share your plans with those around you. Not to put more pressure on, but to get some unexpected help. It has happened to me many times. In this way, I found out about a running group and achieved my goal of running 10 km in a row in turbo time. The procedure for entering the USA was explained to me during the lunch break. A friend raved about Norway so much that I was even more motivated to put together a tour.

Such circumstances are not so rare. Perhaps you have someone in your circle of acquaintances who you didn’t even know was active on YouTube. And hey presto, do you have someone who gives recommendations for the program or helps you build awareness. This helps you achieve your goal faster and gives you a good portion of the extra portion from someone who shares your goal with you.
For many (not necessarily for me), it also helps to get a friendly reminder in questions from the environment.

Tip 4: Find a colleague

You’re not alone. With absolute certainty, there is a person who is pursuing the same goal as you. Either you already know him, or you have yet to get to know him. As an absolute beginner, motivating yourself anew every time can be quite a challenge.
Now imagine that you have a work colleague with whom you meet twice a week after work. The probability is already a lot higher than you will lace up your running shoes and start running. Is there nobody in your environment who shares your goal with you?
You now have the chance not only to have a new experience but also to get to know like-minded people. To stick with the example, you could join a running group or search social media.

Tip 5: Setbacks are part of it

First things first: setbacks are normal! Everyone experiences them. Anything else would be romantic. It can’t just go uphill. The best thing to do is to make yourself aware at the beginning: Slacks will undoubtedly come, but they are never a reason why you should declare your entire project to have failed.
Let’s take this blog as an example. WordPress, FTP client, database, theme, GDPR – all topics that drove me crazy in stages. And then? I tried, researched, and asked around for days, so I mastered most technical challenges—a significant boost for your self-confidence. Now I’m even the one who asked for advice.
What I want to say: setbacks can enrich you. By not giving up but getting creative and looking for solutions, you develop yourself further.
Another tip: You could think about in advance which setbacks could occur. For example, if you get homesick on your trip around the world, you get the first hater comments on your YouTube channel, or you couldn’t resist a kebab on your way to becoming a vegetarian. The trick is that you have to develop a plan beforehand of what you will do in such a case or what thoughts would help you continue on your way undeterred.

Tip 6: Small motivational helpers

Sometimes a little nudge from the outside is enough to get you back on track and stay motivated:

• Success journal

I tried it. But I have to be honest: these books never helped me. But I think it can help many people (maybe you too) prioritize goals and reflect on your thoughts.

• Motivational quotes

Sometimes a small three-line line is enough as an encouragement. Read through motivational quotes and hang up your favorite saying in a prominent place.

• Rewards

The spirits argue about the meaning of reward (because of intrinsic motivation and). It works for me: The prospect of a chocolate sundae when I’ve finally filled out the annoying Esta form for entry into the USA? I’m there!
You could even kill two birds with one stone by indulging in a wellness experience after your mammoth march, which is also on your bucket list.
It works similarly with partial goals. You ran 10 km in a row: Great! This is still a long way from the (half) marathon that you might have planned, but an outstanding achievement! The journey is the goal because you have moved away from your starting point and have come closer to your goal.

Tip 7: The right mindset

Make it clear to yourself: challenges are called challenges because they challenge you. Few people can do what you set out to do.
Nobody undertakes a 100 km march in the blink of an eye. Neither do you acquire a new sport overnight or have saved up the money for your dream vacation.
Persistence, perseverance, and perseverance pay off! It’s a fantastic feeling to have achieved something you have been working towards for a long time.

Tip 8: Focus on a goal

It’s best to only concentrate on 1-2 bucket list items at a time. Otherwise, it will be confusing, and you run the risk of getting bogged down. My bucket list contains well over 100 destinations. I always have only one big goal in mind (e.g. mammoth march, 10 km run, planning a USA tour ) and, depending on the time and desire, pursue small goals such as a bookbinding course or nutritional advice.

Tip 9: Breaks are not bad

Your private life throws a spanner in the works; the job is stressful; you would like to skip the pre-Christmas period, and then there is still your bucket list waiting for you?
Then keep them waiting!
That’s what happened to me last summer when we bought and remodeled an apartment, and things got quieter on this blog too.
A bucket list is not a must! You don’t have to compare yourself to anyone, regularly post your achievements, or be accountable. Realize that taking a break is perfectly fine if you start again with renewed energy, great!

Tip 10: Back to the beginning

If all of the tips don’t help you, go back to the beginning. Why did you put this point on your bucket list? What’s your goal behind it? Did you want to learn sign language, or did you just put the item on your list because you were missing an item from the field of education? Or is the marathon only on your list because you’ve seen this point on countless bucket lists?

It doesn’t help if you have a goal that you don’t fully support. Staying motivated is almost impossible. If it doesn’t mean anything to you, leave it alone! Think about how much energy is lost that you could better put into projects close to your heart.
Hence: Let it go!

Stay motivated – there is no standard recipe.

Here I have presented you with my experiences of how it works for me to stay motivated. That doesn’t mean you feel the same way. You may also have other strategies to motivate yourself.

A last that I would like to give you along the way: The more you meet your goals, the more you not only gain confidence in yourself and your abilities but also know how great it feels to have achieved a goal, what the best motivation ever is.