What do motivational thoughts do? They help us to take action.

What motivates each of us is unique, so you need to have your own thoughts – those which are most effective at getting you going.

Motivational Thoughts of Your Own
Making it your own means experimenting with a good thought until you find a way to use it in your own recipe for motivation. Suppose, for example, you’re in a difficult situation and don’t feel like dealing with it.

As you sit there, you play around with the idea of opportunity coming from difficulty and you discover that it pulls you out of your slump to think about yourself in the future or explaining to a friend how you turned a difficult situation to your advantage.

This is how you create your own motivational thoughts. It might be more motivating if you imagine yourself being interviewed about how you overcame this difficult time. The thoughts that work for you are the thoughts you need to be thinking.

Learn Your Motivations
Experiment and get to know how your mind works. I find that beyond just thinking a thought, if I explain it to someone, I get clarity. That is my own self-motivation recipe. When I feel unmotivated about tackling my to do list, I think about how I will reward myself if I do some hard/boring tasks or what will be the upside if I do them. By the time I have thought about the upside, I’m motivated to do them.

You can get creative in your motivational experiments. Maybe thinking about a bill that needs to be paid makes you get up and go to work. If visual thoughts are more motivating than mental conversations, then use those. See pictures in your head that get you going.

Perhaps when people say you can’t do something, you do whatever it takes to prove them wrong. Then it might be motivational to think about them saying you can’t.

How different would your life be if you were able to motivate yourself?