4 Ways to Stay Motivated & Focused
Worrying about the opinions of others who won’t be in your life 10 years from now, or are unwilling to support your dreams and ambitions, is absurd. The rent to occupy space in your head should be...
Staying motivated is a challenge that new and established entrepreneurs grapple with regularly. As the exhilaration of launching a new venture begins to wane after your first weeks or months in business, one of the biggest challenges is staying focused and energized absent a boss or company imperatives.
On the flipside, monotony can begin to grind on your psyche after you have built a successful business and defined your success formula. Yes, monotony. Long-term business success often boils down to who will repeatedly execute some really simple steps for longer, with more enthusiasm, and with greater vigor than the next person. In other words, the successful do what many would regard as really boring stuff over and over again with the same high level of focus and energy. The business endeavor that was once a shiny object and a symbol of your success, is now like a grumpy manager making constant demands of your time, energy, and attention.
Whether a new entrepreneur or a successful business owner working through the monotony, finding ways to stay motivated is of utmost importance. Those who crack the code understand that staying motivated is a skilled trade that requires investment to learn. Here are a couple of tools to help you find the energy to keep building when you may have lost that passion for your business:
Get Your Head Right
Entrepreneurs must be able to answer the following questions, or they risk finding themselves falling victim to chasing “shiny objects,” expending energy on things that do not serve them, or never rising above mediocrity.
What are your values, and what is the impact you truly desire to make in the world?
How do you want to serve?
Who do you want to serve, and why?
When you answer these questions for yourself, do not make the mistake of parroting societal values if these values are not your own. What’s important to you may or may not align with society’s priorities. Maybe purchasing watches, yachts, or other shiny objects truly gives you energy. It is what it is. Perhaps you desire power, influence, and recognition. It’s all good. Maybe you were deeply impacted by observing the death of a loved one due to cancer or gun violence, making particular causes important to you. Great. Whatever the case may be, be honest. Just remember that it’s extremely difficult to spend your life’s energies on a compromise.
Entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey at times. Worrying about the opinions of others who won’t be in your life 10 years from now, or are unwilling to support your dreams and ambitions, is absurd. The rent to occupy space in your head should be extremely expensive. The rent is positivity, love, support, contribution, encouragement, affirmation, and feedback that sharpens and improves you. And it needs to be collected every day.
You should reflect on the answers to these questions on a daily basis. Your goals and affirmations should be written down daily, be omnipresent, and affirm the person your business and dreams require you to be. Here’s an exercise to help with the process.
Remember That Your Attention is Your Greatest Asset
Attention is like the sun. Whatever you focus it on grows, and what you neglect withers. What are you focusing your attention on daily? How frequently and for how long?
Is your attention, and thus your engine, being focused on people and things that don’t serve your best interests or lack a return on investment (ROI)? Focusing on what someone said to you years ago. Your fears and anxieties. The people you are angry with or envious of. The job or boss you can’t stand.
Or are you focused on consuming things that will improve your mindset, strengthen your character, improve your stamina, stir your creativity, and therefore increase your value? These things cannot be taken from you, and allow you to win indefinitely.
How much screen time do you spend on entertainment versus intentionally watching things that sharpen the saw? How often do you listen to a useful podcast while driving, as opposed to music or talk radio? When your mind begins to wander toward thinking about sports, music, gossip, and other people’s lives, what are you doing to offset all of those empty mental calories? You have choices:
Business Podcasts
Momentum Calls: Find a collective of people who are moving in the direction you desire to move, and doing what you are doing
Training: People don’t raise to their level of desire, but rather their level of preparation
Books of the Month
Inspirational Movies
YouTube Content from Credible Doers
Seminars, Conventions, and Workshops
Every moment that you are involved in something that is not growing you, you are being left behind. You’re either living or dying in every moment. There is no in-between. Become obsessed. Yes, obsessed! And extremely intentional about where your attention is focused.
Guard the Gates with Positive Routines
Your daily schedule is either pouring life into you, or sapping you of your strength. For some of us, brushing our teeth and washing our face is part of our morning schedule. We do it reflexively, without even thinking about it. We become agitated when these routines are disrupted.
The key to keeping negativity out and allowing space for positive outcomes is found in setting positive routines. In other words, if you fill your refrigerator to the brim with nothing but fruits, vegetables, nuts, beet and pomegranate juice, and 1-gallon jugs of water there will be little to no room for soda, pizza boxes, beer cans, and greasy leftovers. Dedicate time to reviewing your goals, exercising, writing for 30 minutes regardless of whether it results in good content or not, executing your top 3 tasks for the day, reading, and consuming content and information that sharpens you, having substantive conversations with people who improve you, attending training or networking events … You get the point.
All of those activities are time-consuming, and that is the point. When your invaluable time, attention, and energy are so occupied with things that serve you, it is extremely difficult for people and things that don’t serve you to find room. Positive routines are how you guard the gates to your time and attention.
Stop Lying to Yourself
“I’ll go to the gym when I feel like it.”
“I’ll start saving and investing when I have extra money.”
“I’ll invest in the books, training, and conventions once I start earning more.”
“I’ll stop going out with friends on weeknights next month.”
You are lying to yourself. You are living inside your own personal fantasyland. The truth is that you won’t feel like going to the gym until you go to the gym and start seeing the results. You won’t have the extra money until you start investing in books, training, and conventions.
Your routines for how you spend your attention, money, and time have gotten you where you are. If you want different outcomes, you need to start following different routines. And change will hurt because it’s supposed to. People dramatically underestimate the magnitude of work and inputs required to enjoy magnificent results. If you want extraordinary results, then you have to give extraordinary effort. There is no hack for this.
The good thing is that most people have such an allergic reaction to change, uncertainty, and duress that you can put yourself so far ahead by embracing the ugly duckling stage of your journey. A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step, and… “There's no traffic jam on the extra mile.” - Zig Ziglar
Take the first step towards elevated performance by scheduling your consultation with JSB Business Solutions. Click this link and schedule a day and time that works best for you.
The world around us wasn’t built by the exceptional. It was built by everyday people who were willing to do exceptional things. Go build something.
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