 Self-motivation is one of the most important skills you can master if you want to be successful in soccer. But if you're always looking for an external source to motivate you, you're always going to struggle. In this video, I'll show you how to motivate yourself, how to get over laziness, and a pre-game motivational video to make sure you're always playing at your best. If you want to get motivated, you must change the way you look at motivation. And more importantly, you must WANT to become better at motivation. Because self-motivation is possibly the most important skill any player or person can master. If you can always be motivated, you'll constantly move forward. You may fail along the way, but with this ability, you'll simply get back up, try again, and keep moving forward until you get what you want. Nothing will be able to phase you. However, without this ability, you will never reach your full potential or achieve your goals. Because when things aren't going your way, when everything and everyone seems to be against you, or when you're tempted to be lazy, you'll give in and you will give up. So understand, motivation, being motivated, staying motivated is your responsibility and it's under your control. If you're looking outside of yourself for someone or something to motivate you, you're already looking in the wrong place. True motivation can only be produced by you. First, realize motivation is not a state. It's not a quality someone possesses. You've probably heard someone say he is very motivated or she has lots of motivation. Don't be confused. Motivation is not a characteristic they possess. It's an action they take. It's a skill they are good at. Just like shooting or dribbling, it's something they practice and it's something they use and do when the opportunity arises. So first, do not look at motivation as something you have. Motivation is not something you have. Motivation is something you do. It's a skill. It's a practice. It's an action. It's a thought. Simply put, motivation is making yourself do something. It's the practice of making yourself want to do something. Now, how do you make yourself want to do something? Or more specifically, how do you practice self-motivation? People are motivated by two things. Pain and pleasure. They are either pushed away from pain or they are pulled towards pleasure. For example, a pain or push motivation may be the fear of humiliating yourself in front of your friends. The possibility of losing your starting position if you don't play well. The pain of disappointing your coach, teammates and parents, missing chances, making mistakes, giving away possession or being the reason your team lost the game. These pains can be used as motivation to push you to want to do something. Think about those pains. Experience the emotion of those pains. How would it feel to get benched? How would it feel to constantly make mistakes, to let your team down? If you're comfortable experiencing these situations and feeling those emotions, then feel free to be lazy. Lay on the couch with a bag of chips and lie to yourself saying, I'll train tomorrow. If you're tired of lying and cheating yourself, the time is now. And if you are really serious about improving your ability to motivate yourself, you need something to pull you. A pleasure or pull motivation may be something like... I have a free gift that I want to give you called the pre-match success guide. It's going to improve the quality of your performances. It's going to help you get over that nervousness, get over that fear. The satisfaction of making your high school team, the joy of scoring the winning goal against your biggest rival, winning a tournament, becoming the MVP, getting scouted, making your opponents jealous, earning that starting spot, getting more playing time and becoming your team's go-to player. Think about those achievements. Feel those emotions, experience them. Don't just say them, actually feel them. How does it feel? How do those emotions feel? Are they something you want? It's waiting for you. All you have to do is put in the work. This is the skill of self-motivation. It's your responsibility to think these thoughts. When you truly think and feel these pains and pleasures, you will feel the desire and willingness to train hard, to be consistent and to stay hungry. Just as motivation is a thought, it's a skill, it's something you do, so is laziness. You are not lazy. You just do lazy. You are not lazy. You've just been practicing lazy way too much. Instead of thinking of the joys of victory and how good it will feel to play your best and show everyone how good you are, you think about how nice it would be to feel lazy, to be lazy, to sit there, to waste time, to do nothing, to go nowhere, to get fat, get slow, weak, out of shape. Well, maybe when you think of lazy like that, maybe the lazy isn't something you want to do, is it? Lazy is a thought. Motivated is a thought. Stop looking at laziness or motivation as something you have or do not have and start looking at laziness or motivation as something you do. It is your choice. You can either do lazy or you can do motivation. So remember, whenever you need to do the act of self-motivation, think about the experiences, feel the emotions, control your thoughts and ask yourself what is pushing you and what is pulling you to become the best you can possibly be. A lot of people struggle with butterflies in their stomach, nervous thoughts, and it affects the way that they play. So if you want to get past these common problems, there's a few things I want you to think about. First of all, you want to be excited about the game. A lot of people are going to the game and they are afraid. They are here rather than excitement. So you need to start thinking about everything that's possibly going to go right. First of all, you're about to play a game that you love. So that's one thing that you can focus on. And that can get you feeling excited right away. But the thing I really want you to think about is all the positive outcomes that can happen today. For example, you could win the game. You could perform really well. You could impress your coach. You could score a goal. You could work on some skills that you've been practicing. You could do so many things and these are all reasons to be excited. Now, most people, most players that struggle with nerves, they don't have this mentality. Instead, they are afraid and they're focusing on all the