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10 Things You Can Do to Boost Self-Confidence

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10 Things You Can Do to Boost Self-Confidence

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I choose this article because I think that the advice afford is helpful. Its similar with the video I choose because it looks at overall how can you change your confidence mindset.

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
"Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand brake on." -- Maxwell Maltz
Nobody is born with limitless self-confidence. If someone seems to have incredible self-confidence, it's because he or she has worked on building it for years. Self-confidence is something that you learn to build up because the challenging world of business, and life in general, can deflate it.
Related: 5 Ways to Maintain a Positive Mindset (No Matter What Challenge You're Facing)
An online negative review, a request for a refund from a customer or a flat rejection from investors can cause our self-confidence to dwindle. Well-meaning but sometimes unkind comments from those closest to us can also hit us hard.

On top of this, we have to deal with our inner critic of self-doubt that constantly tells us that we are not good enough. When bombarded by so many elements that threaten our self-confidence, we need to take charge of building it up for ourselves.

As we teach at Skill Incubator, building a successful business requires a thick skin and unshakable confidence in your ability to overcome obstacles. Here are 10 things you can do to build up your self-confidence.

1. Visualize yourself as you want to be.
"What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve." -- Napoleon Hill
Visualization is the technique of seeing an image of yourself that you are proud of, in your own mind. When we struggle with low self-confidence, we have a poor perception of ourselves that is often inaccurate. Practice visualizing a fantastic version of yourself, achieving your goals.

2. Affirm yourself.
"Affirmations are a powerful tool to deliberately install desired beliefs about yourself." -- Nikki Carnevale
We tend to behave in accordance with our own self-image. The trick to making lasting change is to change how you view yourself.

Affirmations are positive and uplifting statements that we say to ourselves. These are normally more effective if said out loud so that you can hear yourself say it. We tend to believe whatever we tell ourselves constantly. For example, if you hate your own physical appearance, practice saying something that you appreciate or like about yourself when you next look in the mirror.

To get your brain to accept your positive statements more quickly, phrase your affirmations as questions such as, "Why am I so good at making deals?" instead of "I am so good at making deals." Our brains are biologically wired to seek answers to questions, without analyzing whether the question is valid or not.

3. Do one thing that scares you every day.
"If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think." --T. Harv Eker
The best way to overcome fear is to face it head-on. By doing something that scares you every day and gaining confidence from every experience, you will see your self-confidence soar. So get out of your comfort zone and face your fears!
"You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens." -- Louise L. Hay
4. Question your inner critic.

Some of the harshest comments that we get come from ourselves, via the "voice of the inner critic." If you struggle with low self-confidence, there is a possibility that your inner critic has become overactive and inaccurate.

Strategies such as cognitive behavioral therapy help you to question your inner critic, and look for evidence to support or deny the things that your inner critic is saying to you. For example, if you think that you are a failure, ask yourself, "What evidence is there to support the thought that I am a failure?" and "What evidence is there that doesn't support the thought that I am a failure?"
Related: 9 Movie Clips (With Songs!) to Keep You Inspired
Find opportunities to congratulate, compliment and reward yourself, even for the smallest successes. As Mark Twain said, "[A] man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
5. Take the 100 days of rejection challenge.

Jia Jiang has become famous for recording his experience of "busting fear" by purposefully making crazy requests of people in order to be rejected over 100 days. His purpose was to desensitize himself to rejection, after he became more upset than he expected over rejection from a potential investor. Busting fear isn't easy to do, but if you want to have fun while building up your self-confidence, this is a powerful way to do it.
"To establish true self-confidence, we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives." -- Denis Waitley
6. Set yourself up to win.

Too many people are discouraged about their abilities because they set themselves goals that are too difficult to achieve. Start by setting yourself small goals that you can win easily.

Once you have built a stream of successes that make you feel good about yourself, you can then move on to harder goals. Make sure that you also keep a list of all your achievements, both large and small, to remind yourself of the times that you have done well.

Instead of focusing only on "to-do" lists, I like to spend time reflecting on "did-it" lists. Reflecting on the major milestones, projects and goals you've achieved is a great way to reinforce confidence in your skills.

7. Help someone else.

Helping someone else often enables us to forget about ourselves and to feel grateful for what we have. It also feels good when you are able to make a difference for someone else.

