Motivation to Take the First Steps

Posted on March 25, 2024
Claudia hiking through Scotland, showing her from the back taking steps with her dogs. Motivation in action.

The sunshine and longer daylight hours are amazing motivation to take the first steps! Do you feel that, too? 

Since the end of February, you’ve been doing some great groundwork: carefully looking at your ideas and options, selecting one, letting go of the others, and, last week, preparing the space for your choice to be planted. 

Are you ready for this? 

I’m so excited to finally get into the action part! Sometimes the contemplation can get a bit much and I jump into action too soon. More fool me (as I always have to pay for it later. 

There is such a thing as right timing. When everything lines up and you are ready to jump into action because you’ve done all the prep work. A lot of great ideas never see the light of day because people jump too soon, or they don’t prepare what they can to be ready and when the moment comes – they aren’t ready to go for it. 

You aren’t like that, though. You are taking the time to explore what’s important to you and then take deliberate action towards making this happen! Kudos to you!

Motivational Quote 

Let’s start this week of with an inspirational, and of course positive, quote: 

“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you’re not staying where you are “ ~

J.P. Morgan 

You might like to write this out or print it and keep it somewhere that you pass by often throughout the week. It will serve you as a reminder to keep your focus and to keep moving forward. 

No motivation to do anything 

Finding that you have no motivation to do anything can be difficult. Our society does not look with favour on perceived laziness. 

What I want you to ask yourself is whether you might be burnt out? Have you lived out of alignment with your energy for too long? 

Or have you used up too much energy and are now depleted? 

Allow yourself to rest (without judging yourself for it) and let yourself be guided by your intuition on what you need to completely restore your energies. 

If you don’t know where you might be out of alignment, I invite you to book a call with me so we can have a look at your Human Design chart and you can easily see where to focus your healing. 

First Steps 

Let’s go back to your big idea! Can you see it in your mind’s eye? 

Good, because you need to hold the vision and get active. 

One of my favorite ways to keep my momentum going is to create a mood board. Okay, I’ll be honest: it has become digital sometimes when I didn’t have the right craft items to hand. 

If you’re a member of A Year’s Journey, I suggest you listen to the guided meditation prior to starting the craft project I’m about to introduce. If you’re new to my blog (or me) and you don’t want to sign up for a whole year just yet, you can also get the workbook and guided meditation for just this week. 

Think about your dream: your big idea or the opportunity you are going to go after this year. What pictures come to mind? 

Creating Your Mood Board

What you need: 

  • A piece of cardboard or thick paper (I prefer A3 so I have enough space) 
  • Coloured pencils
  • Glue
  • Scissors 
  • Magazines, pictures, newspapers 

How to go about it: 

Go through your magazines, pictures, and newspapers and find anything that jumps out at you. This could be pictures, colours, and headings or words that you want to cut out. They should remind you of your big idea and the feeling you’ll have when you have achieved it. 

Tip: if you can’t find any pictures that inspire you, you can search online and then print the ones you’ve found. 

Once you have a collection of pictures and words, lay them out on your cardboard. I like putting them down once to see how  to layer them before committing to gluing them on. 

What to do when you have “empty” spaces: 

  1. Leave them empty: that way you can add more pictures later (when you progress towards your idea, more inspiration will come that you might like to include). 
  2. Write down affirmations that you can read out loud when you look at your mood board. This could be something like “I am so excited about XXX in my life”. 

Going the extra mile: 

The last step is to find a song that reminds you of your big dream, and fires you up to get into action. You might like to listen to this song while you glue everything together. That way you connect the song deeply with your idea and will get motivated just by listening to it. 

Showcase Your Motivation Mood Board 

Well, you don’t need to share it with the world (unless you want to!). But it is a good idea to have a place in your home to display and showcase your moodboard. 

Use a space that you pass often, or one that your eyes are easily drawn to. If you are working in an office where you can’t put this up (or don’t want to), take a picture and keep a copy on your phone. Then set a daily reminder to look at it.

Keep Your Motivation Growing 

You might feel a little overwhelmed with all of the things you want to achieve. Or you might feel that everything is taking far too long. And that might hamper your motivation. How can one spend so much time preparing, and taking very little action? Why can’t you have everything now? 

Well, just like flowers need time to grow – so do you! 

Sticking with the metaphor of flowers: imagine you prepare the soil and put the seed in. Then, after a day, you are disappointed that you can’t see anything growing yet. So, instead of waiting patiently, you dig out the seed to see if it has formed roots. 

I know you don’t need me to tell you what’s going to happen to that flower… 

So here’s an overview I’ve created for the whole year. It shows you the collections calendar as well as weekly themes. 

Now, relax, and breathe – because I know you are in it for the long haul! You want to stay motivated. You want to reap rewards not just tomorrow, but also the day after, and the day after that. That’s what you can have when you do the work, heal yourself, and set yourself up for success. 

What’s Next 

Next week, you’re going to grow beyond yourself: it’s all about making new friends and connections. Expanding not only yourself, but also your network. This in itself is going to bring a LOT of motivation to stay focussed on your choice!