External motivation will always be short-lived but real motivation comes from believing in oneself.

-Sherre Webb

One thing that holds true for everyone, no matter what their socioeconomic state may be, is that everybody will go through tough times. This fact alone is, what I believe to be the weight that continues to keep the majority of humanity grounded. Therefore, we have the choice to view the tough times in life in one of two ways:

1. You can choose to get stuck in a moment by feeling sorry for yourself, angry at someone, or anxious and fearful about the future because you choose to look at a particular event, circumstance, or situation as though something bad is happening to you and only you without digging for the deeper meaning behind what has occurred.
2. You can choose to go inward with the intentions of discovering more about yourself, as well as looking outside of yourself to learn something that you didn’t previously know about the world or someone in your world and then taking that knowledge and applying it in a way that you grow mentally, spiritually, and emotionally with a full understanding that life is happening for you and not to you.

In this article, I am going to give you some tips on how you can stay motivated during tough times. First, let me state that these tips are not all-inclusive of every life event, nor should they be because some things occur throughout life that you simply must go through the process of, such as the grief that comes with the loss of a loved one. With that being said, let’s get right to it. The tips I am going to share with you are the same ones that I discovered worked for me when I was going through a particularly hard time in my life and because these techniques worked, I use them continuously to this day. Hopefully, you can take this information and use all or at least some of them and use them for your benefit.

Here are the tips you can begin to practice that will aid in you staying motivated during the tough times. You can use these tips starting today and going forward:

• Figure out what gives you life, meaning, know what energizes you. Whatever energizes you will always be tied to a gift or skill that you naturally possess. When you figure this out, it can then be used to help and energize others. Real motivation can only come from within and this is why it is so important to know what lights you up and sets you on fire. This knowledge of self-awareness can always be used as fuel when your fire seems to be going out because of unfortunate life events.

• Have a vision and a goal, as well as a short and long-term plan of how you are going to use your skills and talents to contribute to society, which in turn, will also benefit you. The skills that come to you the easiest are your innate gifts. What better way to pay it forward than to help others in the process. You will become better as a person as well as increase your skillset as a result of doing so.

• Help someone else with a problem they are dealing with. Anytime you are experiencing a difficult time in life, the quickest way to avoid the “woe is me” syndrome and snap yourself out of the possible snowball of negative emotions is to get busy helping someone else. Taking action is the name of the game! Begin immediately doing instead of talking or even worse, constantly thinking about your problems – this is key and almost deserves to be the first tip. Without knowing what brings you alive and having a clear goal and way of accomplishing that goal, you risk wasting valuable time moving from one endeavor to another trying to “figure it out”.

• Repeat tips 1-3 until they become habitual. Continue to repeat these techniques until they become a way of life for you because what you will discover is that you will no longer get stuck in the emotions that accompany any one particular scenario that may occur. You will begin to notice how much quicker you come through the rough patches in life. The trick is in knowing your mind will try to keep you in your comfort zone and because of this, it is very important that you understand when this is occurring. It will feel somewhat like a battle within yourself. It will feel like your heart is leading you to do one thing but your thoughts will come against your gut instinct. Always, always go with what you are being led to do and not with how you are feeling because our feelings tend to be temporary and aren’t what is true for you.

The last piece of advice I will give and reiterate is when tough times comes it can feel as though you are all alone; as if no one understands your pain or personal struggles and this simply isn’t true. Surrounding yourself with positive influences is key to getting through any tough situation. Telling yourself to remain positive simply isn’t enough to keep you motivated. Having people that love and accept you and are willing to act as a support system to you during particularly hard times is very necessary while still understanding that true motivation must come from within.