Staying focused and motivated are some of the main keys to developing a successful home business. At start-up, these skills are necessary to create a plan and get the information and training you need to develop your ideas. It is not possible to achieve your goals without first having a plan of action regarding the steps you will take to hit your target. Everybody has a different style and some are more creative and less organized, so while we may take different paths to get to the prize, getting there will involve navigating to that end. Much easier if you know at least vaguely where you are going.
Try to stay on the most direct course if you want to accomplish your goals sooner rather than later. This means you must focus in the middle of life which is often full of chaos. There is a real art to not letting things distract you and/or prevent you from doing what you have planned. Of course some things can’t be avoided and for these you should actually develop a contingency plan. In other words, if Plan A is not working or there is some obstacle, then have a Plan B and do that instead. The point of course is to keep moving forward and never quit or wait, no matter what.
Different things motivate different people. For some they need to ‘visualize’ what they will buy with the money they earn and some teach even going so far as to cut out pictures of things and paste them to your mirror so you see the fancy sports car, the Italian villa, the diamond necklace, etc. This may work in the long run but it seems kind of silly in that realistically your goal would be something in line with ‘earning my first $100 from my home business’ and it would actually be quite some time before someone was able to live the ostentacious life style.
Imagining fantasy scenarios can be fun, and it might actually work to motivate someone, but at the same time there is an equal chance that someone will become discouraged when in the first years of developing a home business they are seeing lots of work and learning curves and have yet to see much in the way of tangible rewards. This is just normal and nothing to get bummed out over. It’s reality. We have to work and invest our time and effort if we want to see the money.
While competing with other people is not that great of a way to motivate a lot of people, some might respond to this method. More likely competing with yourself would be more appropriate. In other words just like exercising – at first you are sluggish and tire easily, but if you are focused and determined to keep it up, you will build momentum and feel stronger each time; you will naturally want to do more of what makes you feel good or that produces the desired results. You can really get a great feeling of self-esteem from exercising, whether it is your mind, your body or your spirit.
Something else that has to do with mindset and might be considered a competitive strategy to keep motivated would be self-talk. Self talk can be telling yourself that you can do so much more than what you are given credit for at your job. You will show them or at least yourself that you can and you will earn more money than what they think you are worth. You may also be pleasantly surprised at how liberating it feels when you can take control of your own financial situation and realize you can earn as much as you want to when you are working for yourself and not anybody else.
