No matter it can be physically demanding to always keep your momentum but you reach your goals much faster if you do. Plus, it’s somewhat more pleasant to feel the fresh air pressing against you.

Unfortunately, there are neither mental pedals nor mental feet you could pedal with. So building mental momentum differs a little from building speed on a bike. But just a little.

Let’s see how building mental momentum actually works:

Preparation

If you start to ride completely unprepared you risk having to move back to your starting point. That’s not what you want to do, so consider applying the following tips:

• Goal awareness: Do you know your goals yet? Your movement is just not effective if you don’t. I mean, how would you even know you’re moving into the right direction? You don’t need to plan every stopover but you should at least have a vague idea about where the journey should lead you.
• Safety measures: Know that you will experience times of doubt and maybe even frustration. Set up the steady will of not giving up. Having a hard time moving usually just means that you are moving up a hill. So look forward to the downhill ride that is yet to come! I also recommend writing a little motivational text you can read when you’re feeling bad.

Starting to Move

Time to ride!

1. Set small goals. This is the mental equivalent to start driving in the first gear. I recommend daily goal setting for fastest results.
2. Speed up the process of reaching those goals. This doesn’t mean you need to do achieve an amazing number of small goals a day, just make sure you built enough mental momentum to reach those goals fast and with ease.

Shifting Gears

When going for your small goals starts to become less demanding and you feel that you possess some unused motivation, you might want to change up:

1. Set some bigger goals. They shouldn’t be too hard. Setting goals that are out of reach would considerably slow you down. It would be like changing up too early. You shouldn’t choose goals that are too easy to reach either, as you need to go to the next level in order to get extra momentum. You don’t want to stagnate, do you?
2. Again, speed up the process of reaching those goals. Use your collected momentum to reach these bigger goals. Everytime you complete a task, your speed will increase by some amount.
3. Then you might want to change up again.

Repeat this process until you grew beyond what you’ve thought to be possible. Believe me, this mental momentum is some kind of motivation that will help you to yield quite some amazing results.

One additional note: You don’t unlearn riding a bike. Think about it.

Why People Oversleep

There are some different reasons for oversleeping and staying in bed for too long:

• Not hearing the alarm ring: What can I say about this one? Actually, the solution is kinda easy in this case: Get a louder alarm clock! If you regularly miss your alarm you should change something about it.
• Drugs: I don’t want to talk a lot about this point as it’s pretty obvious. If you’re too drunk to stand up, how do you think you could get out of bed on time? Same applies to some other drugs. Just don’t do drugs if you want to wake up at a precise time the following day. (Drinking a lot of coffee can have negative effects on your sleep as well.)
• Tricking yourself to stay in bed: This is where it starts to get interesting. And basically, that’s the point this article really is about. The problem with it is: This sort of tricking yourself has become a habit for most of us. Especially on weekends. You’re giving away valuable time this way. Solving this problem takes some time as you will have to replace the habit of tricking yourself to stay in bed by the habit of getting out of bed as soon as your alarm rings.

Habit Replacement

To replace a habit, you have to act according to the new habit all the time. This means you should get out of bed on time on weekdays and on weekends. Don’t allow any exceptions.

Habit forming is said to take about three weeks at least. So force yourself to stick to your new habit for the first month. Once it has become a habit, you’ll do it all naturally.

Some of you might be able to just use the new habit instead of the old one, but most of us will need some techniques to help ourselves to make the change happen. So here are some recommended methods you can apply during the habit replacement period in that particular case:

• Proper alarm clock positioning: Place your alarm clock out of reach. I recommend to place it just so far away from you that you have to get up on your feet. Once you’re standing it’s a lot easier for you to stay awake and your whole situation changed: Now you don’t need to force yourself to get out of bed anymore, you just need to force yourself to not go to bed again. That’s not that hard to do (or let’s say not to do).
• Don’t let your mind make decisions when drowsy: This requires a little self-discipline. But define your will before you go to bed and stick to it. It’s a major point. Your mind will come up with various strange reasons why you absolutely need another hour of sleep when in fact you just slept long enough to miss a whole vacation. Drowsiness is a strange mental state. And you want to make your decisions when you’re in a clear state of mind, don’t you?
• Motivation: Maybe you will need an extra motivation. You could reward yourself for getting out of bed on time for example. Any small reward will do fine. Plus, you should know what you can do after getting out of bed. Just make it hard for your drowsy mind to come up with any reasons for not getting up.

