Goals, Motivation, and Conflict

I made a blogging schedule but have not been sticking with it...My days are filled with work, my evenings are filled with recovering from my stressful day and finding time and energy to write.

Which brings me to the topic of my discussion today...GMC. Goals, Motivation, and Conflict. Those are the 3 things every character in your story must have. What do they want, why do they want it, and why can't they have it? It sounds simple, doesn't it?

Books have been written about it, it's been blogged about more than anything I'm sure. It's one of those things you know your character needs.

What about us? When it comes to ourselves, it's sometimes hard to figure out our GMC.

Goal: To write

Motivation: I love writing and building characters and their stories

Conflict: Time and energy

Yep, it's as simple, and complicated, as that.

My problem is I usually know what my goals are, but conflict gets in the way and I lack motivation. It's easy to forget or overlook what motivates me, especially when things get hectic and it's easier to relax on the couch with a glass of wine and a good movie.

Take blogging. I want to stick to a schedule, but time really does get in the way and it's hard to find motivation when you don't have a lot of readers on your blog. Well, it's hard to get readers when you don't blog!

Because today is my Top 8 of 8 if I go by my blogging schedule, I'm going to list 8 ways you can find motivation.

1. Keep a gratitude journal and write about what you're grateful for. Remember the small things we often overlook.
2. Pray.
3. Hang a picture of an inspiring person, place or event, or something that reminds you of what you want and why. Remind yourself why you want to reach this goal, and renew your vigor with that knowledge.
5. Assign yourself a personal mantra and say it everyday. I will I will I will.
6. Believe in yourself.
7. Reward yourself.
8. Penalize yourself. That's right. It's in direct contrast to what I said about rewarding yourself. I find that if I want something and I have the means (like if I want a piece of chocolate or a new pair of shoes), I'll usually buy it. I work for a living after all, why not? Yet sometimes that attitude makes it hard for us, because if we always get what we want, we don't have any reason to work harder at what we want. Parents penalize their children if they do something wrong, why shouldn't we penalize ourselves? When I first got on the insulin pump years ago, I had to be very strict about what I ate and what I did for a good month. I rewarded myself at the end of the month with an ice cream blizzard, knowing that if I did what I was supposed to do, I would enjoy that ice cream. It was rare for me to have Dairy Queen blizzards, so it was motivation for me to do what I needed to do. If I had a blizzard every time I was hungry for one (which I didn't back when I didn't have an insulin pump), I wouldn't have cared because I would have known I'd have one anyway. Just one example!

How do you motivate yourself?