No matter how hard you exercise and how hard you diet, if you lose motivation everything will come apart. And nothing is worse than seeing all your progress unravel.

Unfortunately, most people do not know how to stick with it mentally.

So here are some mind tricks to help you stick with it:

1. Have very specific goals: The more vague your goals are, the more likely it is that you will not succeed. You see, vague goals lead to vague action. On the other hand, specific goals lead to very specific action that creates rapid change.

2. Use positive reinforcement, not self torture: Many people motivate themselves by using whipping techniques. In other words, they exercise or diet in order to avoid something negative. It’s much more useful, however, to run towards something positive.

3. Expect to fail: This is what gets most people. They make a mistake or have a bad day and then they throw in the towel and go on an all out binge. In reality, the most successful people in all areas of life have the highest frequency of mistakes. The key here is to embrace them and never stop moving forward.

4. Don’t rely on your mind’s eye for positive visualization: Instead, print out pictures, print out quotes and do whatever it takes to make your environment automatically motivating. In this day and age, your mind has to deal with too many things. Make motivation and visualization as automatic as possible.

5. Pay attention to routines, not results: Although counterintuitive, if you obsess over results you are less likely to succeed. You see, obsessing over results is an emotional roller coaster ride. Focusing on routines, on the other hand, is much more fruitful.

6. Make your mini goals time bound: Applying deadlines to your mini goals is a great way to make sure your overarching goal doesn’t remain a distant dream. You need to have some sort of time pressure in order to get things done in the most efficient manner possible.

Motivation is usually what makes or breaks a person’s progress. So make sure you take action here sooner rather than later!

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