No matter what facet of life you are trying to improve it always takes work.  You want a promotion at work. You want to start eating better. You want to start running more. Whatever it is you are going to have to get excited and pumped to work for it.  Now there are a million different inspirational quotes.  That are “supposed” to get you to run nonstop for 2 hours straight, but how many of these actually get you, well, motivated.

There are quotes that make us strive for the things that we want “Don’t complain, just work harder”. There are quotes that make exert more than we thought we had “Push yourself to prove you are alive”. And there are quotes that are meant to make us maintain focus on our goals, in spite of difficulties.  “Persevere…because on the road to success there is never a crowd on the extra mile!” Now truthfully, how many of these quotes actually invigorate your soul and make you want to become better?

Wikipedia has a behemoth of a page for their motivation entry. But I don’t think we have to complicate things like that. I think you can find a short phrase that should do the trick without digging through an entire encyclopedia entry.

To most people  quotes will be clever and entertaining, but they are not going to light that internal flame of motivation.  To do that you need something that speaks directly to you. so the question is:

HOW DO YOU MOTIVATE YOURSELF?

Ask yourself, “How am I going to motivate myself?”  The hardest part to any goal is the very beginning, after that you have momentum and you can continue barreling down the trail, and in some cases accelerating down.  Motivation is what has to come before that very first step.  The first step initiates the course that you will take, but motivation initiates the action.