How to Greatly Improve Your Motivation and Outlook

While motivation and your outlook on life are two separate things, they are also intertwined. It's hard to motivate yourself when you don't believe in yourself, and it's hard to believe in yourself when you don't have a positive outlook. Through the power of positive thinking, you can begin to improve your outlook on life, which will enable you to stay focused, be confident and improve your motivation. By improving your motivation, you'll also increase your rewards, which will give you a more positive outlook on life, thus perpetuating the cycle of positivity.

Instructions

Improving Your Outlook

• 1

  Find out exactly what's bothering you. If you're in a bad mood, determine why you feel the way you do. If, for instance, you're angry at your father, make it clear to yourself by saying "I'm angry at my father." Write it down on a piece of paper.

• 2

  Determine why you're feeling the way you do. Continuing the example of being angry at your father, write down what specifically made you mad. For instance, you could say "I'm angry at my father for neglecting to pay attention to me after I accomplished a difficult task."

• 3

  Invalidate the belief. Counteract your negative belief with proof that the opposite has been true in the past. Continuing with the example, you could think of times when your father was quite kind to you and gave you praise or a reward for a job well done. The idea here is that you will realize that positive things are possible, and will come again in the future.

• 4

  Focus on how good you feel after you have shed your negative thought. Remember this feeling the next time you feel negative.

• 5

  Calm yourself down and visualize what it will be like when you achieve what you want to achieve. Feel the positive feelings of success and accomplishment. Set aside a few minutes each day for this visualization. Keep this image, and those feelings, in mind as you go through your day. This will help you keep a positive focus on your life's outlook.

Improve Motivation

• 6

  Be grateful for who you are and what you have. Gratitude is a powerful emotion that will restore belief in yourself, and put you in a positive mood.

• 7

  Create realistic goals based on wants. We have a habit of focusing on negative things or things that we don't want. For instance, we work a job because we don't want to be poor, not necessarily because we want to work. Developing goals based on wants will increase your desire to work toward them. Making the goals realistic will also allow you to achieve them easier, and achieving goals will motivate you to work toward more goals.

• 8

  Give yourself rewards. Don't focus on punishing yourself, but rather on rewarding yourself. If, for instance, you want to go to school, then treat yourself to a night out after you sign up for classes. If you want to write a book, buy yourself a bottle of wine after you complete the first few chapters.

• 9

  Get organized. Create a schedule each day, and stick to it. Idle time creates procrastination. By keeping a strict schedule, you're more likely to accomplish your goals, and seeing results will motivate you to keep working.

• 10

  Stay positive. Focus on the good things about yourself and about your work. Remember all that you have accomplished when you start feeling down. By improving your self-confidence, staying focused on the subject at hand, and working towards achievable goals, you can greatly improve your outlook and motivation.