You must have long term benefit + short term benefit. In fact, most people ignore the short term benefit because it seem so trivial but they dont realize it's the short term benefit that keeps you going.

Exercise
Long term goal: Get fit

Short term benefit: feels physically more healthy immediately. Endophrine release. I'm not going to lie, if it wasnt for the endophrine, i think every human being will be a fat ass.

Stop masturbation
Long term: more motivation and have better sex
Short term: Gets more energy to do productive stuff(actually, this is easily more important).

Stop eating too much carbs:
Long Term: Get more fit
Short term: No more insulin rush so you dont feel fatigue.

Hit on girls:
Long term: get laid and relationship
Short Term: Sexual tension is fun. Going out generating sexual tension and socializing is rewarding in itself.

Working on your passion:
Long term: Helps your overall self esteem.
Short Term: You enjoy doing it. You dont feel empty when you're doing it.

My 2 cents I'm adding in my list :

- learn something cool that your REALLY enjoy (dancing, cooking, breakdance etc...)
- improve what you're doing, take a different perspective and try to get to another level in productivity (work = work attitude, experience, hobby = games, etc...)

In short, just learn to appreciate little things as :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp2W0Lylzrs

Passion also motivates you. If you are not passionate about what you do, you will have a hard time achieving anything because you will lack motivation. I think passion is the most important thing in life. The German word for passion is Leidenschaft in which we have the word suffering. So if you are passionate about what you want to achieve you are willing to suffer and you do not give in to set backs. It's almost fun because the suffering makes the achieving more meaningfull.

Truth is, some things are just not fun in the short term. There is such a thing as a pain period. I hated lifting weights for a month. Then i started enjoying it. But you suffer through the pain period, it's called being an adult.

Interesting. I think this has to do with having a passion for the process. There definitely is a pain period too, but I actually think you look back on it fondly sometimes (being a newbie lifting weights for example, and hating going to the gym but at the same time being obsessed and reading every bit of workout literature I could because of the changes I was seeing. Now I love it because I've been doing it for 11 years)