How I’m Staying Motivated in 2025

A vision board, a screensaver, and blinging out my planner.

Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels

One of my biggest challenges in achieving my goals is losing motivation. My therapist assures me that I am far from alone in this. But the way I lose motivation is very specific, and it tends to happen at the intersection of my self-esteem, fatigue, and depression.

This is what that looks like:

• I’ll have a goal and start out very excited about it. But then…

• …I’ll experience professional ghosting or rejection, or not see any results materialize from my actions, and I’ll get discouraged.

• This often leads to losing a) hope in my goal and b) belief in myself, and reverting to old, unhelpful thought patterns like, Things will never change. My life will never get better. What’s the point in trying?

• Simultaneously, I’ll go into “compare and despair” mode, taking note of how successful everyone else is and how much more progress they’ve made than me.

• The last step is losing momentum and abandoning my goal.

There’s another thing that can derail my success, and I experienced it this week: migraines and fatigue. It’s frustrating to feel knocked down for days or weeks at a time with one or both of these afflictions. And it can be very difficult to maintain momentum and consistently take actions toward my goals when I’m frequently sidelined by an excruciating headache and/or exhaustion.

After doing an overnight sleep study at the beginning of December and being diagnosed with moderate obstructive sleep apnea, I will finally have my appointment with a sleep doctor at the end of this month to go over my results and get my treatment plan. Hopefully that will help alleviate one of my challenges — my chronic exhaustion.

Looking back over the past few years since the pandemic hit, I’ve had several goals that involved things like applying for jobs or going to grad school that never happened because, in part, I lost steam. So I know that if I want to achieve the three goals I set for myself this year — get a full-time job, move to Philadelphia, and get a puppy — I need to keep these desires front and center and maintain my energy and enthusiasm for them.

Here are two things my therapist suggested, and one thing I decided on my own to do, to stay motivated and keep working toward — and achieving — my goals this year.