negative outcomes. They're thinking about, what if I screw up? What if I don't play well? What if I make a mistake? What if I do something bad and it causes my team to lose? What if everyone gets upset with me? They think about things that happened in the past. Like last week, I played poorly. Maybe I'm going to do that again. So you can see, if I go into the game with that mentality, I'm already setting myself up to fail. So first of all, you want to get excited about the opportunity. Next, I want you to use your mental self-talk to your advantage. So everyone has experienced that little voice creeping into your head. That voice that pops up and says, hey, maybe I'm not good enough to play with these guys. Maybe I didn't train hard enough this week. You can either let that voice control you or you can control it. So when that voice pops up, you need to use mental self-talk, the way you talk to yourself in your mind, to your advantage. You need to say, I can do this. I will do this. I am good enough. And if you just start talking to yourself positively, you will allow yourself to play well. You'll give yourself the opportunity to play well. So you need to start being aware of the thoughts that are going on in your mind and learn to control them. Another thing I want you to think about is confidence. Confidence is a skill. Yes, you may need to develop your confidence by practicing more, by developing your skills, by becoming fitter. All these things will make you more confident. However, confidence is something that you have. If you ever hear people say, I lost my confidence or I need to get my confidence back. I hate when people say that. Where did your confidence go? Your confidence is always inside of you. You just chose not to use it. So confidence is telling yourself, I can do this, believing in your own ability. Believe in your ability to handle any circumstance, any situation that occurs on the field. For example, your team concedes a goal or you make a mistake. Maybe you scored an own goal. Maybe you got beat by a player. Maybe you're not playing well. Maybe the referee gave you a card or made a bad call against your team. Have the belief that you can handle and come back from every situation. A lot of you love. You started playing this game because you loved it, not because of all the pressure, not because of all these things that you have to achieve and all the personal pressures you put on yourself. You started playing this game because you enjoy playing football, you enjoy playing soccer. So remember that and if you go into your game with that mentality, then the nerves should quickly disappear. So focus on your confidence. Use that positive self-talk. Crush that little negative voice that keeps popping up. Focus on being excited rather than afraid and just enjoy this game. Each day, you will do a different workout routine which will focus on a different area of your development. Check out that free training. If you find it helpful and you like my style of coaching, take a closer look at my online soccer academy. I've put 30 years of playing and coaching experience into one program to help you get the best results. Whether you want to be a professional or you just want to play at this amateur local level and be the best player you can possibly be, it's very important that you have specific goals and you keep yourself motivated towards achieving those goals. If you don't play your best, you're going to be upset with yourself. You're going to be a little disappointed and frustrated and soccer isn't going to be that fun when every time you show up, you're only a fraction of the player you know you could be. You know you could be better if you just applied yourself. If I know I scored 10 goals last season, well this year I want to score at least 11 or I want to try to go for 12 or 15 and that gives me motivation to train hard. That gives me motivation to keep pushing forward and in reality what other people think about you does not matter. All that matters is what you think about yourself. However, we are human beings and we are wired in this way and we do want to impress or we do want to prove other people wrong. So you can use other people to your advantage to keep you motivated. Every player has someone they hate playing against and hate might be a strong word but I'm sure you've used that word in your mind before. You know that player, he's cocky, he thinks he's good and you need to use that as motivation. I love playing against those players because I love tackling them, pressing them. I love beating them in individual battles. I love beating them in games. I love frustrating them and that motivates me every time I play against those types of players or maybe a coach cut you in the past and you want to prove them wrong where you used to be on a team and now you're on a different team and you want to prove that team wrong or people in the past have said, oh, that guy's no good, he's past his prime. In the end, their opinion shouldn't matter but if it motivates you and you want to prove them wrong use that as a tool. Maybe you have your friends or your family and they come out to watch your games and you want to show them how good you are. You want to make them proud. Your parents come and watch you and you feel bad because you didn't play your best and you feel like you kind of let them down. Use that as motivation to train, to work hard. You need to be a better version of yourself and that's all it is. If you're not getting better, guess what? You're getting worse. When you're younger, those are the best years of your life. I don't like that mentality. I think every year of your life should be better. The older you get, the wiser you get, the more experience you gain. Every year gets better, every week gets better, every game gets better, and there's always opportunities. There's a tournament coming up, there's a big game, there's playoffs, there's personal awards that I could win. There's my own personal battles. I didn't play that good last week. This week I want to get back to playing good. So motivate yourself and it all starts from within. Each day you will do a different workout routine which will focus on a different area of your development. Check out that free training if you find it helpful and you like my style of coaching. Take a closer look at my online soccer academy. I've put 30 years of playing and coaching experience into one program to help you get the best results.