by Annie Kaycora

Created on: September 27, 2008

Ah the art of motivation. The first part of my contribution would be that you must have clearly defined goals in life, and clarity surrounding your purpose. These are the major keys to yielding an abundance of motivation. Now this article is moreso about maintaining motivation than it is acquiring it so let's lend to that.

Setting short term goals, such as weekly or even daily goals, keeps us on track and motivated. The reason being, if we only have goals on a yearly basis (i.e. 5 year goals, 10 year goals) often times it is hard to see all the little steps in between, therefore making all the little successes along the way, seem more like failure after failure. We all like bite-sizes things don't we? We buy bite sized cookies, snacks and candies, bite sized vegetables even -and that is how we can approach things in life too. We've all heard of one step at a time, well here you're hearing it again, or reading more like it! Break your goals down, into daily pieces, weekly marks, and I can almost guarantee maintained motivation. My goodness, if your goal was to make a million dollars in 2 years, after 2 months with a bank balance of $200 still you might start to feel like an idiot for even trying! Now, what if your goal was to earn $1500 in two weeks? Once you achieve that, you reach for your next mark, and step by step, day by day, still excited, you will likely reach your goal so long as you are still putting work into it.

There are so many nooks and crannies to this topic I'm afraid I cannot type fast enough! There is a rule for setting goals, in order to stay within the realm of reality, and in order to preserve the excitement, we must follow this code: S.M.A.R.T (I did not make this up, I believe it is Jim Rohn whom I learned it from)

SPECIFIC - Saying 'I want to make a ton of money' may likely make you a ton of NOTHING.

MEASURABLE - Can you measure your progress? Take daily pictures, count the money daily, etc.

ATTAINABLE - Yes the sky is the limit but using your circumstances, set goals that are within your reach, but still challenge you and bring you beyond your comfort zone...leads into the next one..

REALISTIC - We could argue this one with the question of 'Does IMPOSSIBLE really exist?' but let's be real and say we shouldn't set a goal to make 3 trillion dollars in 5 hours and rule the world

TIME - We must set deadlines. Imagine "Take swimming lessons at some point in my lifetime" as opposed to "Take swimming lessons by January 2009" We are all creatures of procrastination a bit, in school, if homework was due 'whenever' who KNOWS when any homework would ever get turned in!

How does this tie into staying motivated? Setting goals inaccurately is a big reason why many of us lose motivation. If you break the REALISTIC rule, or any of the rules for that matter, it is easy to lose hope and just give in. How can you stay motivated if your goal is to "Open up a business someday", does 'someday' light a fire under anyone's tush? All votes should tally up an emphatic NO. Break it down instead, into "Buy a book on start up business by next weekend" then another goal that is "finish the startup business book by the end of this month" etc. Now THAT, can keep you excited. It's called the BEAR system. First, we run on BELIEF, which turns into EXCITEMENT, which leads us to take ACTION, which yields RESULTS which turns into MORE belief..excitement..action and MORE results! That is how you stay motivated: set small SMART goals, and the BEAR system will keep you alive.

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