Not all days are sunny. There are days when you were down and does not want to continue. But, what will you do during these times?
Most of us have a love-hate relationship with motivation. We need to get motivated all the time but we always find it hard to get out of our comfort zones and get ourselves working.
We like to feel motivated but we hate the process of prodding ourselves into doing what we are supposed to be doing or finishing what we have already started.
Motivation is hard to pin down thing. What few people realize though is that while it may be hard to pin down at times, there are plenty of things one can do to muster enough motivation to get yourself going.
Finding the thing that motivates you is one thing, it is quite another to stick with it.
And even while you have already succeeded in identifying what motivates you, the temptation to give in for more convenient, easier things like procrastination are much more powerful than getting yourself up and going.
Identify that lacking motivation or deliberately making yourself feel demotivated is a bad habit.
Something isn’t quite right when you refuse to wake up on time to get to your office. Or, when you allow yourself to be overwhelmed by the power of procrastination when you have deadlines to beat.
You know that something is going wrong inside you when the task you have to finish several days ago sits idly on your desk, untouched.
And something is not right when you can’t even force yourself to confront a problem that has been gnawing your will to live fully.
You lack even the motivation to accept that you are not motivated. So how do you build your motivation from the ground up? Start with…
Identifying the things that sap out your motivation.
It always starts with very simple things in a very natural manner. Then it starts to affect the other aspects of your life, which are not entirely connected with the thing that triggered your lack of motivation.
Maybe you just didn’t feel like getting up after your alarm rung off one morning. The next day, you did the same thing and on and on until you developed the bad habit of not feeling motivated to do anything.
The first effective step to gaining back your sense of motivation is to figure out the thing or things that sap the energy out of you. It could be a small thing like not waking up in time or a really serious thing like hating everything about your job.
No matter what the form, you can identify the things that sap out your energy by their power to make you feel discouraged.
Start with the sample exercise of listing down the areas in your life where you find no motivation to pursue at all and the particular things which you think makes you feel disheartened.
This will help you gain some perspective on the entire issue. You can even derive solutions in simply knowing the cause. This will shed clarity on your issues with motivation.
Then you can move on to evaluating the risks and benefits of not feeling motivated. There are benefits to having no motivation – immediate self-gratification in the form of rest for one.
And there are risks, for sure. Plenty of them. And the risks oftentimes outweigh the benefits. Discovering the risks and benefits of not feeling motivated could be very enlightening.
In general, you would realize that it is never worth it to procrastinate, to give in to the temptation of hating to move a finger to finish your tasks, or to deliberately believe that it is much more gratifying to lie around and do nothing.
Quit the debate -The battle always starts in the head.
It begins ten to five minutes before you start doing the thing you have to do – whether it’s a task, a business plan, a goal.
In the normal course of hesitating to do your task, one part of your head tries to talk you into doing it. It is immediately followed by a voice that talks you out of it.
This process goes on until you decide to follow either of the two voices – abandon the task and live with the uneasy, guilty feeling or finish it and feel satisfied.
The right choice is obvious, but the immediate convenience of the ‘easy way out’ presents make it very enticing.
Try not to prolong the debate. The longer it goes on, the more difficult it will be for you to begin and finish your task, the less motivated you will feel. This mental chatter is an absolute motivation killer.
Find your inspiration – Inspiration almost always comes out of nowhere.
It is funny how one can feel inspired by simply listening to the rhythm of the falling rain or by simply watching little children play. It is amazing how a witty line from a poem can enlighten your mind and your mood.
It is never fully clear why these things happen, but it is evident that they happen all the time.
When lacking the inspiration to get off your butt and do your work, try to look at the most unassuming places and see if something inside you will react.
Don’t push it, though. Inspiration is a sudden occurrence, it can never be manufactured. It comes when the time is ripe.
Take a break – Exhaustion can kill your mood, not to mention lower your motivation level.
There is enough time in the world to do and finish everything you have to do so don’t race against time.
Always take the time to reward yourself with some sunshine and a warm bath. Or with some relaxing minutes under the trees or in your bed.
However, you do it, just try to have the faith that once you get back to the drawing board, your mind is already geared to be productive. Don’t be afraid to take some time off and reward yourself with rest.
Always enjoy the process – What are life and work if they are not enjoyed?
Try to always find the purpose and happiness in everything you do, no matter how uninterested you are.
Finally, commit yourself to change. This is not easy, it never was. But try to set the date for mustering your sense of motivation.
Download here a free PDF copy of breaking the bad habit of not having enough motivation.
