Nigerian Entrepreneur

How do you stay motivated when things seems to go all wrong? This article gives 5 Tips for staying motivated even when discouraging factors abound.

Keeping yourself motivated is crucial for you to achieve your goal in life and business. You need to motivate yourself in other to excel at your job. Also, you need to motivate whoever is working with you if you really want to have a winning team. Coaches understand this issue better. A team that is not motivated will surely get a poor performance irrespective of how talented the member of the team may be.

Motivating yourself to excel at your business should not be something you do only once a while. As a blogger, I have often been tempted to abandon blogging and move on to somethings I consider much more interesting. But then, there is a wise saying that quitters don’t win and winners don’t quit.

Self-motivation is an ongoing process that should include every facet of your business life. This means your mental attitude, physical well-being and appearance, work atmosphere, your interaction with others (clients and employees alike), and your off-the-job environment.

In this generation, there are professional motivational coaches who earn a living by giving talks to professionals and businessmen who are striving for success. I won’t ask you for any money, but here are five tips that will keep you motivated enough to realize your goal.

You Need a Positive Attitude – You may not be in a position to determine what happens to your or your business. However, you are 100% capable of determining how you react to the event. Your reaction to issues is much more important than the events themselves. If you react with a positive mental attitude, you will most likely figure out a way to turn adverse situation to an opportunity. However, whenever you put up a negative attitude, you simply end up magnifying the challenge you are facing until it becomes impossible to tackle.

Have you noticed that when you are around people/things that are uplifting and positive, you feel that way. You have more confidence in yourself, and know you can change whatever needs changing. If you can make your workplace such a place you’ll find happier workers and higher production. You might even find your employees look forward to coming to work!

Keep Personal Challenges Personal – As an entrepreneur, it is necessary for you to keep personal problems as personal and not mix them up with business challenges. You will make greater progress in your business if you keep your personal troubles at home and not rub them off on your employees or clients.

Once you are at work, give your full attention and energy to your business and forget about the challenges you had at home. This gives you a mental break from the troubles at home and also ensure that your team members do not get saddled with troubles they can’t possibly solve. Encourage each team member to keep their personal troubles at home too, except if they need personal advice. Discourage people from transferring personal troubles to the work-place and using it to react to fellow employee or clients.

Create Positive Affirmations – It is true that a man eventually becomes what he thinks about all day long. That means if you change what you think about, you can change your life. One way of achieving that is by taking time to write down positive affirmations on little piece of papers and read them out aloud to yourself all day long. What your eyes see and ears hear, your mind will believe. Try it! After you’ve written them down, read them aloud to yourself and do it every morning when you get into work. You’ll be amazed at what happens. Come up with a set of new ones every month. Statements such as, “I’m an important and valuable person,” or “I know I’ll make good use of my time today.” Repeating them out loud several times a day will help keep you motivated.

Take a Break – Remember that wise saying, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Well, the truth is all work and no “break” will make any entrepreneur an unhealthy person. Working round the clock without adequate rest is counter-productive. Your body and brain need time to rejuvenate. If you refuse to rest, you simply become less productive, and may actually end up a wreck due to stress. Don’t get wound up with the project or situation you’re working on that you don’t ease up. Thinking that it’ll be solved in the next few seconds, and then you’ll get a cup of coffee can lead you right up to quitting time. Regularly adhering to a specified break schedule, even if you’re the boss, releases the tension. If you work on a computer this is even a greater problem because before you realize it – you’ve been working in that same position for hours. The best answer to this is to set yourself a reminder on your appointment calendar for every 2 hours, and let the computer reminder chime send you the alert to move around. I’ve gotten into health trouble due to long hours of working on my desktop without resting. Eventually, I had to take several days off to recuperate. So, I strongly advise that you take a break, less you break-down.

Exercise Your Body – Your body need to be exercised to keep fit. Remember, health is the first wealth you must possess. A healthy body is about the greatest asset you can ever have as an entrepreneur. Irrespective of how wonderful your business ideas may be, if you are sick in your body, you may not be able to turn such business ideas to money making ventures. It is therefore wise to keep your body fit. By “exercise” I don’t mean that you should go out and join a gym and spend your lunch-time, 3-days-a-week there working out. What is really beneficial and workable is that at regular intervals, leave the task you are working on, get up and walk around your desk or room. Maybe go outside and get the mail and enjoy the sunlight (if you’re an entrepreneur that has a home office), or just get up and do a few stretches. Concentrated, tense thinking – typing – plotting plans – or whatever your work, makes all those muscles tighten up and knot up. Then when we move we “ooh” and “ouch” because we’ve knotted up into a ball of tension. Periodic stretching, even at our desk, or just getting up and walking over to the window and getting a different view can help. One of the greatest disservice modern business décor has done to us, is making our offices pristine, sleek, unencumbered spaces. There is nothing more relaxing than getting up from your desk and walking over to a peaceful, serene, seascape or pastoral painting and just drinking it in visually. Momentarily transporting your mind out of work and into that place does wonders. A few good paintings and less shiny chrome in offices would benefit us all.

I do hope you’ll put this 5 tips to use. They may sound simple or mere repetition of what you’ve read elsewhere. I never told you I manufactured them. However, I can sincerely tell you that the tips works. If you have a tip that works for you that I did not mention, kindly share with us in the comment section. You can get future updates to this article 5 Tips For Staying Motivated by subscribing to my RSS feed.