Instead of focusing on your own weaknesses, volunteer to mentor, assist or teach another, and you'll see your self-confidence grow automatically in the process.
"Self-care is never a selfish act -- it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others." -- Parker Palmer
8. Care for yourself.

Self-confidence depends on a combination of good physical health, emotional health and social health. It is hard to feel good about yourself if you hate your physique or constantly have low energy.

Make time to cultivate great exercise, eating and sleep habits. In addition, dress the way you want to feel. You have heard the saying that "clothes make the man." Build your self-confidence by making the effort to look after your own needs.

9. Create personal boundaries.

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself."-- Harvey Fierstein
Related: 5 Ways to Train Your Brain and Boost Your Self-Esteem
Learn to say no. Teach others to respect your personal boundaries. If necessary, take classes on how to be more assertive and learn to ask for what you want. The more control and say that you have over your own life, the greater will be your self-confidence.
"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are." -- Marilyn Monroe
10. Shift to an equality mentality.

People with low self-confidence see others as better or more deserving than themselves. Instead of carrying this perception, see yourself as being equal to everyone. They are no better or more deserving than you. Make a mental shift to an equality mentality and you will automatically see an improvement in your self-confidence.

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10 Things You Can Do to Boost Self-Confidence

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. "Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand brake on." -- Maxwell Maltz Nobody is born with limitless self-confidence. If someone seems to have incredible self-confidence, it's because he or she has worked on building it for years.

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10 Things That Steal Our Motivation—and How to Get It Back

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10 Things That Steal Our Motivation—and How to Get It Back

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I choose this article because of it way to explain what is stopping you from being motivated. Its a bit of a mix of two of the articles I choose. it deals with the overall motive and confidence with how to handle your motivation.

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Motivation is central to creativity, productivity, and happiness. Motivation is what causes us to act, and when we act, we create movement, growth, and change; we feel involved, masterful, and significant; we feel powerful through experiencing how we can change the world; and we create more of what we love in our lives. And all of this gives our lives purpose and happiness.

Demotivation Is Like Snow

It's said that Eskimos have multiple words for snow. It's so familiar to them, they can appreciate the subtle differences between the varied types. These distinctions let Eskimos respond differently to different types of snow, depending on the challenges and opportunities that each particular type of snow presents.

Most of us have just one conception of demotivation, which means that whenever you're unmotivated, you're likely to assume that you're struggling with the same problem. The truth: Demotivation is a category of problems, containing many variations. When you have just one kind of demotivation, you'll apply the same old strategies whenever you feel unmotivated. For many people, those strategies look like this: set goals, push harder, create accountability checks that will push you, and run your life using to-do lists. These strategies are ineffective with most types of demotivation, and in some instances they can even make you more unmotivated.

Demotivation is a category of problems, containing many variations.

At its essence, demotivation is about not fully committing to act, and there are many reasons why you might be in that position. Having more ways to categorize your demotivation will help you identify the real reasons for your unwillingness move forward. Then, you can pick the right tools and strategies to help you get motivated again.

Here are 10 types of demotivation and the strategies that will help you find your fire:

1. You're Demotivated by Fear

When you're afraid, even if you're entering territory that you've chosen to move into, a part of you is determined to avoid going forward. Fear slows you down and makes you hesitant and careful, which can be beneficial to you, but sometimes your fears are based on your imagination rather than on an accurate assessment of the risks in your reality. If your fear is big enough, even if you're also excited to go forward, the part of you that wants to keep you safe can successfully prevent you from going forward into territory that's both desirable and safe.

How to get motivated again: To get motivated, you need to deal with your fear. Start by naming your fears so that they're out in the open. Remember to say a gentle "thank you" to your fears-they're trying to protect you, after all. Then question your fears: "Why am I afraid of that happening?" "What are the chances that would really happen?" Some of your fears will slip away now.

To get motivated, you need to deal with your fear.

Look at the fears that are left. What are they telling you about the research you need to do, the gaps you need to fill, and the risk management strategies you need to put in place? Honor that wisdom by building it into your plan. Finally, consider breaking down the changes into smaller steps and focusing on just the next few small steps-this will calm your fears.

2. You're Demotivated by Setting the Wrong Goals

Martha Beck has a great model for understanding motivation. She explains that we have an Essential Self and a Social Self. Your Essential Self is the part of you that's spontaneous and creative and playful, the part that knows what's most important to you. Your Social Self is the part of you that has been developing since the day you were born, learning the rules of the tribe and working hard to make sure that you're safe by making you follow "the rules."

