7 Rules of Motivation from Olympic Champions
How are you doing in achieving your goals? Have you set your goals for the next year or two? If you can already boast of progress, we congratulate you. However, most people only set goals, postponing their achievement for various reasons.
Not everyone is given the will that the Olympic champions have. We have compiled for you 7 motivation rules used by these athletes.
- Find the hidden meaning
Now it is fashionable to set goals, but often misses their true meaning. Use the triple “Why” method to find meaning for purpose. It’s simple: ask yourself the question “Why?” 3 times and answer it.For example, you set a goal to go to the gym regularly.
– Why do you want to go to the gym?
– To tighten your body and feel more attractive.
– Why do you want to feel more attractive?
– Because I want to find a young man.
– Why do you want to find a young man?
– Because I want to start a family.
There you have it, the true meaning of your goal – not just going to the gym, but starting a family. Now try to find the meaning of your own goal.
- Divide your goals into stages
In studies of athletes by psychologists from Harvard, it turned out that no one can motivate us more than a constant sense of progress. If you see that you are not moving forward, sooner or later you will quit.
Set small daily, weekly goals for yourself so you can see results here and now.For example, copywriters from the Writemypaperbro service do this all the time, and this greatly helps them to be productive in their daily work. When you check the boxes next to the goals you’ve accomplished, you’ll feel much happier.
Let’s go back to our gym example. Prepare a specific workout plan for yourself. For example, day one: 20 minutes on the exercise bike; week one: go to the gym 3 times.
When you see your small victories on a regular basis, your confidence in yourself and in your own abilities will grow.
- Visualize the path, not the goal
It’s a third rule of Olympic athletes. Everyone has heard this popular myth: visualize your goal already achieved, then you’ll be one step closer to success.
However, science says exactly the opposite. When we visualize a goal we’ve achieved, the brain decides it’s actually achieved and relaxes. After all, it has already achieved it, so why work?
Instead of visualizing the goal achieved, visualize the process – the way, how and what you will do to achieve what you want.
- Don’t fall for the reward bait
Imagine that you pulled yourself together and still managed to go to the gym 14 times. What would you do if you came back from it 15 times?
If you decided to thank yourself and eat a piece of cake, you would stop immediately.
Research says that such actions can significantly reduce your motivation. You must remember that motivation should be internal, not external. And when you “reward” yourself, you are substituting one motivation for another.
- Ask yourself, “Can I do it?”
Usually when people get discouraged, they try to motivate themselves with the affirmation “I can do it!” or “I will do it!”
But you have to know the measure in everything. It has already been proven that positive thinking taken to extremes can have negative consequences.
Instead of convincing yourself that you can, face it and ask yourself:
“Can I do it?”
A number of studies have already shown us that people who question their ability to achieve goals tend to be more successful than those who simply say they will achieve them.
- Train your willpower
It’s hard to believe, but willpower can be trained like a muscle. There are 2 effective ways to train it:
Exercise. If you exercise for 15 minutes every day, it’s already a big step forward to developing more motivation;
Meditation. Regular meditation helps you resist irrational impulses to a greater degree and stick to your promises.
- Identify with your self-image in the future
The main reason why people take their time to pursue goals is because we think as if we will have more time, opportunity, desire, and power to achieve goals in the future.Psychologists say that our brain thinks of us in the future as a completely different person, unrelated to us now.
It’s as if we forget that our future self will have the same thoughts and feelings as we do, and the consequence is that we will end up like that, leaving everything for later.
But there is one simple way to connect yourself to your future self and prevent endless procrastination: every time you put things off, imagine that the future is already today. Then you will see that there is not much difference between your present and your future, that you now and you in the future are exactly the same person. This will strengthen your will and desire to get things done.
Hopefully, these 7 points will help you better understand your goals and not to put them off.
