How to Keep Going When the Going Gets Tough

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• Tags: barriers, Excellence, Motivation, obstacles, personal development, Success

This is a guest post from Glen at PluginID.

No matter how full of life and determined you are, if you’re anything like the rest of us, there will be times when you find it hard to motivate yourself and push through the difficult battles.

Whether it be blogging, doing reports at work or even just getting through the daily chores, sometimes it can be a struggle. At times, even the things we love can start to become a strain and get us down.

Take blogging for example, something I love. These days I’m working on a large number of Internet projects so I don’t get to devote as much time to it as I like. Therefore, on days like today I really try to write a lot of quality material, but after 8,000 words (my count for today) it can become a bit of a challenge.

In this post I want to look at some simple but effective techniques for keeping going, even when it feels like you’re drowning in quick-sand and there’s no way out.

3 Steps to Breaking Through the Barriers

The following three tips have been utilized by me in my low points and times of desperate need. Hopefully they’ll provide the same inspiration and drive for you as they have for me.

1.  Look at Brick Walls in a New Mindset

In reality, everything in life is neutral, it’s all about how we interpret things with our minds. Brick walls (challenges) can be one of those things that make most of us want to give up and turn around.

However, with a bit of willpower, you can change your response to them and start to overcome them with ease. I’ve just finished reading ‘The Last Lecture’ by Randy Pausch (Rest in Peace) and I couldn’t say this any better than he did:

Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want something. They filter out the other guys

I love this because it’s so true. In fact, this quote actually made me appreciate these brick walls. If everything were so easy, there would be no pride or sense of accomplishment in our completed work.

If you are on the right path in life and are enjoying your journey then just take the brick walls (the challenges) as a filter for those who don’t want it as badly as you do. Reverse your mindset; see brick walls as a positive thing, not as something to make you turn around.

2.  Properly Plan for Maximum Efficiency

The going can often get tough simply through lack of organization and a feeling of being overwhelmed with tasks and projects. The best way to get through this block is to organize yourself so that you can clearly see what you have to do, but also look at your tasks and see if you can do them more efficiently. A few tips on organizing yourself include:

• Every Sunday, write down everything that you would like to be completed for the days ahead.
• Each morning have an action plan of what you are going to do to complete those tasks.
• Start with your most important task first.
• Even if you don’t get it done, there is no way you could have been more effective in your day.
• Limit time-wasters such as certain social events, email, Internet and procrastination (just do it!).

With this plan in place, you should start to get towards the top of that mountain you have to climb. From there, it’s a nice slope down the other side.

3.  Focus on the End Result

The going gets tough for a number of reasons, it could be: you’re finding your job difficult, you don’t know where you’re heading in life, your goals don’t appear to be attainable or any other number of other reasons.

First of all, if you are on the path to somewhere you don’t want to go, only you can change that. If you are in a career you hate and you want to be somewhere else, only you have the power to work out what it is you love and begin to implement that into your life.

Once you are on this path, there’s one great technique to stay motivated and positive: stay focused on the end result. So, for example:

• If you are in a dead end job, then focus on being able to leave and work at what you love.
• If the work is piling up, then focus on the desired outcome when all this work is completed.
• If you don’t think your goals are attainable…make them so. Focus on proving yourself and others wrong and achieving your goal.

Hopefully, these three techniques are enough to get you through the hard times and help you arrive at your desired destination. Just don’t forget: the process is often the most enjoyable part.

How do you keep going when the going gets tough?

Glen Allsopp writes on the topic of Personal Development at PluginID. His aim is to inspire, awaken and motivate readers by teaching them how they can ‘plug into their identity’.

Photo by alastairduncan