Overcome Motivation Struggles: 3 Proven Strategies

Recently, I’ve heard a variation of the statement, ‘Follow the plan, not your mood,’ and it’s a great reminder that in order to actually achieve results – you have to do the things…especially when you don’t want to. One of the biggest lessons I have learned since starting my wellness journey is that there’s no real way to find out if the plan is working if you keep switching things up or not showing up at all. My fitness coach would always tell us that the one sure way to fail is to stop. When you set a goal for yourself, you have to face the fact that life is going to happen and that we are human. Your future self is not that same person that made the plan to begin with, but she’s counting on you to stick to it. Here’s 3 tips to help you (and me) stick to the plan so we never have to “start again on Monday”. 🙂

1. Relying on motivation is a poor strategy. How often have you been super excited to start doing something, and then life happens, and you have a bad day? Most people resort back to their go-to habits and that goal you set for yourself becomes a distant memory. Motivation is a fantastic tool to help get us going, but it’s fleeting. Showing up when you’re having a bad day and it’s the last thing you want to do is how you craft the new identity of someone who doesn’t break promises to themselves and it is the pathway to successfully achieving your goal.
2. BFFR (be effing for real) – Dreaming big is encouraged over here, but as the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. Setting goals is rarely the problem – setting unrealistic goals is. For example, most people, when they set out to get their health in order, make a plan that includes completely changing life and attempting to do everything they think they need to do all at the same time. Trying to implement all these changes overnight is unrealistic. If you have detested exercise your entire life, why would you try to commit to working out 6 days a week? If you live off of iced coffee and Cokes how difficult do you think it’s going to be to drink a gallon a day starting tomorrow? It’s near impossible to sustain that much change in a very short amount of time. Well you might start but I hate to tell you – your willpower isn’t that strong to keep that up. Building good habits that seamlessly fit into your life instead of turning it upside down is the way to go. Commit to adding a 15 minute daily walk or working out 30 minutes for 2 days a week; start drinking a glass of water before each meal or hydrating before caffinating to help up your water intake. These small changes are things you can build on and still achieve the goal of improving your health. I recommend reading Atomic Habits by James Clear to learn how to make small changes that make major impact.
3. Stop limiting yourself by time – We often believe we need to have achieved something or acquired something by a certain time to be validated or feel successful. Putting a time limit on your success can put major pressure on you and actually discourage you from sticking to your plans. Did you know, most people don’t get their big break until they are in their 40s? While I understand there are going to be things to do that have a hard deadline, there are other ways to measure success and celebrate small wins along the way. A perfect example of this is my goal of losing my weight. If I created a false timeline of when I have to cross the finish line, the pressure alone would make me abandon my mission all together. Not putting a time limit on my weightloss allows me space to build the habits and routines needed to sustain my weight loss forever. It gives me time to make mistakes and learn what works and what doesn’t. It also helps me be able to enjoy the journey as opposed to stressing about an arbitrary date that means nothing. Celebrate milestones along the way and you will find that sticking to your plan won’t be so hard.

Don’t you believe for a moment that anyone you know who has achieve a goal or wild success did it overnight or it was 100% fun all the way to the end. Most of the things we want is going to require a part of you to die in order to give birth to this new version of yourself. Challenging yourself to not rely on your old habits by showing up anyway is going to power you through the most difficult moments on your journey to success. When am I going to reveal the thin version of myself? I don’t know – but what I do know is that I am building a strong foundation to sustain thin Siara and as long as I keep doing the things I promised myself I would do so that I get there…I’ll get there.

xo, Siara