We're all surrounded by so many messages that feed into our Social Selves and we're keen to impress our tribes. When you feel unmotivated, it's because you're setting goals based purely on what your Social Self wants and this is pulling you away from the direction your Essential Self wants you to take. Your Essential Self uses demotivation to slow you down and to detach you from the toxic goals you've set.

Notice how your body responds as you think of each of the goals you're trying to work on.

How to get motivated again: Take some time to review your goals. Since your Essential Self is non-verbal, you can easily access your Essential Self through your body. Notice how your body responds as you think of each of the goals you're trying to work on.

When your body (and particularly your breathing) shows signs of tightness and constriction, that's a pretty good indication that you're trying to follow toxic goals. If you get a constricted reaction, scrap your current goals and question all your stories about what you "should" do with your life. Notice what makes you smile spontaneously or lose track of time, and set goals related to that stuff instead.

3. You're Demotivated by Lack of Clarity

When you haven't consciously and clearly articulated what you want, your picture of your future will be vague. We like what's familiar, so we resist what's unfamiliar and vague and we stay with and re-create what's familiar to us. If you're not clear about what you want to create, then it makes sense that you'll lack motivation because you'd rather stay with your current familiar reality.

How to get motivated again: If you want to create something different from what you've been experiencing, it's not enough to just know what you don't want. You need to know what you do want, and you need to articulate a clear and specific vision of what you want to create so that you can become familiar with that new outcome and feel comfortable moving toward it. Take some time to articulate what you want and why you want it.

4. You're Demotivated by a Values Conflict

Your values are what's important to you in life. If you have a values conflict, it means that there are two or more values that are important to you but you believe that you can't satisfy all of those values in a particular situation.

This situation causes you to feel conflicted and pulled in different directions as you try to find ways to get what's important to you. You might have brief spurts of motivation to work on something and then lose motivation and start working on something else, or your motivation might dry up altogether because the effort of dealing with internal conflict quickly tires you out and saps your energy.

How to get motivated again: You need to unpack your values conflict and play mediator. You have to get the parts of you that are advocating for different values to play on the same team again. Start with acknowledging the internal conflict.

Grab a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle so that you have two columns. Write about the two different directions you feel pulled in, one in each column, and summarize it with a statement of what each part wants.

Now, pick one column and chunk it up: "Why does this part want that? What does it hope to get as a result of having that?" Keep asking the questions and writing your answers until you feel that you've hit on the result that this part of you ultimately wants. Now do the same for the other part, and notice when you get to the level where the answers in the two columns are the same.

Ultimately, all of the parts of you always want the same thing, because they're all you. Now that you know what you really want, you can evaluate the strategies that each part had been advocating for and decide which strategy would work best.

Ultimately, all of the parts of you always want the same thing, because they're all you.

Often, once you're clear on what you really want, you spot new strategies for getting it that you hadn't noticed before. Sometimes by doing this exercise you'll find ways to satisfy all of your values, but sometimes that's not possible. If you've taken time to think through your values and you've consciously chosen to prioritize a particular value over your other values for a while, this clarity will ease the internal conflict and your motivation will return.

5. You're Demotivated by Lack of Autonomy

We thrive on autonomy. We all have a decision-making center in our brains, and this part of us needs to be exercised. Studies have found that this decision-making center in the brain is under-developed in people who have depression and that if you practice using this part of the brain and making decisions, depression often clears.

In his book , Daniel Pink writes about the research that shows that when it comes to doing creative work, having some autonomy to decide what we do, when we do it, how we do it, and whom we do it with is core to igniting and sustaining motivation, creativity, and productivity.

We all have a decision-making center in our brains, and this part of us needs to be exercised.

How to get motivated again: Consider how much autonomy you have in relation to the goals you've been trying to pursue. Are there areas where you feel constricted and controlled? Consider how you could gradually introduce more autonomy in your task, time, technique, location, and team, and then, if you're employed, have a discussion with your manager and ask for greater autonomy in a few specific areas of your work.

