Three Strategies to Motivate Yourself to Write

By Angelica Ribeiro, PhD

To be happy involves feeling satisfied with the progress you are making toward your life goals. If you are a writer, completing writing projects is likely part of those goals. Therefore, you feel good when you sit down to write. However, I bet there are days when you don’t feel like writing, even if you know it will ultimately bring you joy. So, how can you motivate yourself on those days?

Here, I share three strategies that can motivate you to write, especially when you’re not feeling up to it.

Break down a big task into small tasks

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Three Simple Science-Based Strategies to Create Happiness at Work

By Angelica Ribeiro, PhD

Imagine this: You get a new job, which makes you very happy. But soon you realize that the job involves the following aspects, to mention a few:

  • too much sitting, too little movement
  • too much computer work, too few social interactions
  • too many demands, too few flow experiences

After experiencing all those issues on a daily basis, you notice that they negatively impact your well-being and happiness level. What do you do then?

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How Your Professional Purpose and Identity Can Impact Your Work Life

By Angelica Ribeiro, Ph.D.

Being aware of our professional purpose can play an important role in leading us to a happier life at work. That’s because our purpose can reveal elements of our identity that encourage us to live up to our values and create meaningful habits. Let me explain.

My professional purpose is to contribute to (a) language learners’ education by teaching, researching, and sharing knowledge with educators and (b) other people’s happiness by writing books and sharing positivity. After identifying my professional purpose, I realized that it revealed three main elements of my identity: a professor, a researcher, and a writer.

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How Social Connections Can Positively Impact Writers

By Angelica Ribeiro, Ph.D.

As a writer, you have likely experienced negative emotions at some point. Whether it is receiving a rejection letter for your manuscript, facing criticism for your ideas, or getting stuck in your writing, it is normal to feel this way. The key is to learn how to cope with these emotions rather than trying to eliminate them.

Social connections can be a great tool for managing negative emotions like stress, frustration, and disappointment. Robert Waldinger, the leading author of The Good Life, explains how warm social connections can regulate your negative emotions:

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How You Can Experience Your Best Moments at Work or in Leisure

By Angelica Ribeiro

Have you ever lost track of time at work or in leisure? If so, you were in flow, a feeling you should often experience. Let me explain.

In his book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi shares that “the best moments in [your life] are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable […]. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” You can experience these best moments when you are in flow. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

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Why You Should Sit Less and Move More

Are you someone who spends a lot of time sitting while working or writing? If so, it’s important to understand the negative effects of prolonged sitting on your health and well-being.

Research has linked sitting for extended periods of time to a decrease in happiness levels and an increase in mortality rates. This was discussed in an article by Gretchen Reynolds, a physical education reporter for the New York Times. She explains that previous studies have shown a connection between “prolonged sitting and higher risks of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and premature death,” as well as an “association between inactivity and cancer deaths.”

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