Finding Your Inner Motivation

Whether you’re tackling a New Year’s resolution, a personal goal at work, or just staying on top of your chores, it can be incredibly hard to get and stay motivated. It’s especially difficult when you see someone’s post on social media where their life looks perfect and you look around and see, well, unfinished business. But you should know you’re not alone and that there are some tools that can help you get up and get going. If you live at Williamsburg North, you already have lots of tools to help you, but here are some more quick tips! 

#1: Start with the right goal.

Too many goals are absurdly vague, like “get healthy.” What does that even mean? But if you do want to be healthy, how can you turn that into a good goal? The best goals have two features: they are measurable and attainable. If we use the “get healthy” example, we can make that a better goal by adding something we can measure, like your vegetable and fruit intake each day. You could call a serving of vegetables one cup raw or half a cup cooked. You could call a serving of fruit half a cup. You could try to get in the recommended serving of fruits and vegetables every day, but if you haven’t been eating many, that’s not an attainable goal. Maybe instead you could start with one serving of fresh fruit OR vegetables every day. You want to meet that goal over a full month. Then after that, you can feel good about meeting your goal and make a new one!

#2: Keep it interesting. 

If you want to stay motivated, you have to stay interested. Who’s going to stay focused on a boring goal? Now, depending on your goal, you may need to get a little creative. For example, if you’re trying to stay motivated about cleaning regularly, you may have to “bribe” yourself to do it. If you have a favorite podcast, maybe you save each week’s new episode until you have time to clean. You’ll be so excited to listen to the podcast episode that you’ll focus on getting to that and forget about the boring cleaning part. 

#3: Positivity gets you further faster. 

Too many goals are framed with negative language, and that can crush your motivation really quickly. If you have to keep hearing “can’t” or “don’t” or “stop,” you’ll feel even more down on yourself when you fail. Instead, think of ways you can reword your goal to use exclusively positive language. For example, if your “bad” goal was “Don’t be late to work,” you could reframe that to be, “I will get to work on time.” It’s an added bonus to use “I” statements because they make you take ownership of what you’re saying. 

#4: Find a partner or tool to keep on track.

If you’re the only one who knows about your goal, you’ll feel a lot less guilty when you start slipping and lose motivation. Tracking your achievements in some way is incredibly helpful. You could choose an accountability partner. This partner could be working towards the same goal as you or they could simply be someone you trust to check in on you and your progress. If what you want to achieve feels too personal or embarrassing, then think of how you can track what you’ve accomplished in other ways. Could you keep a spreadsheet of your data? Is there an app that you could use? Anything that makes you write or record or talk about what you’re doing is helpful.

#5: When you fail, don’t give up.

It’s so tempting to give up on yourself when you fail and lose motivation. However, that doesn’t fix your problem for the long term. You’ll be right back where you started every time. Instead, if you take a stumble, pause afterward and reflect on what went wrong. Ask yourself a few questions. Did I have a measurable goal? Did I have an attainable goal? Did I frame my goal in a positive way? Is there a specific roadblock that got in my way? Why? How can I overcome this roadblock next time?
Staying motivated is also easier when you have an array of tools at your disposal. At Williamsburg North apartments, you have access to a variety of amenities that can help you stay on track for all kinds of goals. You can visit the fitness center to work out, take a refreshing walk in the dog park, do laundry regularly at the shared laundry facility, or use our prime location to get out and explore the world around your apartment in Indianapolis. Call us to learn more and schedule a tour at (317)-648-5854.