As Zig Ziglar warned us, motivation fades. This means we need a daily boost in order to get motivated.

We need motivation in order to push beyond the ordinary and the mediocre. Whether it’s losing that last 10 pounds, or taking on that tough project at work, or a business venture, motivation wins out. Inertia is a huge factor in our lives.

The power of inertia keeps you going. Test it out the next time you hit the breaks in your car.

Inertia can work for you, because once you get going, you’ll tend to keep going. The challenging part is to get things started (and re-started), and that’s where motivation comes in.

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

Use a mantra — Choose a mantra and then use it daily to create a positive environment and get rid of the negative. 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 used for much more than that.

Guy Kawasaki says that instead of long mission statements, we should use mantras to tell the world what we’re all about. Short and to the point, mantras can evoke a sense of power, and put us in a state of calm strength whenever we need it.

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.

You can use them for meditation as well as a way to find calm confidence and deep strength when needed. Mantras should be short. A few words is plenty. You can choose any mantra you like, and you can choose several of them for use in various situations.

Do something physical — Tony Robbins teaches us that when we feel a certain way, we reflect that in our bodies. Try being depressed for a moment. What happens? Your shoulders slump, your eyes immediately head toward the ground, and your head faces down. Can you feel that? As goes the mind, so goes the body.

Now, let’s try creating a different mental state using your body to your advantage. Stand up tall showing off your best posture. Put your arms straight out at your sides. Look up at the ceiling and smile. Hum out loud as you lift one foot off the floor.

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.

Time travel — This exercise will get you motivated as fast as anything I know. We all know that hindsight is 20/20. In each and every moment, we have choices to make. I hear people say that they have no choice. This is not true. You can eat the fattening dessert or not. You can do right or you can do wrong. You always have a choice.

Sometimes we regret the choices we’ve made in the past. Often, we fool ourselves into thinking that we had no choice and won’t have a choice if similar circumstances arise again.

Try the following exercise. Pretend you’re in the future, and give some real thought to what things are like for you. Now, look back at the present moment that you’re in right now. If given the choice to relive this moment, what would you have done differently?

What can you do right now to make that future that you want become a reality? Say it out loud. Write it down. Make a plan. Now, go do it.

These are just a few of the ways that you can bend your reality just a bit 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.

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