 In the last three years, I've been working from home. One of the challenges of working from home is that you do not often have an accountability system. You can wake up, have a cup of coffee, and hit the couch to flip through TV channels only to find half of the day is gone. Much more discipline is required to motivate yourself to work when you're alone than if you had to spend your time at some company. When you're more inclined to procrastinate, be lazy, and put things off until later, you're most certainly not going to be motivated to work by the end of the day. If this habit continues, it becomes much more difficult to even find the motivation to work. Just as procrastination is a habit, getting things done is also a habit. Too many times you have to learn to motivate yourself if you're always alone because you're your own cheerleader. As someone rightly said, do something today that your future self would thank you for. Being motivated may not be a part of your pack because you're usually alone, but if you discipline yourself to do what you have to do today, then you will be in a better place tomorrow. There is almost no greater motivation than remembering that what you do today determines the place you will be tomorrow. In today's video, I will be sharing with you lessons on how you can motivate yourself when you're alone. If you're new here, consider subscribing so you don't miss other interesting videos like this. 1. Motivation is both a mindset and a choice. In order to be able to motivate yourself, know that motivation is both a mindset and a choice. Since you're all alone, you may choose to not be accountable, but also you can choose to be motivated. John C. Maxwell wrote about two different kinds of people, emotional people and character based people. Emotional people only do things when they feel like it. Character based people do things because it is the right thing to do, so emotional people will work when it is convenient and when it is not, they won't. Also they do what is most convenient. Contrarily, character based people work, whether it is convenient or not. Becoming a character based individual is a choice you must make if you plan to move your life forward. You have to consciously decide that you want your day to be productive and that you will get things done no matter what. You have to deliberately build this habit into you until it becomes a part of you. At first it would be tough, but that's how good habits are formed. 2. Create a reward system. I have a knack for keeping the house untidy during the week because I personally live by a simple principle, weekdays are for work, weekends are for house chores and fun. Thus, I spend my weekdays working so hard and then plan to reward myself with a weekend. No fun on weekdays, but all fun on weekends. If you are concerned about motivating yourself while you are working from home, one of the easiest ways you can do so is to create a reward system. Truth is, your body loves pleasure and relaxation. If anything, we would prefer to have money given to us on a gold platter and then spend the rest of our years going to beaches and having fun. But this is not so. You have to work to earn your keep. That is to say, you must respect the fact that your body loves to have fun by creating a reward system. For a while in my life, to motivate myself to work, I made watching movies a reward for hard work. I told myself I would watch a movie after working hard, not before. For so long, it had continued to work. As soon as my work schedule increased and I learned to motivate myself to work, I almost didn't have to look forward to watching movies after some hard work, but a reward system keeps you motivated. Indigo Stray Conger, a licensed therapist from Colorado, says, Self-motivation is difficult for most people because we typically learn from a young age to accomplish tasks through external motivators. We feel satisfaction in the form of the neurotransmitter dopamine when we receive a reward or avoid a punishment. When you work for yourself or have goals, you would like to achieve on your own. Self-motivation often needs to be translated into a reward system in order to create an ease of accomplishment. Breaking larger goals into smaller, more manageable tasks and setting deadlines with clear motivators is the key to success. For some people, a reward as simple as checking a task off a list is enough to stimulate the reward center in their brain and create a small heat of dopamine, which is what external motivators are designed for. This has been dubbed gamifying your life or turning things into a game in recent years. Create a reward system. 3. Believe in yourself to motivate yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, you will struggle with self-motivation. And this is what I have found. Believing in myself can be overcome by taking action to do the things you're most afraid to do. When we have a history of failing when we start anything, it affects belief in ourselves. And oftentimes, this affects our motivation. Keeping a few small wins under your belt all the time will boost your belief in yourself, which in turn will improve your self-motivation. At some point, people may not believe in you. People may not say things to motivate you. You have to learn to motivate yourself because what matters is that you become successful. And you cannot become successful while expecting others to always be the one to motivate you. Successful people have learned to motivate themselves. If you cannot learn to motivate yourself, then you cannot sustain your success. Repeated success demands that you enjoy periods of aloneness, periods when you will be rejected and even castigated. It is believing in yourself that will help you scale through this period unscathed. The truth is, you can do whatever you set your mind to do. What you haven't done is what you have not set your mind to do. Dan Lok wrote, believing in yourself helps you to motivate yourself because you need to feel in order to ignite feelings of motivation. If you truly believe that you can do it, you'll feel more motivated to try. Remember that many of today's most successful entrepreneurs succeeded without any external support, network or anyone who believed in them. Many of those successful entrepreneurs you look up to, build their own success by believing in themselves, supporting themselves and motivating themselves. You don't need the whole world to believe in you before you succeed. All you need is to believe in yourself, motivate yourself and make every effort to invest in yourself to succeed. Hardly will you find a successful person who waited on people to motivate him before he succeeded. If this video inspired you, like the video, we love you.