As if you didn’t need any other reminders at this point, Covid-19 sucks.  Like a little gremlin with an appetite for destruction this virus snuck into the gears of our lives and took a monkey wrench to our plans for 2020. As some of us come out of lockdown, we are faced with a harsh reality: many businesses have closed, and a lot of people no longer have the stability of their 9-5 jobs. Some of the more strained households have gone as far as deciding to tap into their 401(k) retirement plans. The financial outlook for the future is grim and uncertain. Many people are coming out of quarantine feeling hopeless and depressed, and staying motivated enough to get our lives back on track in the new normal will be quite challenging.

Though challenging, it is not impossible. The post pandemic future requires a new mindset.

The first challenge to overcome on the road to staying motivated is to shake off the quarantine blues.

Related Reads:

The New Normal: Getting Life In Order After Lockdown

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Five Steps For Getting Life Back On Track:

1. Repairing a Devastated Mindset

Maybe you or someone you know has been hit hard by the lockdown.  Financial instability brings with it fear and uncertainty; these are certainly nothing to take lightly but they are not insurmountable.  Escape from these problems might be closer than you think.  All it may take is an adjustment to how one thinks.  All too often, the things that block the path to success are things that we tell ourselves. 

These “limiting beliefs” are usually some of the biggest obstacles to staying motivated and achieving success. 

So let’s take a look at some of the things that are recommended to help people adjust their mindset and overcome these limiting beliefs.

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs Through Positive Affirmations

Believe it or not, positive affirmations can help change your reality. That change starts on the inside first. Instead of listening to your worried mind as it conjures up disaster scenarios of life after tapping into savings, it is better to aim at feeling positive.

This can be achieved by writing down positive affirmations of how you want life to be.   Simply reading them back until the brain is ready to let them in can start changing the way the realities of life are perceived.  

Remember if you don’t feel like writing your own affirmations, you can always start working on it by “borrowing” the affirmations of others that may prove helpful.

When repeated on a regular basis, positive affirmations can help change our emotional state. Once we start to feel like we are gaining control over our emotions, then we are on a good way to getting our lives on track and staying motivated.

Read more about using affirmations to transform your life.

Journaling

Keeping a journal is very helpful when trying to cultivate a positive mindset. Start by expressing how you are feeling at the moment. On the next page rewrite it with how would you like things to be instead.

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2. Start Looking For Opportunities

The havoc that the pandemic has wrought upon the world might be irreversible.  Exercise the control you do have by trying to maintain an open mindset and looking for opportunities. Even though many businesses closed during the lockdown, some that would have closed managed to survive by seeing a new opportunity instead of an obstacle. They showed resilience by adjusting their business models quickly and switching their offline operations to online operations.

At the onset of the pandemic they could just wait for it to end, however, life after lockdown has taught us that it’s best to start adjusting to the new normal. Social distancing and working from home will be here to stay for some time.

When it comes to working online from the comfort of our homes, the opportunities are unlimited: starting an online business, a blog, or an ecommerce shop, just to name a few.  Finding opportunities to reinvent ourselves is a means of staying motivated in what’s to come.

3. Set Goals: Planning for Success

This is where the real magic begins. 2020 has wrecked most people’s plans. Those uneasy with the remaining uncertainty might not be inclined to make new plans. However, planning is crucial for success. If anything this year is a reminder that circumstances can change, and plans must remain flexible and adjust accordingly. That’s what the most resilient businesses and individuals did to conquer the challenges that the pandemic presented them with.

Questions to ask yourself before you set goals

Start planning by setting new goals in line with the new normal. Before you start with the process of goal setting you might want to ask yourself the following questions to help you get a better feel for the direction you might be taking:

1. What is it that you have always wanted to do?
2. Do you have any dreams that were put on the back burner because you couldn’t sacrifice the stability of your 9-5 job?
3. Is there any particular area you feel competent in and have the expertise to help others?
4. Have you been thinking about the purpose of your life? What would you like to do with the rest of your life?
5. What is stopping you from achieving your ambition?
6. Do you need to invest in some additional courses or training in order to acquire the necessary skills to do what you want?

Use Planners

When it comes to planning, it is important to set specific goals. For this purpose, I recommend using planners. They are very handy and can help simplify overwhelming tasks while allowing you to track progress.

I first learned about planning methods when I was reading the book “On Managing Yourself”, part of the Harvard Business Review‘s 10 Must Reads Set. Following the techniques recommended by the book, I found out that after few months goals became easier to achieve.

The secret to goal setting and what makes it work lies in detailed planning.

Set Specific Goals for Each Area of Your Life

First and foremost, set goals for each area of your life.  Break it down into things like work, self, finances, health, relationship, etc.

Break Large Goals into Measurable Parts

The second step is to define the expected result for each goal. This metric is very useful and serves as a means to measure the extent to which goals were accomplished or by how much they weren’t realised.

