by Aaron Potts

We’ve all been there. We get excited about some major new goal in our life, we get all fired up about making it happen, and then… zilch. Nothing happens. The very lives that we want to improve via our personal development and self improvement efforts get in our way, and our dreams of success on a massive scale fall by the wayside.

This is especially common when it comes to financial success or weight loss, and that is probably due to the fact that attaining financial stability or sustained weight loss are both things that take an on-going and consistent effort over the long-term.

The key to pulling yourself out of this self improvement slump is to find ways to once again become passionate about whatever it was that you wanted to accomplish in the first place.

A lot of people decide on some sort of personal development or self improvement program after a negative experience, and their goal becomes not wanting to experience that same type of situation again.

However, is NOT wanting something to happen really a strong enough motivation to keep yourself on track over the long-term so that you can attain the opposite of that thing?

For example, if you decide that you are finally going to get your finances together because you almost got kicked out of your apartment for not paying the rent, or you walked to work for 2 weeks until you could afford to get your car fixed, both of those experiences are pretty powerful motivators.

However, once you are back inside the comfort zone of having enough money to pay the bills, and your car is running fine, where is the motivation to achieve financial freedom that will keep you burning the midnight oil and working weekends in order to make that happen?

Another example is weight loss. If someone makes fun of you or if you have some other negative experience as a result of the fact that you are overweight, you’ll have your brand-new exercise and weight loss program planned out before you even get home that day!

However, after the pain of that incident fades, or you find some way to temporarily fill the emotional gap in your life that in the past has been empty as a result of your health, your motivation to workout 5 or 6 days each week and to eat healthy foods also fades away.

So, the key to keeping your motivational fires burning lies in finding ways to continually be as passionate about attaining your goals as you were when you first decided to do so.

One possible method for doing this could be to mentally relive the time in your life that caused you to decide to make changes in the first place. However, that definitely smacks of “living in the past” as well as “focusing on the negative” so a more proactive approach would probably serve you better.

Instead of thinking back on bad times that caused you to want to make positive changes in your life, why not envision future good times instead?

What would your life be like if you had more than enough money to pay your rent or your mortgage each month, you had 2 or 3 nice cars in the driveway, all of your expenses were covered, and you still had “play” money left over?

Consistent and repeated visualization of what your life will be like when money is no longer an issue will keep you motivated to do what it takes in order to achieve that financial success.

The same process can be used for weight loss or any other area of your life that you want to improve. Put powerful and emotional pictures in your mind of the life that you will lead once you have achieved your dreams, and focus intensely on those images as often as you can – preferably several times each day.

The key to this process is consistency. It has already been shown that humans have the ability – indeed, the very habit – of getting motivated about their dreams, but then not following through. If you do not consistently dream about and feel passionate about your desires, you will simply fall right back into the same trap that has already kept you from attaining success.

There is a saying that goes something along the following lines, and you would do well to put this somewhere that you will see it often. Paste it up where you will see it during the parts of your day when you have the most difficulty sticking to your success plan:

“Do today what others won’t, so you can do tomorrow what others can’t.”

Winners and successful people do whatever it takes day in and day out, month after month, and year after year in order to achieve success.