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Financial Journey
(featured column)
Motivating
Yourself to Take Action
by Karen
Kuebler
Recently I had
experienced a tremendous lag in motivation.
I had surgery on my hand and arm, and was wearing a cast for six weeks.
I found myself feeling listless, lazy, and trapped.
I didn’t have the energy to do much of anything except read the
computer and watch movies. More...
I made a
decision that enough was enough!
I was at the point I didn’t even want to be with myself.
Now, that’s pretty bad. So
I dug into my bag of tricks that I have developed over the years to pull out
some tools I have gathered. I was
determined to get my game back and restore my motivational level back to normal.
I thought I would share some of the techniques I used since we may all
experience times when our motivation wanes.
 | When
you are feeling completely unmotivated and/or down in the dumps, take one
valid action and the feelings will follow.
Write a letter, make a phone call, wash the dishes, get up and go for
a walk. The point is, if you
take action and do one thing other than sitting and brooding, the motivation
will start to come back and begin to build.
| Do
one small thing that is positive and directed toward your goals every day.
If your goal is to increase your savings by $100 per month here are
just a few ideas of baby steps you can take: Eat leftovers for dinner rather
than throwing dollars down the drain; pack your lunch for work the night
before so you won’t be tempted to buy a meal at work; empty your pockets
and put the change in a jar; take your coffee to work instead of buying it
in the vending machine, or even worse, at an expensive coffee shop!
Each baby step propels you to another, then another, and your
motivation begins to snowball.
| Replace
any negative self-talk going on in your head with positive thoughts.
Catch them immediately and start changing your thinking pattern now!
Your thoughts will drive your attitude and in turn determine your
actions. If you tell yourself
you are too tired to research the current interest rates on CD’s by phone
or internet, then you will fritter away the time convinced that you don’t
want to do it. Instead, tell
yourself that moving some of my money from this low interest bearing account
to a higher rate will move me in the financial direction I want to go.
You will be much more likely do the appropriate research and take
action. Examine your thoughts
and determine your attitude – remember that your attitude is totally
within your control and you make the choice!
| Ralph
Waldo Emerson said “That which we persist in doing becomes easier; not
that the nature of the thing has changed, but our ability to do has
increased.” When you aren’t
feeling motivated to take a positive action that you know you should, commit
to doing it just for today. Each
day, recommit to take this action. Repeat
this action for at least 21 days. Research
bears out that is the length of time it takes to develop a new habit.
| Don’t
attempt to take on too many changes at one time.
Trying to make too many changes at once usually leads to the
inability to complete any one thing successfully.
Instead, become comfortable with one or two changes.
As they feel more natural then set goals to work on something new.
It has been proven over and over again that motivation can be crushed
by trying to do too much at one time. That
is why so many New Year’s resolutions fail.
Make this a lifelong process, rather than setting goals at the
beginning of each year. |
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Remember that we
all experience times in our lives when our energy, self-discipline, and
motivational levels fluctuate. It
is extremely important to realize that this is a normal human phenomenon.
I found myself being extremely hard on myself for not feeling motivated,
and then it became a vicious cycle and I continued to feel even worse.
When you are in
a funk, use some of your own bag of tricks to get out of it, or tap into some of
the ideas I have shared. Call on
your friends, read something inspirational – just do something
different to turn the tide in the opposite direction and you’ll find yourself
traveling the path you want to take!
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Copyright
© 2006 by Karen Kuebler. All rights reserved. Want more
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newsletter!
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