Reward Yourself Wisely

Rewarding yourself after achieving a goal works very well as a motivational booster. Why? Reward gives you feeling you work on something you want to do. Achieving a goal is like going from point A to point B and you place your reward in B. You strongly desire to enjoy the state of mind connected with your reward and this desire works like a force that pushes you into direction of B.

Of course, in many cases reaching a goal is a reward itself. Then it’s great, but sometimes we really need additional way to motivate ourselves. Remember to reward yourself wisely.

What does it mean?

When I talk with different people (friends, family and co-workers) about rewarding yourself, they usually come with one idea. Spend a lot of money in a really bad way, most times it is unnecessary shopping and/or unhealthy, expensive food.

What is wrong with that?

Well, on the long run it can really hurts your budget. Keep tracking your expenses and after a year you can find yourself shocked how much money you spend rewarding yourself splurging.

Quite often such rewards are against your goals. If your goal is to save/earn some amount of money, it is stupid to spend any part of them just to reward yourself. If your goal is to lose weight, don’t reward hard training at gym with dessert. That is really awful.

Reward yourself wisely.

I don’t mean that you shouldn’t spend any penny on a reward. Spend money, but do this wisely.

First of all, set the reward proportionate to the difficulty of your goal.

Don’t change the rules during the game. A lot of people don’t obey that. They increase reward while moving from A to B or right after finishing their goal. It is not the way to go. You set your reward when you are in A and when you reach B, you get exactly what you put here, while you was in A.

Look for rewards that will help you in achieving further goals. It is like reinvesting. For example, I earn some money thanks to good investing picks, then I can buy myself book about investing that will increase my skills and knowledge. After losing certain amount of weight, you can reward yourself with new clothes, which will give you a very important feeling of comfort and will always remind you about your success. Find such situtations when reward push you ever further, beyond your initial goal.

Of course the reward must be somehow important for you. Otherwise it won’t motivate you enough. It must be something meaningful and those things vary among people. You must find what works well for you.

For interesting, frugal ideas I’m recommending a short post written by Leo of Zen Habits on how to reward yourself without spending a lot.

Finally, remember it is wrong when you focus only on how to get your reward. It should help you to increase your motivation; it definitely shouldn’t replace your main goal.

I hope since now you will reward yourself in more conscious, wiser way.

If you have any favorite rewards that you use to motivate yourself, write about it in comments. I will really appreciate it.

photo credit: jillclardy