The next time you feel unmotivated, uninspired, ready to eat a sleeve of Oreo’s, try and do these simple steps:

• Stop and breathe for a second. Let your emotions settle down. Why act on anger or frustration? Doesn’t that create more anger and frustration?
• This is the major step:  I want you to reflect back on the first day you started your journey. The first day you started your business or made your first dollar or had your first customer or set up your first website. Do you remember that day, how far ago it was, and how much time as passed?

Look at you now. Look at all the improvements and failures and hardships you went through. Look at how you recovered and the good that came out of it. I started blogging two years ago. Since that time, I started over 5 times. Then I started this blog (so technically 6). Can you image how difficult that is, to start over? I’m sure you do.

Every time I felt unmotivated or felt like quitting, I look back at the first day I started my journey as a writer. The first day I wrote my first blog post and how I couldn’t differentiate their, they’re and there. Then I look at my writing now, and my allies, my first eBook, and the short time (only 2 years) that passed.

As much as I dislike comparing myself to others, in this sense, it is a useful metric. I compare myself to other writers who have been doing this for 10 . . . 20 years! Just imagine how many times they had to start over to get to where they are.

When you feel unmotivated, wanting to quit, etc., it’s easy to dwell on that feeling. It’s overwhelming and poisonous. But let me be very frank: If praise is what you’re looking for, you won’t find it in feeling down on yourself. The only way to get praise and congrats is to do more work. Better work. Wholehearted, blood, sweat, and tears. Don’t think about the outside, think about what needs to get done. Invest your energy in that.

Whenever you feel down, whenever you feel like nothing is working out, whenever you feel like you’re just not doing it right, I want you think about the very first day you started your journey. And then I want you to look at yourself now. This is your story — something special to only you.

Don’t devalue your upbringing and what you went through — that’s easy. Appreciate the roadblocks that you managed to hurdle and the perseverance that has brought you to this very day with what you own.

I bet whatever it is you come up with, it’s amazing and remarkable. A story worth telling.

So now is your chance. Tell me your story. Tell me where you’re at now and when you first started. I bet you the motivation will come crashing in.