Most times staying motivated is be more difficult than getting started. 350 years ago a shipload of travelers landed on the northeast coast of America. The first year they established a town site. The next year they elected a town government. The third year the town government planned to build a road five miles westward into the wilderness.
In the fourth year the people tried to impeach their town government because they thought it was a waste of public funds to build a road five miles westward into a wilderness. Who needed to go there anyway?
Here were people who had the vision to see three thousand miles across an ocean and overcome great hardships to get there. But in just a few years they were not able to even see five miles out of town. They had lost their pioneering vision.
The same could be true for you. Life comes at us fast and hard! It’s easy in the course of daily events to lose sight of the initial vision you may have had for your marriage, home, or our children. It’s the everyday challenges that can chip away at your hopes for the future. Here are some simple ways to staying motivated.
1. Find a way to daily remind yourself of your life goals. A primary key to staying motivated is to keep your heart filled with encouragement and your mind focused on your objective. Read inspirational books. Write out your goals and place them where you can see them often throughout the day.
2. Find a way to reward your successes along the way – no matter how small. Eventually we will lose “steam” if we don’t take a break from time to time and celebrate our successes. It doesn’t require anything extravagant, just some way to say to yourself that you’re doing a great job.
3. Be willing to make the necessary course corrections. The Apollo spacecraft was a successful mission. Yet, it was only on course about 11% of the time. Success is not perfection, but the willingness to make the necessary course corrections
4. Discover the power of persistence - The most successful men throughout history have faced the challenge of staying motivated. Beethoven re-wrote each piece of music he created at least a dozen times. Historians have discovered over 2,000 preliminary drawings of Michaelangelo’s “Last Judgment”.
Leonardo Da Vinci worked on “The Last Supper” for more than 10 years, often working for days without eating or sleeping. George Stephenson spent 15 years perfecting the locomotive.
Field crossed the ocean 50 times before he successfully laid a cable for telegraph communications. Westinghouse was treated as a lunatic for his crazy idea that he could stop a train with “wind.” Then, he invented air-brakes.
Hemingway re-wrote the manuscript of “The Old Man and the Sea” at least 80 times. As a member of the British Parliament, William Wilberforce called a vote for the abolition of slavery every year for 16 years until he won enough votes to abolish the slave trade.
It’s never too late to get up and try again! For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity. [Proverbs 24:16]
With a clear vision, no ocean of difficulty is too great. Without it, you will rarely move beyond your current boundaries. Now is the time to once again stir your heart with the vision and purpose that God has for your life.
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