The path to improvement is a long and perilous one, and your only source of fuel to travel said road is motivation. Though getting some motivation may be easier said than done. So we asked someone who plays this game way too much to NOT be motivated, our resident Sova player for our Dignitas VALORANT roster, Juliana "showliana" Maransaldi, about what keeps her motivated through thick and thin.
You can daydream about being good, you can plan out aim routines, watch and read guides, but if you don’t have the motivation, nothing will happen. “Just get motivated!” Yeah I know, sounds easier said than done. There’s a lot of pitfalls that people fall into that can keep them in an unmotivated rut. Today, with the help of Dignitas Valorant’s Juliana “showliana” Maransaldi, we’ll talk about how to set proper goals to motivate you, how to keep yourself motivated, and hopefully get you started on your path to self improvement!
Before you get motivated, you have to come up with what you want to get motivated to do? Sure, you can just say “I want to get good at VALORANT”, but there’s a bit more to what makes a goal good. If you have a bad or weak goal, more likely than not, you’re not going to be motivated to reach it. There are a few criteria to which your goal should meet:
Here’s a quick graphic to help you remember:
These four factors can help you formulate a proper goal. I’ll use myself as an example. Last Act, I peaked in Immortal 3, and I tend to learn things at a pretty fast pace, and with the competitive mindset I have, I feel like, by the next act, I can hit Radiant or top 1000 in NA. So my goal for this Act (2-3 Months) is to reach AT least top 1000 NA.
When we asked Showliana about her goals for 2022, she gave a goal that fit all 3 criteria, and we did not even ask her to make her goals fit the criteria:
I want to play the game more and, now that I’m playing flex instead of just Sova, I want to get better on all my agents. I want to play a lot more, whether that is scrimming or playing Ranked. I also want to make some new friends in ranked soon since I just arrived in NA.
Credit: playvalorant.com
I talked about this topic a bit in my mental guide but, there’s a lot of aspects of being critical that I didn’t really go into depth about that I’ll address here. The main thing I didn’t talk about there is that you need to focus on yourself. What that means is that to find out how to get better, you can really only compare you to yourself. By looking at TenZ’s flashy aim, and comparing it to your own, you’re going to demotivate yourself and feel like you’ll never get better.
Of course you can watch pro players and get ideas and learn from how they play, but to compare yourself to them and be critical of yourself because you are not like them is just an unrealistic way to look at improving. That will just put you in a rut. Always look at ways you can improve and what aspects of the game you are good or bad at, and not how good other people are. You shouldn’t want to be the next TenZ, you should want TenZ to be the first you.
Showliana embodies the mantra of comparing you to yourself when talking about their goals as a team:
For 2022, we want to be the best team we can be. Of course, we didn’t get the top one (1st place) yet, but it is only a matter of time. [When asked how she stays motivated after a loss] Losing is always hard, but I feel like we knew what we were doing wrong. So we are always motivated to just not make the same mistakes.
When talking about her losses and goals, she never once talks about how other teams are better or worse, and only talks about their own team's positions and the mistakes they made. She does this because she knows she can’t change how others act or how good others are, and she can only change how good she is, or in this case, how good her team is.
Another factor about being critical is the fact that, if you want to improve, you need to push your ego aside, and in every situation, whether it was or actually wasn’t, act like it was your fault and see how you could have won the round or changed the situation. So I don’t repeat myself from my mental guide, here’s a graphic outlining how to be properly critical of yourself from that guide. For the sake of motivation, focus on the 4th step, and make sure to let go of your mistakes once you have addressed them, and try not to dwell.
After talking about having steps, and how to stay motivated, it can be easy to fall into a routine that can sometimes feel like a chore. Here are a few ways to keep yourself motivated through those patches.
- If the steps are something you can do without sound, try putting on a podcast or music while practicing. Whenever I aim train, I always put on a new album or a new episode of a podcast to keep me from dying of boredom.
- Try to have fun! Sometimes, you don’t have to take everything seriously all the time to improve, having fun and joking around can increase motivation and make practice bearable.
VALORANT never really feels more like a chore than a game, since we all love each other and joke around a lot in practice, so it’s always fun to practice and feels more like a game that way.
- Make sure to take breaks. Sometimes you can feel burnt out, and that is totally okay! Even if it’s just a 1 or 2 day break, it can really make a difference. There are countless times I feel burnt out or have been losing badly, and I take a break over the weekend and feel amazing when I’m back. Remember, it’s just a video game, so don’t slave over it night and day.
Staying motivated can be tricky, and hopefully, the pieces of advice I gave and the examples Showliana gave can hopefully get you back on the saddle again and on the road of self improvement! Remember, VALORANT is just a game, so don’t overload yourself and don’t be too hard on yourself, and always prioritize your mental and physical health above everything else. Until next time!
Thanks to Showliana for taking the time to talk with me, and be sure to check out her socials!
