How to Motivate Yourself Every Day in Midlife

(Last Updated On: June 10, 2021)

You never know when you’ll be zinged with a lightbulb moment. The sudden, impactful, head-turning second that a seemingly unremarkable thing, like watching a Hallmark movie while getting in my steps for the day, turns into something that suddenly makes so much sense I have to “stop what I’m doing and write it down” kind of moment.

Such was my Saturday afternoon at home, as I put myself through the walking workout paces to keep the post-60 metabolism working strong.

Midlife brings with it some wonderful opportunities, but also some challenging times. How to motivate yourself everyday can become an issue for some of us who are over 60, or over 50 if we’re retired and life has radically changed.

Where do we fit in? Where do we go from here? Should we consider a total reboot and restructure of our life? We wonder how to become more productive and motivated as the years go by. So my attention was grabbed by this conversation.

In the movie, the characters were discussing the upcoming week, and they each shared three things for that particular week: a Goal, a Plan, and an Aspiration.

Now, I am by nature a planner. That’s how I roll. I set goals, too, and work very hard to see them to fruition.

So the idea of goals and plans is nothing new to me.

What really caught my attention, though, was the time-frame as well as the order:

• 1 Week
• 1 Plan
• 1 Goal
• 1 Aspiration

Sometimes, the thought of creating goals and achieving them can seem almost insurmountable because so much is unclear to us. How do we decide what the goal should be? How long should we set our time frame to achieve it? How will we get there? What if…??? So, we do nothing.

By creating small achievements in 1-week intervals, it immediately becomes something we can wrap our head around. Yes, I can see myself doing, acting upon, changing behavior, reaching out, whatever the specific is, during a one-week span.

Keeping this thought in mind, go back to the question of how to stay motivated throughout the day, the week, and longer. By creating these small “chunks” of time and setting small goals and plans, we are more likely to achieve them and in turn, be motivated to repeat the process the next week.

GOAL: the end toward which effort is directed

mirriam-webster.com

How to Motivate Yourself Every Day

If I think about 1 week, and 1 week only, then I can realistically commit to myself that I will set out to do these things.

And, the ‘things’ don’t have to relate to each other. They might, but the idea is to think about our week as a whole and what we want to see happen in that time period.

Let’s look at each action in more detail.

Motivate Yourself Everyday: Set a GOAL for the Week

Set one goal. It could be that you want to eat healthier food, so your goal is to stay away from fast-food restaurants for the entire week, and prepare your own, clean food at home. That’s your goal.

Or, your goal is to lose 1 pound this week.

The thing you want to accomplish might tie into another, larger goal, and that’s fine. But it might not. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’ll take a wild guess and say that we’ve all got things in our lives we want to change, am I right? I thought so. So…select one thing for this week and set a specific, measurable goal.

TIP: Write it down, don’t just keep it in your head. There’s something about the act of writing, seeing the words on the page, that makes it more real and adds to the accountability.

Stay Motivated Daily: Set a PLAN for the Week

Create a plan that you can describe specifically and in one sentence:

My plan is to clean, declutter, and reorganize the laundry room.

Or, my plan is to research and come up with a weekly menu of healthy, clean foods.

Your plan doesn’t have to change the world, or change your life. But it should be relevant to what’s happening with you right now, and be something that is important to you to achieve in this time frame.

If I asked you to grab a pen and paper (or use the app on your phone 🙂 ) and write down 3 things you want to accomplish but haven’t done yet, it would probably be pretty simple and quick for you think of at least three.

PLAN: a method for achieving an end

mirriam-webster.com

So, set a plan for something you want to get done, accomplish, even if it seems quite simple. Make the decision and set the plan.

The goal and the plan for the week could relate to each other, but they don’t have to. This is your goal, and your plan. It’s your life.

When you’re wondering how to motivate yourself everyday, these two weekly commitments will give you the daily inspiration to keep moving forward and seeing them through.

TIP: Just like with the Goal for the week, write down your Plan for the week. Most plans will have a few steps, so writing everything down will help you remember what to do.

And, if you’re a list-checker-offer, putting that big check mark next to each to-do as it’s completed will give you a sense of accomplishment and keep you motivated to complete the plan.

How to Stay Motivated: Set a Weekly ASPIRATION

What is an aspiration? Here is a definition:

ASPIRATION: a hope or ambition of achieving something

lexico.com

This is thinking about the future and what we hope to accomplish. We’re traveling into a bit different territory with aspirations, but they are helpful, motivational and can also be inspiring.

Types of Aspirations:

• a thing we want to do or experience
• a place we want to go
• a skill we want to learn
• an objective we want to achieve
• a possession we want to obtain

We want to dream big, don’t we? So what if I’m 64, if I want to aspire to become a confident ballroom dancer, then that is my aspiration.

Aspirations could include things like, become a successful entrepreneur, speak a language fluently, visit all the states in the continental U.S.

Will you achieve your aspiration in that given week? Not likely. Will it change from week to week? It might. Most of us would have more than one aspiration that we’d like to achieve before we leave this earth.

But by verbalizing, and writing our aspirations down on paper (hint!), we think, we hope, we dream, we plan, we set new goals…and everything ties together.

When you’re pondering how to motivate yourself everyday, remember these 3 words:

GOAL | PLAN | ASPIRATION

How about making a commitment to yourself to take these three words and apply them to yourself for the next 4 weeks. Use the handy, free printable to keep track each week, and see how those actions help motivate you, every day, in life.

It’s free and waiting for you in the Resource Library:

Who knew that watching a Hallmark movie could be so enlightening? Sometimes it is the simplest ideas and actions that can make a significant difference in our lives.

Let’s make the effort to commit to goals, plans and aspirations. Because we all have so much to look forward to!

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