To gage your level of motivation, take a moment to ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you find it hard to get out of bed?
  We all love a lie-in but it's important to feel positive about the day ahead. If you can't find an incentive to get out of bed in the morning, then you may need to consider making changes in your life.
• Do you feel stuck in a rut at work?
  Sometimes a lack of motivation means we put up with mediocrity at work for years just because it's easy. Sometimes we need another person to remind us what we are worth and what we are capable of.
• Do you give up easily when you feel challenged?
  It's easy to give up when times get tough. Sometimes we get so close to achieving something but give up when we feel ourselves weakening slightly. It's important to find the motivation to push through that wall and keep going.
• Do you often feel bored?
  Boredom is a sign that you are lacking motivation. There's plenty to do in life but often it can be hard to muster the will or the courage to go out and do it. A life coach could help you to explore your options and encourage you to do things you maybe wouldn't have had the motivation to do before.

It is easy to become unmotivated when we don't enjoy every day life, or when our hard work goes unnoticed and we feel unappreciated. Sometimes it's important to be reminded that we can succeed, that we can get what we want and that we do have the strength to push through obstacles and overcome the challenges on the way.

A life coach could motivate you to:

• excel at work
• enjoy work
• build happy, fulfilling relationships
• get through stress and sadness
• get fit and stay healthy
• become more organised
• become more confident
• achieve life-long dreams
• achieve more than you ever expected
• feel energised
• feel happy
• motivate others
• do something good for the world.

1. Motivating you

So how will a life coach try to motivate you?

Don't worry, your life coach isn't going to dress up in Lycra and pump Eye of the Tiger from a boom box while shouting at you to drop and do 20.

Life coaches aren't there to give you advice or tell you what to do, they're there to help you develop, structure and fulfil your own thoughts and goals. You'll soon find that the ingredients for a highly motivated outlook were inside you all along- you just needed someone to probe them out, reveal them to you and help you to piece them together.

Your life coach will probably begin the first session by finding out what kind of person you are and what kind of things are most likely to spark your attention and get you feeling motivated.

Transforming from sluggish, bored, unhappy and unsatisfied to enlivened, enthusiastic, happy and highly motivated is not something that can happen overnight. It takes time, exploration and practise.

Experts believe there are three different elements to motivation. You may find that some elements come naturally to you and others take a little longer to develop.

The three elements are:

1. Activation - motivation starts with an impulse to change or do something.
2. Intensity - motivation requires desire - how much do you really want to achieve that goal?
3. Persistence - you might really want something - but will that be enough to stop you giving up when times get seriously tough?

How naturally each stage comes to you will depend heavily on the kind of person you are. What makes you tick? What grabs your interest? What drives you to do the things you do?