Here’s how to find the motivation to achieve your goals

Trying your best not to give up?

It’s not that you haven’t tried, it just seems hard to stick to the process of achieving your goals and you’ve often found yourself giving up after two weeks.

If this sounds like an all too familiar year for you, take note of these tips for success!

Find motivation to reach your weight loss goals

Problem: Unrealistic goals

We’re encouraged to ‘dream big’ or ‘reach for the stars’ but in reality when we set goals that seem unachievable we end up losing motivation to reach them and get discouraged by inevitable failures.

If your goal is to lose weight, being unrealistic about how to go about it can be a real set back to losing any weight at all.

Solution: Set incremental goals

An effective way to achieve seemingly unrealistic goals may be by setting incremental goals.

So say your goal is to lose a lot of weight, instead of saying “I’m going to lose 7 st. this year” try to break it up into smaller targets over a shorter period of time. So losing a mammoth 7 st. now becomes:

• About 8 lb every month
• Around 2 lb each week

Now that’s achievable! Each incremental goal you achieve will give you the motivation and drive to achieve the next goal. Take it week-by-week or month-by-month, and you’ll be more likely to hold out till you reach your goal.

Problem: Focus fatigue

So you have your goal of losing a specific amount of weight, you concentrate on working out and staying on track with healthy eating. After a couple of weeks you find it’s becoming more of a challenge, with the stresses of life, to stick to the process of achieving your goal and you’re losing motivation.

This is what we call ‘focus fatigue’- when it becomes harder to achieve your goal as you lose motivation and focus. Focus fatigue happens when you lose perspective of overall wellbeing.

Being out of balance doesn’t bode well with goal achievement. In fact, it ensures you burn out quickly and spiral back into old destructive habits.

Solution: Focus on fun

Try to set other goals that encourage you to stay on track but create a new sense of motivation. Instead of choosing an activity with the continued goal of, for example, losing weight in mind, try instead to create a goal that makes you happy.

So instead of reluctantly or half-heartedly going to the gym or working out at home, get a group of friends together for a group walk or dance class.

Try something you’ve never thought of before, like pole dancing or rock climbing. Whatever it is, the goal is to inject fun into your day. It’ll make goal achieving less of a focus, which will reboot your motivation to get you back on track.

Problem: You’ve failed

People get discouraged by failure; they give up because they are either too afraid to try again or because they listen to that destructive voice in their mind that puts them down.

Either way it’s fear of failure, not failure itself, which stops many of us from achieving our potential.

Solution: Fail to succeed

Failure is how we learn. From our earliest time learning how to eat, walk and talk, we learn through trial and error. This is the advice we give our children as they grow and this is the advice we need to take on board.

So you haven’t worked out in a while or you didn’t eat the meals from the 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge  this past week. Look at why you didn’t stay on track, register and acknowledge your triggers and move on, doing your best to avoid them.

Instead of dwelling on your failures, accept them and move on.

Problem: You see no progress

Does it feel like you’re putting in all the work but you aren’t seeing any progress? This can discourage anyone because it’s easy to forget that success isn’t instant.

No matter how hard you try, you won’t lose all your weight within two weeks. It’s at this point a lot of people simply give up.

Solution: Take note of what you have achieved

Instead of focusing on the results you can’t see try to appreciate what progress you have made. Have you managed to change your diet? Have you increased your physical activity? Do you find your willpower is stronger when saying no to the unhealthy treats?

All these small achievements add up to your end goal. You just need to appreciate them.

Stay positive and focused on your overall health. The Healthy Mummy Facebook groups are filled with encouraging and supportive women who can relate to what you are going through. Join one today in order to help achieve your goals. You’ve got this!!

Need some help to stay on track? Check out the 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge!

With over 4,000 recipes, 350 fat burning exercises and 24/7 support, the 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge  can help YOU hit your goal weight faster.

Our Challenge includes:

• 28 days of at home exercise routines (no gym needed) – with video instruction
• New CHALLENGE THEME each month – so you’ll NEVER get bored
• Customisable and breastfeeding friendly meal plans
• Time-efficient exercises for busy mums – under 30 mins
• Challenge combines Pilates exercises with interval and circuit
  training (HIIT)
• Suitable for basic to advanced fitness levels
• Home to thousands of EASY-TO-MAKE recipes!

Join the 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge today!

This blog was written by Shara Smith who is a psychotherapist and a counsellor with over 12 years of experience in the mental health, life coaching and self-care sector. While she loves her husband and three kids, she also loves watching re-runs of Sex in the City and baking decadent cookies that only she gets to eat.