6. You're Demotivated by Lack of Challenge

Challenge is another crucial ingredient for motivation that authors like Daniel Pink and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, highlight. When it comes to dealing with challenges, there's a sweet spot. Too great a challenge, and the fear becomes too great and saps our motivation (see point 1), and if the challenge is too small, we quickly get bored and struggle to stay motivated. We're designed to be living, growing creatures, and we need constant challenges and opportunities to master new skills. Without challenges, our Essential Self steps in and demotivates us as a way of telling us that we've departed from the path that's right for us.

If the challenge is too small, we quickly get bored and struggle to stay motivated.

How to get motivated again: Review your goals and the projects you're working on. Are they challenging you? Are they going to require you to grow in order to achieve them, or are you treading water in your comfort zone, doing only the things you know you can do? Try tweaking your goals to make them a bit more challenging, take on projects that will require you to grow, and find a new thing or two to learn to stimulate yourself.

7. You're Demotivated by Grief

At the beginning of any change, we go through a phase of wondering if we should or could hang on to the way things were and grieving what we'll be losing if we make significant changes. Confusion, self-doubt, mistrust of the world around us, and feeling lost are common symptoms, and the bigger the change, the more powerful these symptoms. Sometimes we even go through a bit of depression and social withdrawal. Martha Beck calls this phase the "Death and Rebirth" phase of change in her book Finding Your Own North Star. With all the grieving and fearing and feeling lost that go on in this phase, it's normal for your motivation to dry up.

How to get motivated again: If you've just experienced a trauma or loss, or you're going through a major change and finding that there are days where you're hit hard with Death and Rebirth symptoms, don't try to make yourself motivated and proactive. You can't rush grieving or the undoing of your old life and ways of thinking, and you can't skip the Death and Rebirth phase and go straight into Dreaming and Scheming.

Take one day at a time and go easy on yourself.

You need to give yourself a lot of space for nurturing and reflection. Look after your body with good food, rest, and exercise. Express your grief, confusion, and fears with people who can listen lovingly. Spend time in nature and with calm, loving people to center yourself. Accept every feeling and thought you have-they're all normal and safe.

Take one day at a time and go easy on yourself. Confusion, forgetfulness, and clumsiness are all normal in this stage. The grieving will end when it's ready, and if you relax into it and express your grief, it'll be sooner rather than later.

8. You're Demotivated by Loneliness

This is an especially important one for those of us who work alone from home. You know those days when you feel a bit cabin-feverish, you just don't feel like working, and you'd rather be out having a drink with a friend or playing a game of soccer? Well, perhaps it's because we're designed to be social creatures and sometimes your Essential Self is just longing for some connection with other people. Your Essential Self hijacks your work motivation so that you'll take a break from work and go spend some time with other people.

How to get motivated again: Take a break and go spend some time with someone you enjoy. You may be surprised at the motivating impact this has and find yourself much more clear and productive when you return to your work. And then look for ways that you can begin to build more networking and joint venturing into your work.

9. You're Demotivated by Burnout

I attract overachieving Type A's, and, as a recovering Type A myself, I know that sometimes we're banging on about wanting to get more done even after we've exceeded the limit on what's sustainable. If you're feeling tired all the time, you've lost your energy for socializing, and the idea of taking a snooze sounds more compelling than the stuff you're usually interested in, then you've probably pushed yourself too long and hard and you may be burned out.

Your Essential Self will always work to motivate you to move toward what you most need. So if you're burned out and needing sleep, your Essential Self may even sap the motivation from the things that you're usually really ignited about-just to get you to meet your core needs again.

Your Essential Self will always work to motivate you to move toward what you most need.

How to get motivated again: Sleep. And then when you're done sleeping and the quality of your thinking has been restored, check back in with your Essential Self about what's most important to you. Start building sustainable ways to do more of what's important to you.

10. You're Demotivated By Fuzzy Next Steps

Your end-goal might be nice and clear, but if you haven't taken time to chunk it down into smaller goals, you'll get stuck, confused, and unmotivated when it's time to take action. Some projects are small and familiar enough that they don't need a plan, but if you're often worrying that you don't know what to do next and you don't have a clear plan, then this might be the source of your demotivation.

How to get motivated again: If you want to keep your motivation flowing steadily through all stages of your projects, take time to create clear project plans and to schedule your plans into your calendar.

Write down all of your "I-don't-know-how-to" concerns and turn these into research questions.

