People who can motivate themselves to use their skills toward reaching positive goals often feel good about themselves. Here are some techniques to motivate yourself:

Outline for Motivation

1. Think about what you want to accomplish in life (for instance, writing a short story or directing a school play). I suggest you have a list of three of four things you want to accomplish and then write them down.
2. Look at these goals and determine how close you are to reaching them.
3. Compare these goals to your past experience with using these skills or you may decide to pursue a new skill.
4. Figure out how much it would cost in terms of finances and time to accomplish the goal (you are more likely to succeed when you focus on one goal at a time).
5. While pursuing that goal, give yourself positive affirmations regarding that goal. For instance, if you are directing a school play, you would tell yourself you are able to adapt the script to your viewing audience and to the students, and you tell yourself the play will be successful in terms of reaching a large audience and making money for the school. Then focus on making the play successful before the opening night.

How These Steps Work

When you think about what you want to accomplish in life, decide which things are important to you. I decided to start a blog because I enjoy writing and I enjoy helping other people. Your motivation for doing specific things may be different. However, I suggest you pursue goals for the benefit of society. People feel good when they help other people, and that builds the person’s self esteem.

While looking at these goals and deciding how close you are to reaching them. You may feel good about goals you have almost or completely reached and then think about other goals that are important to you.

The third step is to compare these goals and decide whether you want to use skills you already have, skills you may want to improve, or try something new. I already had writing skills. I had to relearn how to write articles, because I did not write articles for many years.

Then figure out whether the goal can be easily reached financially and whether you have the patience to work toward that goal until you have reached that goal. Blogging doesn’t cost me very much money. However, it takes time to build a blogging business. I decided I enjoy this enough to pursue it even if I don’t make much money during the first six months or a year.

The fifth step (given above) talks about positive affirmations. I tell myself I am a good writer and I am helping people lead better lives. I tell myself I am helping people, and even if my articles are occasionally rejected, I can learn from the rejected materials and keep focused on improving my skills related to article writing and blogging. Positive affirmations build my self esteem. It tells me I am a good writer whether other people agree with me or not. Without positive affirmations, you may decide to give up on your goal. When you have low self esteem, you may tell yourself you are lousy at what you are doing. If you give up, you will not reach your goals.

This article talks about setting goals, deciding which goals to pursue, and being able to work toward these goals. As you make progress in reaching your goal, you start telling yourself you are doing the right thing. When you have accomplished one goal, you can move onto other goals with more confidence. When you are confident, you have high self esteem.