Tips on Staying Motivated When All Hope is Lost

It’s one of the worst feelings in the world. You wake up at 3:30 in the morning drenched in sweat. You’ve just had a nightmare where you, dressed completely in company attire, were slowly sinking below the surface of the ocean. The message was unmistakable: you feel like your business is sinking and there’s nothing you can do about it!

Times are tough, there’s no doubting that. And businesses do fail all the time. So why is yours any different? To be frank, there isn’t much of a difference. What determines your success in the face of adversity often depends on how motivated you stay throughout. Can you power through?

Keep Your Chin Up

Though it may seem a little cheesy, one of the best things you can do during this time is keep your chin up. Your attitude will determine a lot of your actions, and you need to be really precise in everything you do right now.

If you have a defeatist attitude about your chances, then you will act accordingly. You’ll make decisions that reflect how down and out you are about your business and the state of the world. Why would you try your hardest if you’re so sure you’re going to fail anyway? The same goes if you go into “panic mode.” The more frazzled you are, the worse your decision making becomes. Suddenly you’re ordering all sorts of crazy merchandise and blogging crazy thoughts.

So keep your head down and your nose to the grindstone. Worrying all the time won’t solve anything except how your doctor will pay for his next boat! The clearer your head is the better you’ll be at making rational and clear decisions. If everything is going down in flames anyway, you might as well go all out, right? Treat the situation more like an opportunity than a hindrance.

Redefine Goals

On the other hand, one of the worst things you can do is to maintain the goals you set for your business when you first started. Things are different now, and you need different priorities. It’s time to look at your goals!

Perhaps your early goals for your business were to “make a million dollars” and “take over the world.” Unfortunately, those didn’t quite pan out. So maybe you should change them to “sell X amount of product this month” and “market locally”? Setting some more realistic goals gives you short term satisfaction while you work on your long term plan.

This will also help with adjusting your mental state. If you start achieving small things, you can gain momentum. Often this momentum can drive you to succeed more. Eventually, others will pick up on your progress. Now you capitalize on this and change your goals to take advantage of your new state of affairs.

One final thing: never be afraid of reaching out for help! There is a wide net of people in your industry out there willing to give advice or at least pat you on the back and wish you luck. So reach out when you need a helping hand!

…………….. This has been a guest post provided by Kabbage.com

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