Don’t let sleep rule you, rule your sleep.

Why is it that some people seem to be successful in every way while others fail doing the most basic things? What separates successful people from the unsuccessful?

Of course, there are some different factors, but I truly believe that a positive attitude works wonders with regard to your overall success. And I got some good reasons to believe that:

Effects on Others

Your inner state is constantly visible to other people. Sometimes they perceive it unconsciously,
but they definitely perceive it. This means that a change of your attitude alters the way people think about you. And that’s why a positive attitude brings about the following advantages:

• It’s easier for you to get to know people. As people with a positive attitude are usually seen as more approachable, people talk to you more often. So it will be easier for you to get to know others. This directly leads to the next point:
• You have more friends and better business opportunities. Others are also more likely to like you and trust you if they sense a positive attitude within yourself. People just feel good in your presence. But not only the quantity of your friendships improves, the quality improves as well. That’s because of the next consequence:
• You attract other people with a positive attitude. Those other people will amplify your own point of view which creates some kind of loop.

Effects on Yourself

A positive attitude has several favorable effects on yourself as well. You probably could have guessed that for your own but let’s go into details:

• You don’t waste your time with pessimism. Your attitude determines your thoughts. If you’re optimistic you just don’t think pessimistic thoughts as often as others do. And this is a time saver. Pessimism doesn’t get you anywhere. So there remains more time to think about the important stuff.
• You tend to give up later. If you have a positive attitude, you trust yourself. This trust leads to good endurance. Lots of people give up before they reach their goals, so this endurance gives you a huge advantage over them.
• You believe in yourself. If you don’t think you can reach your goals, you won’t reach your goals. You automatically use a kind of negative autosuggestion if you have a negative attitude, manipulating yourself into failing.
• You’re motivated and enthusiastic. Your goals seem to be closer if you’re optimistic. And this is what helps you to create a stronger desire within yourself. A desire that gives rise to enthusiasm, motivation and a better focus, which all can be seen as real boosters for your success.
• You’re healthier. Last but not least, your attitude has a direct effect on your body. It’s because your thoughts and believes do influence your inner processes. The placebo effect should be proof enough for this. So people with a positive attitude are healthier than those with a negative one. And health is beneficial for success.

So what about your own attitude? Are you an optimistic person or do you want to change your attitude?

Fortunately, there are plenty of techniques and tips that will help you to become and stay motivated.

Unfortunately, you need to apply them more than one time. It’s not that you need to use a certain technique more than once to become motivated, but motivation tends to fade away quickly if you let it go. So you will need to motivate yourself regularly. Keep that in mind. That’s also the reason why it can be pretty useful to have some different techniques in your repertoire. Alternate. Combine. Don’t become bored by using the same technique over and over again.

To finally add some variety to your motivation creating process you may try out the following techniques:

• Think about your own moments of success: Remember past moments when you felt great. Moments when you succeeded. It doesn’t need to be any huge success, small achievements are sufficient. Try to create the feeling that you can succeed again.
• Read biographies of famous successful people: Read about famous actors, scientist, inventors, almost any successful person will do. Notice that in most cases, their success is nothing but the result of hard work. You can be equally successful if you can create the right attitude.
• Read about motivation: Motivational quotes, articles and even books about motivation are available in the internet. Learn new motivational techniques. Try to understand motivation. If you understand it you can handle it.
• Reward yourself. Why not just think up a little reward for staying motivated over a certain period of time? Rewards surely increase your desire to hold on which will lead to some extra motivation.
• Make it a habit. Don’t ever allow yourself to give up. If you manage to create the habit of keeping up, then guess what? Keeping up will become almost effortless in most situations. Every time you decide to hold out, your will gains power for future decisions. Motivation creates motivation.
• Think about life and death for some time. You should get a feeling for the limitedness of human life. Life is too short to give up. It doesn’t matter if you live to a great age or die in a car crash next week, your life span is very limited. You won’t survive life, so try to use the little time you got. Don’t waste it.

And there’s yet another great tip to become and stay motivated: Learn something about proper goal setting and goal achievement. You could do that by reading the according articles on this website for example:

• Successful Goal Setting Explained
• How to Reach Your Goals

So if aimless travelling is not what this article is about, then what are you supposed to learn here? This article will tell you some powerful tips. Tips on how to increase your rate of success, how to stay motivated and how to maintain a sharp focus, tips ready for use. Here they are:

• Visualize your goals. Imagine how it would be to have achieved all of your goals. What would you feel? What would you see? What would you think? Try to go into details. Let your mind form a concrete picture of your success. I’m not talking about daydreaming, you have to believe that your visualization can come true. Try to imagine smaller steps if you don’t think you’re ready to jump. You don’t want to feel frustrated during your mental expedition, you want to feel a strong desire inside of you. Feel how your motivation increases. Visualization can also be helpful to remind yourself of your goals. Don’t underestimate its power!
• Keep your goals in steady focus. Remind yourself of what you want to reach. You could form a new habit to do that. For example, you could do some kind of everyday reflection before going to bed and mentally check your process. Maybe you want to combine that with visualization. Just do anything that will help you to stay focussed.
• Avoid persons who pull you down and look for those who motivate you. Try to get away from pessimistic people, they pull you down and can be a huge obstacle on your way. Their attitude influences your attitude. Their pessimism creates pessimism inside of you. Your surroundings affect your feelings to a large extent. That’s why you should surround yourself with ambitious and enthusiastic people, those who resonate with you, those who smile, those who laugh, those who are successful themselves. Let their success and enthusiasm spread to you.
• Read success stories. Other people’s success can really motivate you. You will be more likely to believe that you can be successful yourself if you know that others can be. Most of the time, success is just the result of hard work and the right inner attitude. You can do it too. Try to avoid becoming envious though. Envy would be a burden for you. Envy weakens you, it takes away enthusiasm and creativity. What you want to create is the feeling that you will succeed if you make some effort, that you will soon be able to write your own success story.
• Tell others about your goals. This brings about some extra pressure which works just nice to keep you motivated. It will also make it harder for you to give up. Just try it out. You could tell your friends about your ambitions, post your goals in forums or post them on your blog, just to mention a few possibilities.
• Hold on! Don’t give up too soon. Many people give up just before they would make the one deciding step. I’d like to quote Thomas Alva Edison (famous American inventor) to emphasize that point:
  “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
• Enjoy your life. You need to like your life and yourself, so don’t forget to enjoy the present moment. Having reached goals shouldn’t be the only pleasure in your life. Goals are great to give direction to your life and to create a better future. But after all, you’ll never be living in the future, you’re living now!

You might noticed that the whole process of reaching goals is strictly linked to your inner attitude. I want to emphasize this essential point one more time:

Trust yourself.

Believe in your qualities. There’s virtually nothing you can’t do. Most people have difficulties accepting that. They don’t really trust themselves. If you don’t trust yourself, you’re constantly manipulating yourself into failing and improvement becomes impossible. Sounds easy? Yeah, but it can require quite some practice.

Going for your goals might be a little stressful at the beginning, but stress comes and goes with your inner attitude. Don’t try to hard, but do your best.