How to Stay Motivated for Your English Goals | Build Momentum

Does this sound familiar to you? You start January with a bang,

new goals, resolutions, or new intentions,

and you tackle your goal with enthusiasm.

You set up great habits and every week you do exactly what you're

supposed to do to achieve success.

And then February happens. You start to get a bit busier,

you have more deadlines to meet, and you're feeling a bit tired.

You lose energy. And by March,

you've totally lost steam.

You no longer have that motivation to keep you going.

You start to lose those great habits that you've built,

and maybe your goal becomes long forgotten.

This is a pattern that you and I are both very familiar with.

So you might be wondering, is there a better way?

If you've set a goal for your English, confidence and fluency,

is there a way for you to maintain the momentum you need to keep

going forward? No matter what? If you don't already know,

I'm Annemarie with Speak Confident English,

everything I do here is designed to help you get the confidence you want for

your life and work in English. And to answer that question,

is there a better way? The answer is yes, absolutely.

There's a better way. Just like you.

I have a laundry list of professional and personal goals,

but I don't have a lot of time.

So I'm always looking for more effective,

efficient ways to help me keep motivation,

track my progress and be certain that I meet my goals.

So whether you're setting a new goal right now,

or you're still working toward a goal that you set last year,

in this lesson,

you're going to discover four different strategies to help you keep motivation

or reclaim the momentum you need to keep going. And along the way,

you're going to learn useful collocations, idioms,

and frail verbs that we use to talk about this in English.

Plus at the end, I have a free download for you in this download.

I'm going to share with you the same process I use to track my progress and keep

that momentum going. I have all the details for you at the end.

So be sure to stick with me

At the beginning of this lesson,

I used the expression to start January with a bang.

When we start something with a bang,

it means that we start with excitement and enthusiasm,

just like we do with almost every goal we set.

I'm sure that with any goal you've set,

you're familiar with that feeling of being instantly enthused,

and you may fling yourself or throw yourself into the process of creating

habits or setting up an action plan to help you meet those goals. However,

you may run out of steam before you even reach the halfway point.

Although you've worked hard to build those strong habits,

you've lost that initial spark that helped you start that goal.

You, this is where the word momentum comes in.

Momentum is a force that drives us forward with energy,

an energy that develops with the continued synergy of having

confidence, a positive mindset, building strong habits,

feeling motivated and having the certainty that you're making progress

with those five elements combined.

You have that energy to move you forward. However,

when just one of those elements is negatively affected,

we begin to lose that momentum, that energy that we need to keep us going.

If you're struggling to stay focused on your goals and to

maintain the positive habits you've built,

let's get into four strategies that will help.

Plus vocabulary you need to talk about it.

Strategy number one is evaluate and refocus.

In any journey or any goal that you have,

you're bound to hit a snag or encounter a problem

and get thrown off.

To be thrown off is a phrasal verb that means to be diverted away

from the thing that you're pursuing. For example,

after building a habit of running three days a week,

an injury can throw you off your routine and stall your

progress. Here's the thing,

often the goals we set are too vague or too broad to create

the momentum we need to keep going and to meet that goal successfully.

And that's exactly why when you encounter a problem,

it's much easier to get thrown off,

but let's reframe this usually negative experience.

There is a positive side to it rather than attempt to

pursue something blindly without clear direction.

This experience is an opportunity to evaluate and refocus

what this is to take a step back and look at the full picture.

Perhaps there's a better way to frame the goal or set a goal that is more

specific, more helpful. When you encounter these situations,

try using this sentence structure to help you set a more specific goal.

I will __ the verb or the action for ___and then

the duration or the frequency and when.

Let me give you an example of how I can take a vague goal and turn it

into something far more specific and helpful so that I have the momentum I need

to keep going, rather than say, I will read one book this month.

You can shift the language slightly to more clearly say,

I will read a book for 15 minutes at 6:00 AM before I have

breakfast. This small shift in language,

prioritizes that goal in a different way.

And it will set you up for success to reclaim the momentum you need

to meet that goal in the end Strategy number two for reclaiming momentum

is to be a minimalist.

Once you refocus your goal,

you can take a minimalist approach to defining success.

Just like our goals tend to be too vague.

We also tend to define success as some huge end moment like

climbing Mount Everest or reading 25 books in English in a year.

And then when we're not successful, or if we start to get off track,

we feel disappointed and we get stuck in a rut. We lose that steam.

A better approach is to celebrate small wins and take

a bare minimum approach.

