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When you are getting your online
degree, you might find yourself taking a course that
is related to leadership methods and motivational techniques.
There are a variety of courses on leadership, human resource
management, project management, and group management. These
types of classes may explain in detail how to lead and motivate
groups and individuals, but rarely will it focus on how
to motivate the most important person of all – YOU!
Where is the class about self-management? How are you supposed
to lead and motivate others when you can’t get yourself
motivated? Yet, you are expected to have this question answered
and be prepared to work effectively with others, so you
had better figure it out.
Look to others
While you shouldn’t necessarily base your life on
the standards of others, the success of your peers will
almost always play a role in how you perceive your own success.
Looking at how others have gotten to where they are, and
the variety of available paths to get there can act as a
road map. This doesn’t mean you have to follow their
paths directly, but you can use them as a guide to choose
the most effective means to enable you best to succeed.
Seeing dreams fulfilled by people like yourself should not
only give you an idea of how to succeed but motivate you
to succeed as well. Use the success of others to push yourself
and to identify and set goals that can help you to maintain
a road to success.
Identifying and setting goals
One of the most important aspects of motivation is the identifying
and setting of goals. Why do you get up in the morning?
You would likely answer that you have to go to work, school,
or prepare your family for one of those two activities.
But isn’t it also because, consciously or not, you’ve
set goals for yourself? You aren’t just going to work
for the fun of it. You’re going to work to receive
a paycheck. That’s your goal. Are you going to school
just for something to do? No, you’re likely going
to school to earn a degree and get an education. Even helping
your children or significant other get ready for school
or work has a goal, and that goal is the furthering of their
goals. Get it?
Really, that’s all life is – the continuous
setting, meeting, reviewing, and re-setting of a bunch of
goals. Going to the store has a goal – to get food.
Buying gas for your vehicle has a goal – so you can
get where you need to be. Even going to bed at night has
a goal – to get rest so you can wake up and achieve
more goals.
The simplicity of setting and achieving goals is why it
is so ridiculous when people say they have trouble achieving
their goals. It isn’t that they don’t know how
to set goals, or how to achieve those goals. They set and
achieve goals constantly, often without even knowing it.
It is rather that they are setting or recognizing their
goals incorrectly. They are either setting their goals too
high or setting the wrong type of goals. While most likely
you won’t reach every goal you set since your life
is constantly changing and therefore requires constant re-evaluation,
it is important that goals be set so that they are achievable
and so that they are relevant to what you do and where you
want to go with your life.
Rewards
With the onset of the massive recession beginning in 2007,
we all saw what over-rewarding ourselves could accomplish.
While this might be an extreme example, delayed gratification
is becoming somewhat of an unknown these days. People reward
themselves with gourmet coffees each morning, fast food
lunches, dinners out, new cars, oversized homes -- the list
goes on and on. The problem with such an abundance of rewards
is that they quickly begin to loose their effect. As the
saying goes, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ and
therefore, our current rewards system thus becomes commonplace
and we begin looking for bigger, better ways to reward ourselves.
Maybe it’s time to get back to the basics when it
comes to rewards and how they factor into motivation. For
some of us, it’s time to realize that our efforts
should not necessarily be based upon the gaining of material
objects or items immediately to be consumed, but rather
based on time and emotional needs.
By accomplishing your goals and completing your work quickly,
efficiently, and effectively, you gain two items that are
impossible to purchase. Those two things are time and emotional
satisfaction. These rewards should be more satisfying than
any food, drink, or product you can buy in the market and
should only work to reinforce themselves as motivators.
That means that if you plan, work hard, and set goals, as
you meet those goals, your sense of accomplishment grows,
and pushes you even harder. At the same time, your meeting
of these goals will provide you with more time to meet bigger
goals, and thus the scenario becomes a cycle of continuous
motivation.
All in all, if you are able to set targets and strive to
achieve them then an online degree will surely bring you
success in the career of your choice. If you're currently
thinking of getting a college degree but just don't have
the time there are many traditional colleges that are now
offering accredited online degree programs. Browse through
our online
degrees channel to get started.
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