Have you ever started a project? Have you been “all in” like Luke was for Lorelei? Did you get pumped up, excited and SO committed? Have you gotten halfway through and lost your momentum? Gotten bored? Have you given up? Hey, me too.

So, how in the world are people motivated to stick to their goals? How do you FINSIH your projects? Unfortunately, in my experience, we won’t always be 100% motivated, BUT there are things that I’ve started doing in everyday life that have helped me tremendously.

1. Take care of your body! It is incredibly hard to stay motivated when you feel like crap. If you are not setting yourself up for success, you cannot expect magical success. This doesn’t mean getting up in the morning and doing a hardcore workout every day (that might be one of your goals). I mean take care of your body at the core. Get proper amounts of sleep, build morning and bedtime routines to keep your body on an internal clock. Eat things that make you feel GOOD. Not things that make you feel good for 5 minutes and then terrible for the rest of the day. Things that are fueling you, keeping you energetic and lifting your mood!

2. Be your own biggest cheerleader. If you are constantly starting new things with the mindset that you’ll probably quit just like you have in the past…well, number one, that’s a rude thing to say to yourself and number two, that is literally taking away any motivation right from the start. I don’t know when it became the norm to talk down to ourselves all the time, but take a second to think about this. Really think. WHY are you letting Regina George act as your inner voice? Who told you it was cool to be negative, hypocritical and MEAN all the time and why are you listening to them? So do a thing for me. Pick someone who inspires you. Someone who’s voice you can hear right now. It can be anyone! Your mom, dad, sibling, Oprah, Mufasa… I don’t know! What does it for you? Got it? Okay, now every time you hear self doubt, criticism, Regina George in your head, I want you to replace that with your favorite motivational voice and tell yourself how you are succeeding. It’s going to be annoying and it’s going to be difficult the first few times you do it, but DO IT. Every time. You will notice a difference.

3. Make your goals accessible! If you keep losing motivation to “run a marathon in 6 months”, try thinking about your ratio of big to small goals. Let me share some knowledge that I’ve picked up in almost every single self help book or podcast I’ve listened to. If all you do is give yourself one giant goal with a drawn out timeline that hovers over you like a dark storm cloud every day you are doing the following:

   -With a huge goal in a long timeline, you are giving yourself an automatic excuse for not doing the work TODAY.

   If, on your first day of kindergarten, your teacher said to you “I want you to write a full term paper by the end of the year… at that age, you would probably cry (at this age, I would still probably cry). The same goes for your goals in life. I am absolutely guilty of setting lofty goals with spacious timelines for myself, but I’ve found that more often than not, that leads to frustration, disappointment and self criticism.

   Try keeping that lofty goal (because you are a badass and you can absolutely do it), but breaking it down into smaller more manageable pieces so that you can experience success every day instead of waiting and waiting to feel GOOD about something. If you read my last blog post and your new goal is to become a morning workout person, let’s make that goal manageable. Instead of, “I’m going to BE a morning workout person and workout every morning and completely love it!” Try, “I’m going to get up at 6am and do a 30 minute workout on Mondays”. You see what I did there? You have specific, manageable goals to start hitting right now. Once you feel good and powerful about nailing those Monday workouts, maybe add Wednesday and then Friday and then move to an hour workout instead of 30 minutes… you got this! Whatever you choose, BE SPECIFIC and do not give yourself room to make an excuse. Do you know how empowering it is to be able to check something off of your goals list? To do that, you have to put timely, attainable goals on that list. These little wins every day will empower you to go for that ultimate goal and you may even reach it sooner than you thought!

Here’s a little takeaway for you! Think about a huge goal that you have. It doesn’t have to be fitness or even business related. What is something that you REALLY want? Got it? Okay now I want you to write down 5 SMALL things that you can do THIS week to get you closer to that goal. Be specific, write these things in a planner, DO THEM! And then try this every week. Let me know how you feel!

**A great physical tool that I’ve used to create bite sized goals for huge dreams is the Start Today Journal from Rachel Hollis. This simple daily activity may seem silly, unnecessary or like it’s “common sense”, but try it.. I was a skeptic, I tried it and I saw complete clarity for the first time in my life.

I love the fun planner colors and the breakdown for how exactly to do the exercise, but if you don’t want to buy something, take a listen to Episode 72 of the RISE podcast to do this in your own little notebook for free.

LET’S GET OUT THERE AND BE GOAL GETTERS!