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How to Stay Motivated (Blog)

Motivation is a key part of our lives. It’s our drive to achieve our goals and keep bettering ourselves. But when we’re under pressure, it can be hard to keep it up. This can sometimes be the case in school life, where exams and workload feel overwhelming. Feeling demotivated can have a domino effect. So, what can we do to catch it before it falls? 

Getting started 

A hurdle to staying motivated is getting started in the first place. What you want to do may seem simple, but without a clear direction, it can quickly become intimidating. That’s why it’s important to break down your aims and create an environment that helps you confidently work towards it. There are many ways to do this, but here are some tips to get started:

  • Set yourself a clear goal: This should be what you ultimately want to achieve. 
  • Set yourself targets for you to reach: These are smaller objectives you can use to break down your goal into steps and track your progress along the way. 
  • Develop a proper schedule: Setting yourself time to perform certain tasks may help with encouraging you to do them. But of course, this depends on how able you are to commit to this schedule and it’s better to be honest and realistic when designing. 
  • Build a support network to keep you motivated: This can include friends, family, or anyone else you trust. But these should be people you’d like to encourage and support you.
  • Create a positive working space: This could mean setting up a calming study space for yourself, free of distractions like your phone, which could affect your motivation.

Sticking with it 

Finding ways to get motivated is only part of the challenge, because you then need to maintain that motivation. If you aren’t reaching your goal as quickly as you’d like, it can start to feel impossible. You may start to feel like you’ll never get to where you want; impacting your self-confidence. It can be difficult to pick yourself up when you fall into this pattern, but these are some ways you can try and get back into a motivated mindset:

  • Keep reviewing your goals: It can be easy to feel like you’re stagnating at points. To avoid this, you should try setting yourself new targets to reach your overall goal.
  • Find mentors: Look for people who are skilled in your area of focus. For studying, this could be a teacher. Try asking them what strategies they use and see if they can work for you. 
  • Seek support from those around you: Be open with the people you trust about the way you’re feeling and start working together to find new ways to encourage yourself and new methods to help you work.
  • Reflect on your achievements so far: Sometimes when we’re so focused on moving forwards, it can be hard to remember what we’ve done. Try reflecting on what you’ve managed to do so far and use it to inspire you going forwards.
  • Reward yourself with breaks: Take moments to rest and do something you enjoy between busy periods of work. This will help you recharge and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

Most importantly, it’s important not to overwork yourself. It may seem like being a motivated person means working non-stop, but it’s also vital that you take time to rest in between. Without occasional breaks or time to relax, it can become easy to become burnt out, and lose all the motivation you’ve built up. The key isn’t to work endlessly but to develop a consistent pattern that works for you.


Written by Joe Perkes

For Lyfeproof UK