How many times have you heard yourself say: “I should exercise more, but when should I do it” ?
Or “Planning my days would help me, but I’m too busy to do so”?
How does that make you feel?
I don’t know about you, but this makes me feel like I am uncapable of standing up for what I find important.
…Do I really find these things important though?
Let’s be honest, some things only get important when they become urgent, meaning we’re getting at the border of disaster. Like when we feel an unbearable tooth ache that forces us to go to the dentist. Or when we realize that our fiancée has just booked a week-end trip with our best friend instead of with us.
What motivates us then?
- Anything that we perceive as being really urgent
- Whatever we perceive as being a very pleasant or important gain
- The awareness that by doing / not doing something we will face a tough problem
How do we kick ourselves in the rear?
Let’s take a moment and ask ourselves:
- Why do I want to do it, honestly?
- What short-term benefit do I expect from it? What long-term ones?
- How much do I really care about these benefits? How important are they to me, honestly?
Let’s imagine we cannot find the motivation to take 10 minutes every week to organize and plan our tasks for the week ahead.
Let’s ask ourselves:
- “What will happen if I don’t do it?”
I will probably get back to doing things as I did before, even with my best intentions. I will probably achieve only half of the things I would like to do, as usual. I will feel stressed and unsatisfied because I haven’t managed to do all the things I wanted. I may even feel tired.
- “What consequences will this have on my professional life in the long run?”
I will mostly take care of urgent issues and hardly find time to plan an effective strategy. Due to a lack of sleep or energy, I may take some wrong decisions. I may even miss some deadlines, resulting in angry clients. Colleagues or business partners will find me unreliable. In the long run, this may decrease my income.
- “What consequences will this have on my personal life, in the long run?”
I will hardly find time to exercise or to do things that contribute to my personal or professional development. My health may suffer as well, if I don’t take care of it properly. I may risk a burnout. My family and friends will be annoyed by the fact that I spend so little time with them. My relationships will suffer in the long run. There will be more quarrels, also due to the decreased income. I will feel unhappy.
- “Is this what I really want?”
- No.
- “What can I do then?”
- Take 10 minutes a week to plan my time!
And if it is a matter of “the way it is”?
Sometimes is just a matter of changing the way we do things:How could this become fun to do? Would music help? Or using colours, such as coloured pens, paper, etc?
Some other times it may be a matter of the environment or the people involved: Let’s imagine we attend a language course. We may enjoy learning a language, but for some reason the teacher’s style does not match our learning style. So it gets boring and we lose interest.
What can we do? How important is this course to us really? Can we talk with the teacher about it and look for ways to make classes more effective? Can we find a different course? What other possibilities are there?
Reward yourself!
Remember that we mentioned above that we find motivating “Whatever we perceive as being a very pleasant or important gain”?
Keeping commitments and staying motivated isn’t always easy! How can we reward ourselvesf? How are we going to celebrate the fact that we are strong enough to keep our commitment? For example, does the idea of a hot chocolate motivate me? What other pleasant gift could I give myself?
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