Today I wanted to focus on talking about how we can increase our motivation, not just for work, but for hobbies, dreams, and goals that we may personally have. You may have a dream to play tennis for a club or want to paint a beautiful landscape, but currently, you're just not feeling the motivation to do it. I want to give you some tips and tricks to help boost your motivation and make you feel better about yourself. 
Our society seems to be all about performance, doesn't it? We have to do our best, be our best, look the best, etc. For me, I've always felt I've had to perform, not as just as a saleswoman, but as a parent. And both are challenging! But the stress to perform can be a negative motivation. Let's step back and talk about what is the difference between positive and negative motivations. Positive motivations come from feelings of wanting to better yourself, giving yourself joy in doing something, or knowing that you'll feel better after doing a certain thing. Positive motivations are healthy and are what we could focus on to help ourselves become more motivated. For example, my positive motivation for exercising might be: I'm going to feel great after this! Or my positive motivation for doing the dishes is that I'll have clean plates to use for my next meal. It's pretty self-explanatory.
Negative motivations are also pretty self-explanatory, and they come from feelings of fear, sadness, or stress due to a stressful or scary situation. For example, in the past, I've struggled with body image, wanting to be a figure that was just impossible to obtain. Because of this, I had negative motivations of stress trying to obtain the perfect weight, and this led to unhealthy diet choices. Negative motivations can give you the effects you want, but in the long run, are unhealthy. By determining if your motivations are positive or negative, you can start to understand more about your own motivation process.
Once you know whether your motivations are positive or negative, it's easier to understand how you can boost your motivation. If you know that you have positive motivations, you can boost those by setting small goals for yourself using those motivations as tricks to keep yourself going. For example, if I'm positively motivated to exercise because it makes me feel good, I can use that good feeling and set goals for myself of doing small exercises every-day, knowing I'll have achieved my goal when I feel good after the exercise. It's pretty easy to follow through on, and once you get into a rhythm, you'll be able to better understand how to boost your own motivations when they are lower. 
The last thing, don't overdo it. For me, I easily fall into a trap of trying to do too many things at once and can overwhelm myself and more easily burn out. To combat this, I've decided that I have had a productive day if I have gotten just three of my tasks done, they can be big or small tasks, it doesn't matter. But if I've accomplished three things, I'll go to bed feeling more productive and happier than before. If you're someone who tends to overdo things, try this tip and see if maybe that can also work for you.
Remember that no matter what motivations you have, that you are capable of succeeding in your situations, and you're here for a reason.
Until next time!
Katie
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