Whether it's a project at work, starting a new business, or something personal like losing weight, we all need to get motivated in order to complete the task. A body in motion tends to stay in motion.



Try driving down the road and slamming on the breaks and see if you don't keep going when the car stops. Better yet, don't do that. It might be bad for your health.

Inertia can be your friend, because once you get the ball rolling, it's easier to keep it in motion. The challenging part is to get things started, and that's the job of motivation.

Below are 3 ways to get your momentum going, get inspired, and out of a rut.

Choose your mantra -- Choose a mantra, then use it daily to wipe away the negative and make room for good things to happen. In the traditional sense, a mantra is a sound or series of sounds that are repeated over and over again during meditation. But, they can be much more than that.

Guy Kawasaki tells us that we can replace long mission statements with mantras. Short and to the point, we can rely on mantras to calm us and give us strength.

Mantras can also act as guiding principles for behavior and help with decision making. Google's "do no harm" philosophy is a mantra for how to do business.

Mantras should be only a few words long at most. You can use them for meditation sessions as well as a sort of battle cry when you need strength. You can choose any mantra you like, and you can choose several of them for use in various situations.

Do something physical -- When we feel a certain way, we reflect that in our bodies. As goes the mind, so goes the body. Pretend you're depressed for a moment. What does your body do? Your shoulders slump, your eyes head toward the ground, and your head faces down. Can you feel that?

Now, try using your body to your advantage. Stand up tall showing off your best posture. Put your head back and look up at the ceiling. Smile. Put your arms straight out at your sides. Lift one foot off the floor and hum out loud.

Try to be depressed in that pose. If you can be depressed while smiling in that silly pose then you're really good. Now, ask yourself what you can do physically every day to get motivated. Maybe it's a silly pose, maybe it's a 2 mile run, or maybe it's yoga. Whatever it is, do something physical every day and get motivated.

Jump to the future -- We all have choices. In each moment, we choose what we do. I hear people say that they have no choice. This is not true. You always have a choice. You can eat that second helping of french fries, or you can have an apple. This exercise is an eye opener. Hindsight is 20/20. This will get you motivated as fast as anything I know.

Sometimes we delude ourselves into thinking we had no choice in the decisions we made in the past. Even though we regret some of these choices, we believe that we once again won't be able to choose if faced with similar situations in the future.

So now, pretend that you're in your own future. Think about what it's like in your future. It's moments like this when we see what we really want. Now, look back at the present moment that you're in right now. What would you have done differently?

What can you do right now to make that future that you want become a reality? Spell it out and say it out loud. Next, make a plan to achieve it and write it down. What are you waiting for? Go do it.

This is just a small sampling of the ways you can alter your reality and get motivated. There's no limit to the ways that you can gain control of your future if you'll just apply a few simple principles.