Define Implementation Steps

Step three involves listing in detail all the implementation steps necessary to accomplish the goals that have been set. Defining clear implementation steps for each stage is crucial for avoiding failure, and it helps to break big, overwhelming tasks into small bites.

Set Deadlines

Finally we should set a deadline by which we expect goals to be accomplished. Depending on the time necessary for accomplishment, some goals might be short term, others long term.

Set Monthly, Weekly, and Daily Goals

Listing goals on paper allows for monitoring of progress as well as making necessary adjustments when inevitable changes happen. Big, long term goals might seem a bit intimidating, especially if you’re just getting started and feel you lack the confidence to accomplish something big.

That’s why it’s best to start by undertaking one step at a time. Setting monthly, weekly, as well as daily goals to break up big goals into smaller chunks is very helpful for this process. Small steps lead to small victories which in turn help to boost confidence necessary for achieving big goals, as well as staying motivated during the process.

4. Take Action

Plans often change and there isn’t a perfect plan. When it comes to taking action, many people tend to procrastinate simply because they fear failure.

Conquer The Fear of Failure

 Fear of failure is a common reaction to being faced with something we’ve never done previously. When fed regularly, the fear of failure becomes the ultimate cause for failure in the pursuit of dreams.

Avoid Procrastination

One action people take when they fear failure is to blow their time on acquiring the skills they feel are necessary to avoid failure.  More often than not this is just an excuse for procrastination that helps to prevent people from taking real action.  Many of the skills required for things can be learned as you go; unless your goal is something like parachuting, in which case prepare as much as you can and learn the skills beforehand.   Whatever you do, don’t defer your actual goals in preparation for taking action.

Taking action is the single and most important step that brings goals to fruition.

As you begin toward your goal, ensure that you take small steps and do something every day that brings you closer to achievement. Taking small steps reduces the risk of failure and will provide much needed boosts to confidence. 

Review your goals regularly and stay focused by prioritizing the tasks that matter most and will push you toward your desired direction.

Take Responsibility For Your Actions

Do not blame others when things don’t go as expected. Instead, take responsibility for your actions. Be solution and action-oriented. Sometimes we succeed and move forward, but sometimes we just need to learn. Look at setbacks as opportunities,  as the blocks on the road to success.

5. Don’t Give Up!

How to Stay Motivated and Reach Your Goals

Making a dream come true is not an overnight task. It might be a long road filled with challenges that require courage, persistence, and self-discipline. Staying motivated is the key to persistence.

Believe In Yourself

Achieving anything is almost impossible without some degree of confidence in yourself and your abilities.  If you’ve been cultivating limiting beliefs that have instilled doubt in yourself, you might find it hard to stay motivated on the journey to success. Bring your doubts and fears to light, and gradually try to replace them with a positive belief in yourself through the practice of positive affirmations.

Keep a Gratitude Journal

Setting aside time to keep a gratitude journal will help remind you of your successes and the good things in life. Focusing on people you are grateful to have in your life as well as the good things that happen in everyday life will help you stay positive.  Keeping a gratitude journal is an excellent way to stave off the blues and remain positive when setbacks happen.

Visualize Your Goals

When done properly visualization helps to bridge the gap between our goals and reality.   Visualizing acts as a “mental rehearsal”, which can help generate creative ideas to help us reach our goals. If done consistently, it helps us concentrate on our goals and stay motivated to take the necessary actions in order to achieve our dreams.

When we visualize, it is important to see ourselves achieving the end goal in our mind’s eye. By doing this we create visual images of the goal in our mind, which serve as a roadmap for the brain to follow. Furthermore, if we bring emotions into play and “trick the brain” into feeling like we’ve already achieved the goal, this increases the likelihood of realizing the goal faster.

Meditation is another great way to help stay motivated. It helps improve our willpower, attention, focus and it is especially useful for stress management.  Visualization can be easily incorporated into a meditative practice.

Take Small Steps

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Chinese Proverb.

Great things in life do not happen overnight. Instead, take small steps and learn to build habits gradually. Large goals might seem intimidating at first. Breaking them down into smaller steps is a great strategy that takes you closer to your goals.

Surround Yourself With Positive People 

When starting a new venture, especially when starting from scratch, it’s easy to be vulnerable to the comments and criticism of others.

Though feedback is important when starting out, it is also very important to differentiate feedback from criticism, which in the long term can impact our motivation and persistence.  Surrounding yourself with people that will support you and bolster your efforts even when they’re delivering criticism are indispensable allies in your journey toward success.  They will help you to stay motivated and positive as you pursue your goals.

Read Next:

How to Make a Relationship Work When Life Gets in the Way

How To Practice the Hygge Lifestyle During Pandemic 

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