Awakening the Inspiration Within: Motivation Techniques  

As a young adult of a certain age, it may seem like an entire world’s worth of problems are hunkered down on your shoulders. You have an ever-growing list of questions to answer: Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? What makes me happy? Should I go to college? Should I get a job? Should I move–down the street or across the world? Your ability to enjoy a smooth transition into adulthood is complicated by this laundry list of unanswered questions. Maybe you know what your parents want you to do with your life, but you’re not so convinced that their choices align with your own.

The delicate age of development beyond high school graduation may be filled with stops and starts. You can’t seem to finish anything because you just don’t feel motivated or committed about anything. Experts refer to this delayed transitional period as a “failure to launch”.

Before you can become motivated, you need to have a better understanding of what you stand for and believe in. Afterward, you can learn some self-motivation techniques to give you needed fuel to “blast off” into adulthood.

Learn Your Personal Values

Adults have been pushing or pulling you in one direction or another for most of your life. Now, it’s actually up to you to make decisions that will define your life. Choosing a college, relationship, or career can be agonizing if you don’t know what it is that you believe in.

Finding out your personal values and principles allows you to learn what traits, in a career path or in a person, align with your own beliefs. The more your life choices align with your values, the better and more confident you will feel. Taking a values assessment is the first step towards identifying what’s important to you and, as a result, to what you want to commit.

Go Explore

By now, you have identified your personal values and drawn a vague roadmap of the life you aspire to live (e.g. Is it important that you make a lot of money? Help others? Lead?). Next, you must get out there for a test-run to affirm what it is you love. People become more motivated and committed to tasks that match their interests. Yet, you can only truly know your interests by exploring a variety of choices to see what you like and don’t like. Volunteer for an industry event. Volunteer at a non-profit organization. Travel to a different state or country. Audit a college course. Try an out-of-box job to see what you think of it. The point is to develop a curiosity for all the potential paths your life could take.

Get Motivated

Now, that are you have a better understanding of yourself, you can get motivated with the following strategies.

• Clarify your personal goals and give yourself deadlines for completing certain tasks.
• Tell yourself you will only do a task for 10 minutes (e.g. researching colleges or jobs). Sometimes, getting started is the hardest part
• Reward yourself for completing undesirable tasks. If you don’t get the job done, you don’t get a reward.
• Surround yourself with positive people who are on a similar journey and who will hold you accountable.
• Create a vision board with pictures and words that represent your personal goals.

Once you identify your personal values and start exploring, you should start to feel more motivated about taking life by the horns. If not, try any or all of these strategies to motivate yourself to make these difficult adult decisions.