The great Zig Ziglar once said, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. But then, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily”.

You know how it works – you have a goal that you want to reach – building your business, writing a book,  releasing 10 lbs. Whatever it is, you start off full of motivation and fire. You are going to get this done!

The next day, or the next week, or the next month – at some point, guaranteed, you wake up in the morning and just don’t feel like it. Your get up and go has got up and went. How do you keep yourself going?

Start by being very clear on what it is that you wanted to achieve, and especially, WHY. What emotions are connected to achieving this goal? Our rational brain does all the planning, but without our emotions, nothing can ever become important to us. What feeling will we have when we achieve this goal? Will we feel happy, proud, secure, loved? Imagine that feeling. If you are a visual person, consider making a vision board that you can look at every day to remind you of that feeling you are aiming for. If you are an auditory person, consider making recordings of yourself talking about that feeling.

Now, take that goal and reverse engineer it. What is it going to take to achieve this? How many pages do you need to write? How many messages do you need to send out? How much money do you need to save? How often do you need to exercise?

If your goal is worth while, it is probably going to take a lot of work, but don’t be discouraged. Try breaking it down into smaller chunks. For example, if your book is going to have 50,000 words, you can’t write those in a day. But if you set a goal to get that book written in six months, how many words do you need to write each month? Each week? Each day? Your daily goal is a lot smaller than the total, isn’t it? Much more manageable.

A major reason for procrastination is the feeling that we can never achieve our goal, because it seems too big and overwhelming. But if you break it down into baby steps, it doesn’t seem so hard.

Another important part of keeping yourself motivated is accountability. Find a buddy who is doing something similar, and keep each other accountable. It’s amazing how we will resist letting down someone else, when we find it so easy to break our word to ourselves.

What other techniques have you found useful in keeping that motivation going? I’d love to know!