Strategies to increase your motivation

It's easier to stick to your studies when you're strongly motivated. This page explains what you can do to stay motivated.

Motivation is not endless stream or a switch you can turn on and off. Neither is it something that you're born with or not born with. Even creative geniuses can find themselves unmotivated. But everyone can harness their own motivation with a simple tool of setting goals. Watch this video below for some tips to help you stay motivated:

Think positively

• Listen to what you say, either to yourself or to others: Do you put yourself down? Are you negative about your chances? (For example: 'I can't do it.' 'I'll never get through all the work.' 'I'm not very good at ....'
• Try changing your talk, and your ‘self-talk’ and give yourself positive messages. (For example: 'I can succeed.' 'I’m good at …', 'I passed my previous assignment so I can pass this one too.')
• Make a list of all the things you’ve completed successfully in the past, include assessments and exams but add other things as well (i.e. got a job, painted the house, learned to cook, etc ). If you succeeded once, you can do it again.Think about how you did it and use those techniques again.
• Form mental images of working towards successful outcome, i.e. studying hard and passing! (It's very important to include the 'working hard' bit: you won't pass if you don't do the assignments or study for the exam!) Keep thinking about this, reinforcing the image.
• Revise with a friend or fellow student (perhaps you could link up with someone you've 'met' through the course page). Then, if one of you is having a bad day, the other can be encouraging and get you motivated again.

The power of positive thinking - Dr Aaron Jarden, senior lecturer in Psychology, Open Polytechnic (opens in a new window)

Set realistic goals

• If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do, try setting some realistic goals.
• Start by dividing large tasks into smaller, more manageable parts. Then set a mini deadline for each of them.
• Accept that whereas an A is great, a pass is really all you need.
• Accept that you can’t do everything and try to work out what is possible.
• Think about your learning – what works for you and what doesn’t. It’s amazing how many students continue to use strategies and techniques that don’t work for them simply because that’s what they’ve always done. If you don’t think the strategies you’ve been using work all that well for you, then try some new strategies.
• If you feel you're not coping, ask for help: ask your lecturer/tutor or ask a learning adviser by calling 0508 650 200; there may be something we can do to help. And ask for help sooner rather than later, then there's a better chance that you can get back on track.

Read the full article: Strategies to increase your motivation

Feel Free to Help Yourself

Sarah L. Courteau

Sveral years ago, I was living in Washington with one of my brothers, who had come to stay with me while he pulled himself out of a rough patch. Eventually, he got a gig selling memberships at a gym, part of a well-known national franchise. No one in our family is a natural salesperson, but it was a job, and at least the gym is one place where my brother is in his element.

He had the closing shift, and he’d get home in his regulation polo shirt and raid the fridge just as I was going to bed. Pulling in a paycheck straightened his shoulders, as it does for anyone. Some of his wry humor returned, and so it was that one night he came in and, standing at the kitchen counter, recited “The Affirmation,” the creed that new gym employees had to learn by heart:

I will win. Why? I’ll tell you why—because I have faith, courage, and enthusiasm!

Today, I’ll meet the right people in the right place at the right time for the betterment of all.

I see opportunity in every challenge.

I am terrific at remembering names.

When I fail, I look at what I did right, not what I did wrong.

I have clearly defined goals.

I never take advice from anyone more messed up than I am.

I never let a negative thought enter my head.

I am a winner, a contributor, an achiever. I believe in me.

We laughed until there were tears on our cheeks, in part because of the mock enthusiasm with which my brother belted out that last line, but mostly at the idea that such earnest propaganda could ever be received—much less adopted—with a straight face. What kind of chump did these corporate types think he was?

But really, what was so ludicrous about a company that makes its money burnishing the temple of the body applying that same approach to the mind? Sure, it isn’t exactly a tune you can dance to. Still, “The Affirmation,” crude as it is, echoes some of the time-tested ideas of the self-improvement canon, old and new. Back in 1936, in How to Win Friends and Influence People, a folksy businessman’s bible that is really just a useful guide to not being a jerk, Dale Carnegie admonished his readers to “remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” And in the 2006 blockbuster The Secret, various “experts” unrelentingly advocate using positive thinking to mobilize the “law of attraction” in your favor. “Your life is a mirror of the dominant thoughts you think,” but the law of attraction doesn’t register “words of negation,” says one of these authorities. (In other words, if you’re thinking “I don’t want the restaurant to give away our table,” what the universe hears is “I want restaurants to give away our tables.”) The Secretreminds me of another megaseller, The Da Vinci Code, with its pseudo-historical references and simplistic explanations peddled as deep insights. The law of attraction is bunk. But there really are some benefits to thinking positively.

The truth is, my brother could have done worse than take “The Affirmation” to heart. And at that point in my life, dating a string of men whom Dale Carnegie would have kicked to the curb, I could have, too. The main trouble with “The Affirmation” was the source—a company that wanted its workers to bristle with enthusiasm so they’d sell more memberships. That didn’t invalidate the message.

There’s a fundamental contradiction in our attitudes about self-help—a term that describes the broad category of products and ideas that are supposed to make us thinner, happier, smarter, and more efficient. We Americans accept protein powders, extreme diets, personal trainers, expensive gym memberships, and the Rube Goldberg exercise contraptions that litter our basements and garages as the necessary paraphernalia for the pursuit of physical perfection. We openly admire gym rats and envy their fit bodies. But anyone who dabbles in the improvement of the mind—even taking yoga that hasn’t had its spiritual roots bleached out completely—invites a raised eyebrow among those of us who consider ourselves serious people. We are above such lockstep platitudes, empty positivity, and pop psychology.

Read the full article by Sarah L. Courteau : Feel Free to Help Yourself