Motivation, it's a complicated subject. Wheather you're trying to stay motivated for school, your job or your relationship: it can be a whole new challenge to find motivation in your surroundings and keep it where you need it. 

So what is the best way to stay motivated? 

To be quite honest with you: I don't know if there's a "best" way. It depends on what kind of person you are in different situations. Maybe you need your rest and peace once in a while or maybe you get bored when you're not busy and 7 hours of sleep are enough to keep you going. Each and every person is different, find out what works for you!

Give yourself enough fuel

You might be wondering what food has to do with motivation, so let me explain. Most of the time when we start giving up on things it has to do with the fact that we're tired. I noticed this problem especially occurs when working on big projects. Next to the project you also have your private life, of course and that can be energy consuming too.

To avoid giving up on your projects because of how tired you are, make sure you eat enough (and the right) food, drink enough water and last but definitely not least: SLEEP. Lack of sleep doesn't only make you tired, it also slows down the way you process your work, which can cause problems in keeping up with deadlines. And as if that wasn't enough: it also makes you grumpy. Grumpiness doesn't do a lot of good for your motivation level, believe me.

Don't push away your feelings

The amount of people who do this is insane. Personally, I'm a quite emotional person and when I'm around people I trust I'm not scared to shed a tear. There's days where I hate this side of me and call it "weak", but on days where my brain actually functions like it should do, I realise it's a personality trait I should be thankful for more often.

The more you push your feelings aside, the higher the tower of little frustrations becomes. Skyscrapers can only go a certain hight, after that it gets tricky, unsave even. Give yourself some time once in a while to cope with your feelings. Write them down if talking isn't your thing. Just make sure they don't start eating you from the inside. Sooner or later the skyscraper is going to collapse, you might as well keep it small to keep the damage low. Besides, your little skyscraper is just an obstacle between you and motivation.

Failure is not a thing

You shouldn't be motivating yourself by repeating that you "don't want to fail". Besides the fact that it's way too obvious and it's not really a goal you could build your inspiration around, it has a bad effect on you as well. You start developing a fear towards failure and start running away from it instead of knocking it down. You can only run for so long. Set a realistic goal for yourself that makes the little excited sparks in your eyes ignite. If it doesn't, the goal isn't good enough to meet your personal preferences.

Remember that "failing" isn't really a thing and if it even is, it's not a bad thing. Instead, try to look at it the other way: you never really fail. Even if your project didn't go the way you planned, you learned from the mistakes made and won't make them next time. When you're at the point where you feel like your project is turning into a great disaster, make a backup plan. Use your creativity and use what you got to turn it into something useful. You can see it as a ticket on a plane straight to stress city, but seeing it as a challenge might help you dealing with it.

Make sure you're doing something you like