How long does it take to regain a spark and motivation

How long does it take to regain a spark and motivationHow long does it take to regain a spark and motivationIf you start doing small daily activities (aka habits) that inch you toward your goal and fuel your motivation? About 66 days.Three Ways toChangeThere are only three to four known ways to modify human behavior for good. You can wait forenlightenment, and this is one way. However, its highly unreliable. You canleid engineer enlightenment.Aelendher method is tochange your environment, what surrounds you. You can throw out every piece of furniture from your bedroom. You can change jobs. You can move to a different city or country. Each of those changes will introduce changes in your environment, and your environment often provides cues for your habits.Follow Ladders on FlipmotherboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreThus, your habits will change. But this kind of change lacks the element of conscious de sign. Some of your habits will disappear, others will emerge and you will start behaving differently. How differently? Time will tell.There is one more problem with this method not everyone can afford it. Its not so easy to change a job on a whim or move to another country, especially if you have family and life obligations.When I decided to change my life at the age of 33, I had a day job, was married, had three kids and a 35-year mortgage to pay off. I could not drop everything and start a new life.The ThirdWayAnother great way to change your behavior is tospend time with people you want to be like. Find people who have the spark and motivation. Mingle with them. Interact with them. Thats all. Human social nature will take care of the rest.We are social mimicking machines. Everything, from body language and vocabulary to value systems, transfers from one person to another at a subconscious level. You can slow down or accelerate this process of osmosis only with your conscious effo rt.The Fourth and BestWayMeeting new people may not be an immediate option for everyone. I was shy like hell when I began to change my life. Others may be constricted by geography, physical disabilities or circumstances (its pretty hard for an ex-convict to get into the top tier of society right after getting out of jail).Hence, the most reliable and available method to change ones behavior is bychanging personal habits.The idea of habit does not include the size of the activity. Doing a pushup once a day is as much of a habit as working out in a gym for two hours a day.SustainabilityWhen building new habits, dont chase immediate results, aim for sustainability. If you can do something for 100 days in a row without fail, thats sustainability. Michael Phelps can swim four hours a day, every day. You cant. Aim for somethingYOUcan do every day.I recommend starting a couple of habits one that will be directed toward your goal, and one specifically to fuel your motivation.So, if you want to write a book, write every day. If you want to lose weight, exercise every day. If you want to graduate, study every day.Remember, the scale is irrelevant at the beginning. It may be one sentence, one pushup or half a page from a textbook. Only sustainability truly matters, and its easier to maintain if your initial discipline is tiny. Also, keep in mind that tiny is subjective. One swimming pool length is tiny for Michael Phelps and writing 1,000 words is not a problem for Stephen King.When I started developing my habits I decided on several 10-minute disciplines that might have been grueling for others, like reading a book written by a saint or studying database administration documentation. But they were small in my mind.MotivationPeople often say that motivation doesnt last. Well, neither does bathing?- ?thats why we recommend it daily.?- ?Zig ZiglarWhatever your primary discipline is, you should start also a habit of igniting and maintaining your motivation. You cannot just wait for it to appear. You need to cultivate it.The range of options is wide you can read yourpersonal mission statement, look at a vision board or visualize your success (or your process of getting to that success or both).The key is to make ita habit, not to invent the fanciest motivational tool.This article first appeared on Medium.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people