Use your fears to point you to the potential risks you need to manage. Write down all of your "I-don't-know-how-to" concerns and turn these into research questions. The first part of any planning stage is research, and you'll find new research questions along the way, so realize that conducting research should be part of your action plan at every stage of your project. Finally, ask yourself what smaller goals need to be achieved for you to achieve your end-goal, and schedule deadlines for yourself.

Goal-setting, planning, organizing, and accountability structures are often touted as the big solution to demotivation and the silver bullet that will get you creative and productive again. The truth, as you've learned: It's a useful strategy for dealing with only some types of demotivation. Pinpoint your unique form of demotivation, and start to tackle it in a specific way.
This article originally appeared on ProductiveFlourishing.com
Read next: When You Have to Do Stuff-But Don't Feel Like Doing Anything

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10 Things That Steal Our Motivation-and How to Get It Back

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Motivation is central to creativity, productivity, and happiness. Motivation is what causes us to act, and when we act, we create movement, growth, and change; we feel involved, masterful, and significant; we feel powerful through experiencing how we can change the world; and we create more of what we love in our lives.

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How to Make Yourself Study When You Have ZERO Motivation

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How to Make Yourself Study When You Have ZERO Motivation

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This video explains ways to study productively. One suggestion was before you even study you should do some activity.I choose this video because of that suggestion.   During my freshman year of high school I used to go home late and just shut myself in my room late  afternoon and do work. This became very unproductive and an frustrating experience. I used to never go outside to get sunlight which I felt that I direly needed. Now, I enjoy my walks from my bus to my class everyday because I get the air/sunshine that I need in the morning and afternoon. With this new cycle I feel that I am handling work a lot better than the last couple of years. I enjoy my classes more as I feel that there isn't a huge pressure lingering over my head all the time. Overall I feel that so far I am more motivated to study and work than the last two years of school combined.

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How to Make Yourself Study When You Have ZERO Motivation

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How to Wake Up Feeling Motivated Every Single Morning

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How to Wake Up Feeling Motivated Every Single Morning

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In this video, Frank explains key factors that can help you be more motivated in the morning. As I am a morning person I decided to watch the video. The point that really made an impression on me was when he explained that by looking at the bigger picture, you will feel more motivated to reach your short term goal. I always bear in mind that I am working towards an associates degree. This degree could be my ticket to a better career/job and an overall better life. So every step on my way there should be made with a motivation to succeed. So when I reach this goal I will feel that I completed a step in my career correctly.

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C.I.G. is supported in part by its readers. If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Read more here.

1. Experiment with Your Schedule

2. Build Productive Momentum with a Smart Morning Routine

3. Use the Rule of 3 to Cut Down Your Task List

4. Do One Thing You Love Every Morning

Most of us deal with the occasional lazy, zero-motivation morning.

You know the feeling - you wake up knowing you have a bunch of stuff you need to get done, but you just can't convince yourself to do any of it.

So you sleep in instead. Or maybe you get up and waste time playing Mario Run on your phone. Before you know it, 11:00am has arrived and you've done nothing.

A reader asked me how to deal with this problem recently:

"Do you have any advice for someone who plans out everything the night before, but then loses all motivation the next morning?"

Even though my girlfriend likes to occasionally accuse me of secretly being a robot (which isn't true - I love circulating oxygen through my clearly biological respiratory system and exhaling carbon dioxide as much as the next fellow human), I'm not immune to this problem.

However, I've learned a lot over the past few years that has helped me to make lazy mornings occur far less frequently. Today, I'll share a few ideas that will help you achieve a similar level of consistent morning productivity and motivation.

At a glance, here are the solutions for increasing your morning motivation that we'll be going over:

Experimenting with your schedule

Using a morning routine to build "productive momentum"

Reducing your intention-achievement gap with the Rule of Three

Leveraging "pull motivation" by doing one thing you love every morning

Beep boop... er, I mean, let's get started.

Experiment with Your Schedule

I'm a sucker for articles that detail the habits and morning routines of authors, entrepreneurs, and other famous people. I'm talking articles like:

One interesting thing that I've learned from reading these kinds of articles is that the schedules of individual writers differed greatly. For instance, here's how Haruki Murakami, author books like 1Q84 and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, starts his day when he's in novel-writing mode:

"When I'm in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4 AM and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9 PM."

This routine differs quite a bit from someone like Margaret Atwood, who once admitted to,

"...spending the morning worrying, and then plunging into the manuscript in a frenzy of anxiety around 3 PM."

