How To Stay Motivated
A Little Perspective & A Few Good Goals
By Grace K. Bianco
“We become so caught up in our daydreams that we become disgusted with our reality.”
Many of us, including myself, put a lot of pressure on ourselves to become our own definition of successful. We set unachievable goals, and when we don’t reach them quick enough, we either lose a little or all motivation to keep pushing forward.
After three years of writing, I have just started barely started to reach some of my goals. I have been reflecting back on what kept me motivated and how I help encourage others to stay motivated in their own lives. So, as someone who easily loses motivation, I am here to try to help you not be like me.
Perspective
This is one of the most important things to have in life if you ever want to be content. You have to be able to see the bigger picture to keep pushing through the harder patches. A huge thing I want you to get out of this blog is that you need to be content before you can be successful.
There’s many different areas of life where we start to lose hope. A few of the bigger ones are career, hobbies, talents, and dating. All of these things can become a huge source of stress and discontentment.
We become so caught up in our daydreams that we become disgusted with our reality. We dream of the promotion we want at work. We dream of finally being in a relationship. We dream of our hobbies becoming something more than a hobby. We dream about a lot of things. And in the process, we lose sight of where we are today.
If you are working towards something or want something in your life, it’s about trusting God before you get to that point. We can only see the second we are living in, but God can see all the way through our lives. When the time is right, God will do exactly what you need. Sometimes, we don’t always know exactly what it is that we need.
My Personal Life Example
If you keep up with my blogs, you know my husband travels for months at a time for his work. We dream and pray constantly that he will get a home job, and we will be able to settle down completely. We have no idea when this will happen, and it will take my husband working extra hard to reach that goal.
For him, he can become exhausted with the extra work on top of his already intense workload. For me, I become exhausted with the constant traveling back and forth during each work season. We deal with inconvenient housing, long hours of him working and me being either completely alone or living in a different state, and difficult roommates/landlords.
It takes a lot of patience to deal with our current life. My husband comforts me when I have to live at home without him. I comfort him when he gets frustrated with various housing annoyances. We remind each other to have a better perspective.
“This is temporary.” “Think of how great your house job will be.” “We will settle down soon.” “We won’t have to deal with annoying landlords forever.”
When we are able to live together, we look forward to when my husband has a day off. When we have to be a part, we count down to when we get to see each other again. When a landlord is nice, we notice it even more. We get frustrated, but there are always little positives sprinkled in.
I am extremely confident my husband will get a house job. It’s just a matter of when. We are always learning how to take on the frustrations that come until then. We can’t hate our lives until we get to where we want to be exactly.
If dealing with all of this means I get to be married to my husband, I will take it. It’s not always easy, but it is definitely worth it all.
Goals
Screw a New Year’s Resolution. Make tiny goals daily to help you reach your bigger goals.
If you are trying to work your way up at work, don’t make “getting a promotion” your only goal. Make more specific goals like “being recognized for working well”, “get a compliment from boss or fellow coworker about your work”, “set up meeting to discuss going up in specific work field”, etc. You need little wins a long the way to keep you engaged and excited.
If you want your hobby to become more than a hobby, don’t lose the fun in it while working harder at it. For example, if you are an artist and want to sell your art, enjoy creating each piece without stressing whether or not it will sell. Your little goals would be something like “make certain number of art pieces in a week”, “receive a compliment of your art (social media or in person)”, “market your art at least certain number of times (social media, business cards, email list, etc.)”.
Your little goals give you something to celebrate. It makes the process of moving up seem more attainable and fun.
My Personal Life Example
For three years, I wrote and wrote. I didn’t make a penny from any of my blogs. I made a very tiny amount of money from my book, “Party Pooper: Growing up with Anxiety” (less than $100) on Amazon. There were days I would announce that I was going to quit writing only to immediately go write something in the other room. There were weeks I would go without posting.
I tried to make goals. I would tell myself that I would write a blog once a week, but I would maybe do that consecutively for four weeks. I just wasn’t 100% happy with what I was actually writing. Then, I said I would post daily on Medium that lasted a month (I think?), but that series felt too repetitive (“Tales of A New Marriage” — They haven’t been deleted. Just scroll to the bottom of my page on here.) I constantly said I would do something to get myself somewhere, but I became frustrated the second I didn’t see results.
It took me three years before I said, “Okay, I am going to solely post on one platform [Medium] three times a week. I will write WHATEVER I want to. I will post it on whatever day, just post three times a week. If I make zero progress by January 2022, I will reevaluate.”
I have kept my word. I have been writing three blogs a week since July 3. I haven’t missed a single week, and I have always made time to sit down to write, proofread, and publish. And guess what? For the first time in all my years of blogging, I now make money. It’s not a lot. Sometimes, it’s less than a dollar, but I used to do all of this for free. So, a few cents makes me feel good.
I enjoy writing three blogs. I don’t put myself in a box, and only allow myself to write about marriage, Christianity, mental health, etc. I can write how I want and what I want it to be about. I didn’t say exactly how much I had to make in a month. As long as I made a dime, that was progress enough to celebrate. The only “requirement” I gave myself was that I have to write three blogs a week.
Writing daily blogs is good for some, but three is the perfect amount for me. It’s still a lot of work, but I LOVE it. I am seeing results. Even if my growth is a small amount to some, it’s enough to keep me going. I started writing to reach more people and encourage them with my words. A little growth shows me that I am reaching more people.
I make little goals on my follower count. I am at forty followers right now, and my next goal is fifty. I feel blessed to even have forty people follow me to read my writing.
Conclusion
Life is not perfect. We will most likely not get everything we want in life. However, it doesn’t mean we can never be successful or find contentment among our chaos.
If you have a dream, follow it. Make realistic goals to get yourself there. Be sure to find contentment with each phase. You can still be dreamer, but don’t lose sight of what you have right now.
Trust God, and He will give what you need when you need it. And remember, you don’t always know exactly what you need.
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My book, Party Pooper: Growing up with Anxiety, is available now on Amazon (eBook and Paperback).
