Personal Motivation
What’s personal motivation? Personal motivation is what drives you internally and externally to succeed in what ever you want to succeed in.
Personal motivation helps you accomplish something. Personal motivation can be motivation to do just about anything. It can be motivation to lose weight, complete a task at work, or to do something that you have put on the back burner for a while.
Depression sucks the energy out of a person, so even if you are a motivated individual, you don’t have the energy to do things. Simple tasks others take for granted become huge struggles. But personal motivation, that inside voice that keeps driving you forward, fights hard against depression. It’s a good friend. It’s what makes a depressed person get out of bed, eat breakfast, or get help for depression.
How do you get motivated?
So how do you get motivated? The first thing you need to do is set goals for yourself. The goals have to be realistic goals and they have to be a possible gain.
Too often we tend to set our goals too high, fail, and then blame ourselves. This is just a step backward in the personal motivation search. Goals give us the push we need to get the job done. But they need to be achievable.
It’s a good idea to write down your goals. This makes it easier to see your goals on a daily basis and be reminded of what you’re reaching for.
Write out your goals, stating each goal clearly. In depression, your ultimate goal is to feel better and love yourself. You know you can’t make that goal in one shot. You have to take baby steps, one mini goal at a time.
For instance, a mini goal might be to do something nice everyday for a week to yourself. Well what does nice mean? It changes day to day when you’re depressed. With such a vague goal, you could say watching tv all day is that something nice. That might be true, but ask yourself are there 10 other things I like to do or used to like doing more than watching tv?
A better way of writing out that mini goal would be to list 10 nice things you like to do. This way you have a clearer idea of what nice really means to you. So on that crappy, miserable day you just want to watch tv and say to yourself you did something nice, check your list. Is it on there? If it is, then good. If not, then look for something else you can do that’s nice. Maybe it’s as simple as eating a chocolate bar.
Look at the gain.
You also need to look at the gain. It’s a positive gain if it helps you feel better. Eating a chocolate bar is something you might set out as a goal. But a lot of people think chocolate is bad for you because it adds pounds to your hips. But that one bar can be a positive gain. How? Chocolate is proven to improve mood. Eating chocolate when you’re depressed can elevate your mood for a while, which is a good gain. It can also give you an energy boost to do something else you like doing. Another good gain.
So you set out the goal : do something nice everyday for a week to yourself. You listed 10 things that you like to do. You made sure each item was a positive gain for you.
It’s time to go to the next step. The next step is making a commitment to keep after these goals until they are met.
Never look back on past failures. This really does nothing for your self-esteem. It will only set you back. You can learn from your mistakes, just don’t keep looking back at them.
Twitter: @tereziafarkas #depression #wellness
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