How to stay motivated?

One of the most important things in doing your workout is to keep your motivation up and running. Once you stop training for a long period of time, it will feel like you have to start from the beginning.

Therefore, the key to see results in your constant training is to stay at it!

But how do you stay motivated when there is so much going on in every other aspect of life and you have constant distractions that keep you off track?

In this blog post I will try to show a method on how it is possible not to stop your training constantly and stay focused on what you want to achieve.

First off – There is no “magic formula” for consistency. I’m sure you have had the situation already when you set yourself a goal and stay on it for some days. After some days or weeks you slowly lose sight of your goal and leave it behind.

Whether you tell yourself that it was not important enough or that you cannot reach the goal-line, the truth is that you failed.

The thing is, subconsciously your brain will not forget that you did not succeed. You can tell yourself as long as you want that it is okay the way it is.

To avoid the scenario of failing, it is necessary to put enough work into planning to make the way to the goal easier. For sure you could also get directly to training and stay at it, but when you forget why you want to reach a specific goal, it is easier to get off track and lose sight of your actual way.

First of all you have to clarify following questions:

• Which goal/goals do I want to reach?
• Why do I want to reach it?
• What is necessary to reach it?
• How can I be as effective as possible?

Anybody can set him or herself a goal that seems impossible. While for some people the goal is to stay fit, others want to have specific abilities. But no matter what your goal is, with the right plan and steady focus you can make it possible.

Which goal?

What can help to keep the focus is a book, that is only used for workout planning. A book where you write down all the goals you have on the first page. Then write down why you want to achieve your goal right next to it.

Whether it is to lose weight, make a progress in your training in general, having more strength or impressing someone else. No matter why you set yourself a specific goal, there is a reason you want to reach it.

Why this goal?

Think about why you want to reach it, because this will be your motivation for your future path. Even when you forget about the why, when reading your written notes you will get back to the mindset you had when you set yourself this goal and why you have already put in work up to this point.

What’s necessary to reach this goal now? I guess you already figured it out, first of all it’s the motivation that you have to bring in day by day to go on.

What do you need?

However, for some goals it is not enough to motivate yourself. Sometimes it’s easier to do something in groups of 2 or more. Maybe you can find some people who have the same goal as you. A training buddy or a motivator will make your journey a lot easier. They can motivate you even on days when you sometimes don’t feel like it and vice versa.

For some steps you also need certain equipment or even a trainer who can show you the small mistakes. But you can also be your own trainer.

How to be effective

You can approach a goal step by step. To achieve success as quickly as possible, you should now divide your big goal into much smaller individual goals. For example, if you want to run a marathon and you have never run before, it would be pointless to run the full distance right away. Set a specific date when you want to be there.

Macro- & Micro-planning

Plan a longer period in which you really trust yourself to be able to do it. After the first few weeks you will see if it is realistic. You do not necessarily have to reach the goal by this date, but you set yourself a time limit and thus have pressure.

Now divide the time until then into smaller sections with sub-goals. In case of the goal to run a marathon, you could set yourself a 5km mark in 3 weeks, a 10km mark in 6 weeks and so on.

If you are pursuing a certain skill, research for building exercises for that skill and do the exact same thing.

Now to go to the smallest level – microplanning – just divide each week into days. For example, Monday – 2km run, Tuesday regeneration, Wednesday 3km run …

Through this plan, which you have now set for yourself, you enable yourself small partial successes that help you to maintain motivation. For example, if you run the 5 km in 3 weeks, you can be proud of yourself for being one step closer to your real goal.

Sometimes it happens that you reach a partial goal later but also even earlier than planned. If this is the case, you can either adjust your plan, try to schedule more sessions, or take a little longer to consolidate your new skills.

No “magic formula”!

As I said at the beginning of this entry, there is no “magic formula” that will give you the motivation you need to keep going.

However, you can make your path a lot easier by constantly reminding yourself why you want to achieve something.

And if you put enough time into planning, you will be even more likely to pursue your goal because you’ve already put in the work to take the first step. So, you’ve already laid the foundation for the mindset you need to continuously pursue your goal.

It’s up to you!

From this point on, it is up to you how much you stick to a plan and how much motivation you have to follow it day in and day out.

If the described precautions don’t help you to continuously follow your path, you should ask yourself if you really answered the “Why?” honestly for yourself. I don’t mean to imply anything, but sometimes you set goals that you don’t really want.

If this is the case, simply look for another goal and answer the question of why you want to do something once again. Because in the end, you must be satisfied with the path you have chosen for yourself.