Monday, September 8, 2014

16 Quotes to Keep You Motivated This Year

Image Credit: jacsonquerubin via Flickr
Hi there! I thought I'd kick off the week with something to get you pumped and motivated for the next five days. I’ve grown into the habit of seizing every possible opportunity for a new beginning to make new goals and try to get myself motivated to change myself for the better. I find it’s not the hardest feat to start the school year with a desire to be better and be positive, but it’s hard to maintain it throughout the year. So many things can happen in the span of ten months from friend fallouts to stressful assignments that can make you feel like you want to give up and just slack until summer comes around again.

While giving yourself a break every once in a while to avoid such thoughts is a good idea, giving up and slacking off are not and words well said (aka quotes) can really help when it comes to picking yourself up. After spending quite some time on Pinterest and collecting quotes over the course of a couple of weeks, I’ve come up with a list of quotes that I think were specially designed to keep your levels of motivation up. These aren’t the kind of quotes that are all fluffy that give off a oh-it’ll-all-be-okay vibe (even though it will all be okay), they’re more of a tough love kind of collection of quotes that will make you want to get off your butt and do something.

Enjoy!

1. The future depends on what you do today. This is quite a cliché, I guess, and has been used countless times, but it’s so true. If you need a break, take the break, but all of the little decisions that you do over the course of your life all lead to what’s going to happen in the future. So make your day worthwhile.

2. Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and start being positive about what could go right. There’s no point in living in complete stability without taking a single risk because that’s not really living. If something scares you, you bet I’m going to go tell you to do it. Just please make sure it’s legal and not dumb. Please.

3. People are just as happy as they make their minds to be. If you’re thinking negative thoughts, you will be negative and unhappy. It’s hard to take that first step and continue thinking positively, but it’s worth it. Again, clichés, but stop thinking of it as a glass half-empty and start thinking of it as a glass half-full. Somehow, after doing that for a while, you’ll find that more happy things and more things that you’d get excited for just magically come your way.

And you know why that happens?

Because you allowed yourself to see them.

4. There are 7 days in the week and someday isn’t one of them. You have the same amount of hours in a day as Beyoncé, so don’t make excuses and say that you’ll do something “someday.” Do it today, or the very least make a concrete plan to do it soon.

5. Storms don’t last forever. If you’re going through a bad day, please remember that it’s a bad day and there’s promise that tomorrow will be better.

6. Sometimes it ends up different and it’s better that way. You can plan things all you want, but sometimes, that’s just not the way it was meant to be. Be flexible and adapt to your situation, but of course, never lose sight of your goals and aspirations, just remember that they too can change.

7. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try. The last thing you want is to look back on an opportunity with what ifs. Those are just the worst. The very least you can do is try and if you fail, you fail, but at least you tried.

8. Ask yourself if what you’re doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow. Every little thing is a part of this other huge thing called life and make sure that you don’t spend too many days wasting away doing nothing that will help you later on. This doesn’t mean that you should boycott lazy days because those could serve to refresh your mind for tomorrow, but just be productive. In school, plan your time wisely today so you can get to a certain point in a project tomorrow. Stuff like that.

9. Do it for the people who want to see you fail. If you have dreams and aspirations or just a simple goal and there are people who you know aren’t on your side, don’t let them discourage you, but rather encourage you. It’s incredibly satisfying to accomplish something that someone said you wouldn’t be able to do.

10. Be the type of person you want to meet. It’s so important to love yourself and most of the time, when you love yourself, you will just be kinder towards others and you’ll be more driven amongst many other lovely qualities. Taking after something a good friend of mine really believes in, strive to be the best version of you. Always.

11. Overthinking leads to negative thoughts. Literally, you could be sitting in your room all day and have the same toxic thoughts swirling around your head, making you an incredible miserable person. I’m not trying to be overly blunt and harsh, but if something bad happened, give yourself time to mope and mourn, but get over it. If you did something embarrassing in class, no one probably remembers and you’re really just torturing yourself by overthinking it.

On another note, if you’re trying to decide whether or not to do a certain thing, take the risk and stop overthinking it. You’ll (probably) thank me later.

12. If nothing goes right, go left. Picking yourself up after a bad situation is so incredibly important and just remember that it’ll always get better and you can do so. If something doesn’t work out, figure out what went wrong, don’t give up, and try something else.

13. If it is important to you, you will find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse. Excuses, excuses, excuses. They can totally eat you up and strip you of your goals, leaving you an unproductive shell. Take some time and evaluate the situation: is it important to you? If so, don’t waste any more time and find out how to get from Point A to Point B.

14. You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. It’s great to have plans, it’s great to have goals, but don’t let them become wishes that can never be fulfilled. Make a life for yourself by making those goals and having those plans and actually going through with them.

15. You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. Don’t be worried about not being amazing at the beginning of something. Please remember that you can get through that tough bit and you will be proud of what you accomplish by the end.

16. You can’t start the next chapter if you keep reading the last. Knowing when to move on and just knowing that you have to move on is important. Whatever might’ve happened in your past happened and there’s nothing you can do to change it. What can do is accept it, accept whatever crap happened, whatever mistakes you made, and use that to make yourself stronger and a better person. If you’re always hung up on the past, you’re not going to move forward and grow as an individual and you should never be preventing your growth. Never.

Which quote was your favourite? Do you have another one that I should know about? How do you get yourself motivated again? Leave your comments and share your stories below!


Thank you so much for reading!
- J


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