Yet both Murakami and Atwood have been incredibly successful authors. So have many others, all with differing schedules and habits. What this says to me is that there's no perfect formula for success; you can structure your day in whatever way you see fit, as long as it helps you maintain motivation and drives you towards achieving your goals.

Furthermore, the contrast between the different authors' schedules illustrates a divide between what I'm going to call morning maniacs and momentum builders.

These are completely arbitrary terms that I just made up, but they fit my purposes for the moment, so I'm going to use them. And you can't stop me because you're too far away.

Morning maniacs are the kind of people who can simply roll out of bed and start working on their most difficult, challenging tasks right away. Haruki Murakami is a morning maniac; Ernest Hemingway was one as well, as he revealed to George Plimpton:

"When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible."

By contrast, momentum builders are the people who need to wake up and build a bit of what I like to call productive momentum before they can really get into the swing of things. In other words, they need to do some small tasks to essentially get their brains into "work mode" before they can tackle more challenging ones.

Here's the thing... it's not always apparent which category you fit into. That's why the first thing you should do in order to start waking up more motivated is to experiment with your schedule.

Personally, I'm more of a momentum builder during the mornings - but I only know this because I've experimented with both types of schedules. If you haven't, give it a try.

If you've never been a morning maniac, try getting up and immediately tackling the most challenging task on your daily plan.

If you don't know which task to choose, look at your task list and ask yourself which task you feel the most resistance to starting. As Steven Pressfield puts it in The War of Art:

"Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North - meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others."

Use the resistance you feel to guide you. If this schedule works out and you discover you're a morning maniac, congrats!

One huge benefit that this kind of schedule brings is that it crosses off that most challenging task right away; once you've finished, everything else on your list should feel easy by comparison.

Build Productive Momentum with a Smart Morning Routine

If you discover you're not a morning maniac, then you need to take a different approach to building that morning motivation. To start, let's get back to that concept of productive momentum again and try to explain it a little better.

A few years ago, a friend gave me a piece of advice for when I was feeling particularly resistant to working on a big project.

"When you find yourself procrastinating," he said, "Go do the dishes."

His reasoning was simple: doing the dishes - or doing any simple, manual chore - is low-level work. It's work that doesn't require a ton of creativity or brainpower, and hence you'll probably have very little resistance to starting it. By contrast, writing a paper or studying for a test brings a lot of resistance.

However, once you get into the flow of doing the dishes, you start to build up some productive momentum. Your brain goes into work mode. And once it's there, you can use that momentum to carry yourself into those harder tasks that were so difficult to get started on before.

If you're not a morning maniac, then you need to find a way to bake this process of building productive momentum directly into the start of your day. To do that, you need to set up an intelligent morning routine.

By picking a few simple, productive habits to do right after waking up, you can start your day off on the right foot and build up the momentum you need to jump into your task list with true intensity.

Here's a brief look at my current morning routine, which I start at 6 AM every weekday:

Drink a half-liter of water

Feed my cat

Meditate for 5 minutes

Exercise (I hit the gym three days a week and do outdoor cardio on the other two)

Shower and dress

Cook and eat breakfast

Read for 30 minutes

This routine takes me about 2.5 hours to complete, which works for me since, as an entrepreneur, I can set my own schedule. However, even if you're in school or working a job with a fixed schedule, you can still take advantage of this concept.

If you'd like to follow a similarly full morning routine like mine, you could always train yourself to wake up early - I have several online friends who actually start their day at 4:30 AM.

Alternatively, you could simply work with the time you have in the morning and choose habits that don't take as long. The key is to just pick habits that build that all-important momentum. Experiment to find the ones that work best for you.

Use the Rule of 3 to Cut Down Your Task List

One thing that can really kill your motivation in the morning is a long task list that you know you can't finish.

This is why I advocate using a productivity system that combines both a master task list and a daily task list; that way, you can keep yourself from becoming overwhelmed by only looking at your daily list on most days.

However, I know from experience that even a daily task list can become overwhelming; when I'm creating mine before bed each night, it's really tempting to get overzealous and put a ton of tasks on it.

Here's the problem: If you constantly create daily task lists that you never actually finish, then you're constantly maintaining a gap between what you plan to do and what you actually do.

