If you are like most people, there must have been times when your alarm wakes you up in the morning and you say oh no! as you snuggle back into bed. Or you have a business and when faced with challenges associated with running it, the motivation to forge ahead vanishes. I can tell you firsthand that staying motivated when the odds are against you is difficult. It is even more difficult to achieve your goals when you lack the motivation and the tenacity to pursue them.

Essentially, to achieve anything tangible, you’ll need the drive to commence and the motivation to stay on course regardless of any challenges you may encounter along the way. Being motivated becomes easy when you have a full understanding of what your goals entail. It is not feasible to start what you cannot finish. So in order to stay motivated, it is important to ensure your goals are:

• Specific: This means setting clear, concise and unambiguous goals. Every goal must be definitive and detailed.
• Measurable: This means you’ll need to understand what exactly you intend to accomplish and set a criteria for accomplishing them.
• Achievable: keep your goal simple and attainable.
• Realistic: To achieve your goals, you must be realistic about your expectations. It must be within reach and be relevant to your purpose.
• Timely: There must be a time frame assigned to each goal or task you want to accomplish. The reason a timeline is important is because it creates a sense of urgency, and also helps keep you on course.

SMART is a well established tool that helps many plan and accomplish their set goals. No matter the amount of motivation you possess, if your goals are not SMART, there’s a high tendency it won’t be accomplished.

Here are 5 ways to stay motivated to achieve your goals.

Remember why you started your journey

There’s always a reason why you started a journey and there will always be challenges at every turn. Challenges are what reminds us that the goals we set are worth accomplishing. Never get discouraged when you cannot see a path in front of you. Keep pushing, keep striving until every facet of your goals becomes a reality.

Listen to motivational podcasts

This has really helped me a lot in my personal life’s journey. Besides coffee, motivational articles and podcasts are very fundamental to my daily activity. They remind me of the essence of why I do what I do. Motivational materials give hope and the adrenaline that pushes us to get up and keep moving.

Work out

When you exercise, endorphins are released and that helps the mind and our overall mental health. Beyond the physical fitness we gain by working out, it reinforces our drive to go above and beyond to achieve other goals we set for ourselves.

Encourage yourself

The truth is that no matter the external motivation we get, holistic transformation starts from the mind. Dreams are conceived first in the subconscious mind before they spill into other areas of our life. Essentially, to get results and achieve your goals, you must be willing to go through the process with or without the encouragement of others. If you can’t see yourself winning, you can never win.

Avoid toxicity

Toxins are very damaging to our health and they are not just bacterias or fungi. There are people, places or situations that are worse than the most deadly diseases. They are not only bad for our physical health, they affect our mental health as well. To stay motivated, you need holistically sound health. When you have toxic people or situations standing between you and what you can actually accomplish, it is important to cut them out. Doing this will ensure you maintain a healthy mind to stay motivated to achieve your goals.

We live at a time when it is super easy to lose focus and be derailed from accomplishing whatever we set out to achieve. People, places and situations are just tools that could stand as an impediment to achieve our heart desires. But we can determine who stays and who leaves in order for us to focus and look ahead to what we can truly accomplish.

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