How to Stay Motivated in Tough Times

"When you’re in a hole, should you stop or keep digging? If you stop at the least disappointment you’ll never get anywhere. If you keep digging no matter what, you risk becoming the kind of fool who calls down up to sustain their optimism.

Here are a few thoughts on how to stay motivated through hardship:

• Eyes on a single prize, flexible on the sub-prizes: Have one goal and adjust whatever sub-goals in response to discouragement.
• Neither optimism nor pessimism nor possumism: Romantic realists know they need the news; they don’t play possum, hiding from reality. To maximize their chances of good outcomes, they attend to the obstacles. They also know that, like cleaning house, it’s something we have to do over and over. There will always be disease and crime.
• Know the boat will roll: Romantic realists roll with the news. Entrepreneurs fail two ways: being too self-critical to promote their idea or too self-romanticizing to adjust their strategies with changing circumstances.
• Motivated regardless of hope: Habits keep us going more than we notice, especially social habits, reinforced by what people expect of us. Relying on habits, we can stay motivated and agnostic about how things will turn out. Hope isn’t the only motivator. We mostly keep doing what we’re doing rather than checking every minute to see how we’re doing.
• No spoilers: People often act like they already know for certain how things will end—great or terrible, like people who spoil movies for you. They become doomscrollers, amassing evidence that confirms their worst fears, or the reverse, dream-scrolling only for inspirational platitudes about how they’re destined to succeed.
• Counter-tip the scale: When you’re feeling discouraged, read some of the good news about reality.
• Use your clutch pedal: Feelings and thoughts don’t make things come true. It’s all about whether you act on them. There’s a clutch pedal between perception and action. When you’re down, you’re down, but pumping the clutch, you don’t have to act like you’re down. At least not as impulsively as you would if you didn’t have that clutch.
• Bad but not your fault: You didn’t even design yourself and your situation. It’s easier to carry the burdens of this world if you remember that you’re a guest here.
• Pick your prize carefully: Your grand goal may sound heroic when you declare it, but imagine your enemies declaring the same goal. If they’d feel just as heroic crowing your theme as you do, you haven’t really got a clear prize in mind and could just be romanticizing yourself by pretending it’s exclusive to you."

Read the complete article available at Psychology Today!

Reflection:

How do you stay motivated during tough times?

#Motivation #Inspiration #EmotionalRegulation