I call this the intention-achievement gap, and it's a real motivation killer; after all, waking up every morning with the knowledge (based on past experience) that you won't achieve what you set out to do can only hurt your drive. By contrast, having the confidence that you can carry out your plans will help you do so.

To start closing the intention-achievement gap, simply cut the amount of tasks on your daily list. If you need help, try following the Rule of 3, a concept explained in Chris Bailey's book The Productivity Project. Here it is as Chris describes it:

1. At beginning of day, fast-forward to the end of the day in your mind. Then ask yourself: "What three things will I want to have accomplished when the day is over?"

2. Write those three things down.

3. Do the same at the beginning of every week.

The idea here is to think deliberately about what you want to accomplish - and by limiting yourself to a small number of items, you challenge yourself to set manageable goals that are still substantial enough for you to be satisfied at the end of the day.

If you'd like to learn more about this concept, I discussed it at length in this podcast episode (starting at 18:00):

Do One Thing You Love Every Morning

The last idea I'd like to share with you is inspired by this quote from Tony Robbins:

"There are 2 different kinds of motivation: Push requires willpower, and willpower never lasts. What will last is pull - having something so exciting, so attractive, something you desire so much that you have a hard time going to sleep at night, you get up so early in the morning and take it to the next level."

This actually takes us back to the morning maniacs we talked about earlier, because while I believe that much of the reason for their choice of schedule is due to their personalities - i.e. they're just wired that way - I think that their mission also plays a part. When Haruki Murakami is in novel-writing mode, for example, his desire to finish that novel pulls him to keep writing.

But what if you don't have an all-encompassing mission at the moment?

Whether you're working through a semester with classes that don't particularly inspire you, or you're putting in your dues at a job that's not super-exciting, there are going to be times when you simply don't have a mission that motivates you all that much.

During those times, however, I still believe you can take advantage of pull motivationby building at least one thing you love into your morning routine. For me, it's listening to my favorite podcasts while I'm out biking or in the gym; the anticipation of listening to a new episode pulls me into my routine and makes me happy.

You can use something similarly small to provide some pull motivation of your own - it doesn't have to be anything huge. Anything that you're excited to do in the morning is going to contribute to your overall motivation to hop out of bed and start the day.

Wrap-Up

Everyone deals with a lack of motivation at times, but by intelligently applying these ideas, you'll equip yourself with the tools to combat the problem and ensure that you wake up motivated more often.

Hope you found this article helpful! If you have ideas of your own that I didn't include here, share them in the comments below.
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Looking for More Study Tips?

If you enjoyed this article, you'll also enjoy my free 100+ page book called 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less).

The book covers topics like:

Defeating procrastination

Getting more out of your classes

Taking great notes

Reading your textbooks more efficiently

...and several more. It also has a lot of recommendations for tools and other resources that can make your studying easier.

If you'd like a free copy of the book, let me know where I should send it:
Get the Book
I'll also keep you updated about new posts and videos that come out on this blog (they'll be just as good as this one or better) 🙂

Video Notes

If you'd like to improve even more, you might find these additional ideas to be helpful:
If you liked this video, subscribe on YouTube to stay updated and get notified when new ones are out! Graphics credits

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How to Wake Up Feeling Motivated Every Single Morning

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C.I.G. is supported in part by its readers. If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Read more here. Experiment with Your Schedule Build Productive Momentum with a Smart Morning Routine Use the Rule of 3 to Cut Down Your Task List Do One Thing You Love Every Morning Most of us deal with the occasional lazy, zero-motivation morning.

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How to Be More Confident Than Anyone You Know: 5 Effective Tips

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How to Be More Confident Than Anyone You Know: 5 Effective Tips

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The video by Thomas Frank about confidence I believe was very helpfully for me. I choose it because of the examples he showed, and how he shared his personal experience with being confident. The biggest tip for me was to acknowledge where you are and who your talking to. Then give them something to invest themselves in. He explains that by being a bit lose and having confidence in yourself, you will not only feel better and more confident. The audience in turn will most likely enjoy the moment and keep it with them longer. Other than if you stood up there looking at the floor and being uncomfortable.

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How to Be More Confident Than Anyone You Know: 5 Effective Tips

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If you want to build lasting self-confidence, defeat your insecurities, and feel comfortable in any situation, the 5 strategies I outline in this video should help. Confidence is - without a doubt - a skill that you can build with practice and deliberate changes to the way you look at the world.