How to Stay Motivated when You Feel Like Giving Up: 5 Tips that Work

It’s been almost one year since I stopped smoking. In this post, I will share how I kept myself motivated despite the temptations and challenges (ie. Being surrounded with smokers, diverting my cravings to junk foods, and resorting to stress eating) while I was trying to quit the habit.

1. Create a plan for every goal you have may it be big or small.
   
   You will not reach a certain goal if you don’t know how to plan or at the very least, set expectations. This, perhaps, is the most beautiful lesson I’ve learned in life. When I learned how to set my priorities, I achieve more things and I find more reasons to stay motivated. Each time I feel like I’m losing steam, I just look back to the life I used to have to remind myself of how far I’ve come.


2. Find a reason why you want to pursue a particular goal.
   
   One reason why we lose sense of direction is forgetting why we’re doing certain things. To make your reason seem more concrete, you can write them down and keep on reading them, so that you can get attuned to them again.


3. Find other ways to achieve your goal.
   
   "If plan A doesn’t work, don’t worry because the alphabet has 26 other letters." If you’re losing motivation because you feel like you’re not seeing any progress, why not find another way of working towards your goal?
   
   During the times I failed to quit smoking through gradual withdrawal and e-cigarettes, I tried resorting to the cold turkey method. I know it would be hard, especially for someone who smoked for 12 years, but I wanted to challenge myself. I’m the type of person who tends to be more persistent when things get tougher. Finally, I succeeded, and I never had a single puff of cigarette from the time I quit.


4. Enjoy what you do.
   
   The lessons I learned when I quit smoking will not stop with me, I will continue to share it with others. Through tips and accounts of my personal journey, I’m striving to encourage others to stop smoking and take better care of their health. Thanks to social media and this blog, I am able to reach a lot of people and encourage them to end their relationship with cigarettes. I feel overjoyed and fulfilled each time someone e-mail or message me through Facebook, saying that they were able to quit smoking. This is how I enjoy what I’m doing.


5. Find inspiration.
   
   In this journey, my son is my inspiration. Aside from the harmful effects of cigarette smoke to his health, I also don’t want him to grow up seeing me smoke. I just want to set a good example to him so that he can have a good quality of life.

Follow these so that you can keep that fire within you as you strive to be more responsible with your life. While I cited my journey to quitting smoking in this post as an example, it’s important to note that these tips can also work well in staying motivated with any area of your life such as getting higher grades, improving your career, losing weight, and other goals you may have.