Find A Villain In Your Life
You always need a villain in life to move forward. And that villain cannot be you. That is why self-hatred may give you an initial push, but it rarely sustains itself over the long term. To become a better person, you can begin from a place of disgust with your current self and a desire to change, but after a point you need a larger villain, something that repulses you enough to keep evolving and moving.
Anger has worked wonders for some people. Artists have created masterpieces out of revenge. It is a common occurrence that young boys, after their first breakup, often hit the gym because they are angry at the girl and at themselves. Eventually, they move past that anger because time heals, but they come out of it with a body they are proud of.
The breakup acted as fuel to begin with, but the boy saw his body as a weakness and abhorred weakness, so he did everything to become the opposite of it. He carried a mental image of a weak man that he despised, and that kept the motivation alive.
If you are someone who procrastinates a lot, you need to build a sense of urgency to finish tasks. But for that urgency, you need a deadline, and to enforce that deadline you must define consequences if you miss it. Those consequences could be anything that embarrasses you or something you deeply hate.
If you cannot identify a villain in your life, then you will have to manufacture one. If you are overweight, imagine having no partner. Imagine your spouse leaving you because you cannot perform. Imagine being unable to protect your children from a street thug. Imagine how embarrassing that would be. Or worse, imagine failing to save your family because you cannot handle stress.
You have to harness these negative feelings to consistently achieve your goals. I write every day, and when I do not feel like writing, I imagine myself as a failure who started something because it felt exciting but then ran out of ideas. If I do not write, then I am a fraud. I consider myself deeply ethical in my own way, so the idea of being a fraud strikes a nerve. I also feel like an impostor, which makes it even stronger.
I sit down and write because thinking of myself as a fraud hurts more than typing on the keyboard ever could. Find a villain in your life. If you cannot identify one, you will have to manufacture it. You will not need it for every goal, but for a select few that are difficult or life-changing, you must visualise the worst possible outcome.
Every story needs a villain because it is only when the villain grows stronger that the value of the hero increases.