Picture this, you are finally at step one, two or three of your many paths to success. You are beyond proud of yourself, but you are starting to feel worn out, after all the drive, effort, and determination it took you to get to your path, which was exhausting. You can’t help but to get in your head and start to think, is this stage enough; am I doing the best for myself in the timely matter? The ‘long story, short’ answer is yes. Any achievement, overcoming an obstacle, a step in the right direction is a success in itself.
How are you going to keep reminding yourself that what you are currently doing is enough and how do you keep ‘your drive a current?’ There are many ways in which you can identify your stage of success and fulfilment. With success comes hard work and resilience and with hard work and resilience comes success.
One of the most important things in life is to recognise, reflect and appreciate. Stressing about the next best thing won’t rush along your vision of success and will make the next paths an unenjoyable journey. Why is this? Because you will be constantly searching for the next best thing and won’t appreciate where you are today is something you dreamed of five years ago.
So, what can we as individuals do to ensure we are staying current and keeping motivated? Firstly, reflection. There are many ways to reflect and to establish what works best for yourself. One of the many things you can do is journaling. Journaling gives you the opportunity to execute your thoughts and on occasions, you discover things that you weren’t even aware of about yourself until you put pen to paper or finger to keyboard.
Secondly, create something that you can look back on to remind yourself of how far you have come. For example, you can create a folder or a document of all your achievements, things that people have said about you and refer to this whenever you are wanting to feel reminded. Remaining along the lines of visualisation, an effective strategy is to create a vision board, this can be done in whatever way suits you best. Some individuals use features such as Pinterest or Canva, where you can add pictures to a ‘board’ (also known as mood board, or all onto one visually pleasing sheet. Creating a vision board gets your creative juices flowing and therefore can add the correlation to view your goals and success as a fun and exciting journey. The effect of journaling, visualising, and creating a space for your recognition is so you can look back to what you have written & created and remind yourself of why you are putting in the hard work on days where it may be more tough. It will also teach you to not rely on others to build up your motivational attitude, knowing that you are on your own journey, and you are contributing to your visions each day shows just how incredible you are doing!
Asking someone who inspires you to be your mentor is also an effective way to engage in conversations with others who may have a great impact in helping you reach your goals. A mentor can be anyone that you look up to and admire, just don’t be afraid to reach out!
The end message is to understand and appreciate yourself, as the battle to becoming your very best version of yourself is between you and your mindset.