The bare minimum refers to the least or smallest amount

permissable. Let's go back to how we refocused the goal in strategy number

one and consider how we can redefine success with this

bare minimum approach.

Rather than view success as finishing a book in one month,

success can be defined as successfully reading for 15 minutesa day.

This approach doesn't have a high level of commitment or a high level of that

complete success or failure.

Instead by choosing to read for 15 minutes a day,

instead of scrolling through social media,

you're doing the bare minimum so that you meet your

daily goal. By following this strategy,

not only do you cultivate a more consistent habit,

but you also create the opportunity of these small daily

wins that lead you to feeling motivated and a sense of

making progress. And in the end,

that is exactly what we need to either reclaim or maintain

the momentum we need.

Strategy number three on our list today is my favorite and it

tends to have the greatest impact for my students when they implement it.

Strategy three is fall in love with the process.

When you shift your goals and redefine success,

it helps you to fall in love with the daily practice.

What that means is focusing on the transformation that's happening every day,

as opposed to some long term end goal.

Let's talk about that word transformation for a moment.

Transformation is the act or process of changing

completely imagine completely changing or transforming how you feel

speaking English,

going from someone who feels or nervous all the time to feeling

absolutely confident.

This transformation requires two things time and

small, consistent acts day in and day out.

In other words, a routine,

and although routines have the potential for starting to feel

boring or monotonous,

there are steps you can take to help you fall in love with this daily

practice, this transformation. For instance,

if you want to become a better writer,

but you're feeling uninspired with the monotonous routine of using

the same resources again and again,

you can introduce new resources that also align with

your areas of interest.

This act of combining a daily habit with something that is of interest

to you, helps to maintain a more positive outlook and again,

keep that momentum.

You need to consistently meet your daily goal and

in the end,

rather than waiting months or even years for that final end

result,

this practice helps you to fall in love with those daily

achievements, those daily habits,

or that process that leads to transformation.

And now our final strategy in today's lesson on how to reclaim

momentum to help you meet your goals is to remember that patience is

a virtue.

The truth is success is not defined by one

single moment or event.

What that means is you can't do one thing one time and

immediately have success toward a goal. Instead,

success comes from patience and demonstrating

consistency, walking the walk.

I love this expression to walk the walk means that you back up

your words with actions,

you do what you say you're going to do.

It is the ability to walk the walk,

even when you're feeling bored, even when you started to lose motivation,

even when things get more challenging or you don't feel that you're making

progress, staying on the path, walking the walk,

even when you experience those difficult elements is the most critical

step in achieving success. Everyone experiences highs

and lows when they're working toward a goal,

whether it's a career goal, a health and fitness goal,

or a language goal. Recognizing that reality now,

knowing that at some point in your journey, things will get difficult.

You will feel tired.

You will have days when you're not sure about the progress you're making,

knowing that now,

and being prepared for that by following the other strategies,

reframing your goal, redefining success,

falling in love with the daily practice and walking the walk will help

you maintain or reclaim the momentum needed so that

you are ultimately successful.

Now that you have these four strategies to help you gain the momentum you need.

And you have a wealth of vocabulary that can use to talk about this.

Let me share with you my process for how I track my progress

and help me stay motivated to meet my goals. As I mentioned,

I have a free download for you.

This is the same download I use when I want to set specific

goals or refocus and define them more clearly,

when I need to redefine success,

and create a daily action plan to help me walk the walk and

fall in love with the process.

I've put all of this in a simple PDF that you can download and immediately

implement so that you start making progress toward your goals.

To get this free download.

You can visit this lesson on my Speak Confident English website,

and I'll leave a link directly to that lesson in the notes below this video.

Along with that, I have two questions for you. Number one, as I mentioned,

there were lots of new collocations,

idioms and FRA verbs in this lesson today to help you talk about

momentum in English,

I would love to know if there was one particular vocabulary that you really

loved. And if so,

share it with me in the comments below when you do that,

make sure that you also use it in an example sentence.

It's the perfect opportunity to make sure you really understand that new

vocabulary and you're able to use it correctly.

And my second question is from today's lesson,

which strategy are you going to use to help you get the momentum you

need so that whatever goal you've set for yourself,

you're bound to be successful. Again,

you can share which strategy you're going to use with me in the

comments below. If you found today's lesson useful to you,

I would love to know. And you can tell me in one very simple way,

simply give this lesson a thumbs up here on YouTube, and while you're at it,

subscribe to this channel.

So you never miss one of my Confident English lessons.

Thank you so much for joining me. And I look forward to seeing you next time.