Motivation...Sometime You Have & Sometimes You Don't
Motivation “A look into why we lose motivation and want to quit a week or two into something new” We all suffer from it. Suddenly, complete loss of motivation. We feel depressed, empty, and tired. Getting out of bed is a struggle and some things get even less interesting as time goes on. We put our tasks and projects on hold. We feel guilty about it, but we can't force ourselves to do anything. You see, the loss of motivation is instructive. Your subconscious is telling you that something is wrong. A proper analysis of why you are not feeling motivated will make it easier for you to get rid of it and will ultimately determine how productive and satisfying you feel over the long term. What Is Motivation Motivation is essential for creativity, productivity and happiness. Motivation drives us to act, and when we act, we create movement, growth, and change; we feel involved, ability to become an expert level, and important; we feel empowered by experiencing how we can change the world, and we create more than we love in our lives. And all of this gives meaning and happiness to our lives. Why You Lose Motivation You don’t know what you want. Out of all the reasons behind a lack of motivation, this one is the most common: either you don't know what you want, or you don't have clarity about what you want and how to plan on getting there. It's hard to motivate ourselves to do something when we're not sure what we're looking for. On the other hand, once we take a vague dream we have and put it into focus by writing it down as a goal and then develop a plan of action, motivation comes naturally. If you lack motivation in any area of your life, it may be because you haven't decided in detail what you want in that area. And we can't focus on anything if we don't know what we're aiming for. How To Overcome Loss of Motivation Remember, you can't hit a target you can't see. However, identify some interesting and attractive goals for yourself in each of the major areas of your life - physical, financial, emotional, spiritual, etc. - and write it down, it will help you focus and feel motivated. Once you have identified your goals that is only the first part of a long term plan of action. Your Goals Overwhelm You Sometimes when you have a lot of work to do and feel overwhelmed your body and mind shut down. Instead of moving forward and getting a bit done everyday, it's better and easier for you to do nothing. Lack of motivation can be the result of overwork or work that is not bringing any immediate results. If you feel like you have so much to do that you can't finish them all, you probably don't even want to start them, so you don’t. How To Overcome All This If this is you, try dividing your task into smaller parts. View your assignments and see if they small enough so you will get faster results more frequently and in a shorter period of time. Did you structure your project and/or goals properly? Analyze your ambitious goals and break them down into a structure of small tasks. As you complete each small task, you move toward the completion of your larger task. Your detailed list will help you relax because you can see exactly what you need to do and you are achieving daily and weekly goals giving you the feeling of reward and accomplishment. Your Environment isn’t Supported Your environment is a good indicator of your success. If you surround yourself with negative and cynical people, you will accept their way of thinking and you will become negative and cynical. This, in turn, will make it harder for you to motivate yourself to do anything. Of course, this transcends humans. Your physical environment also plays a role. It can be harder to lose weight when you have sugary treats in your home or when you live with people who party and eat like crap for every meal. How To Overcome Surround yourself with positive and successful people (and I define success broadly, not in the narrow sense of money). Determine what elements in your environment demotivate you. Remove these elements and replace them with motivators. Unfortunately, if this means dropping old friends or stop going to certain locations, you must do what you must do in order to set yourself up for positive change. Values Conflict Values are important to you in life. When you have a value conflict this means that there are two or more values that are important to you, but you feel that you cannot fulfill all of them in a given situation. In this situation, you feel conflicted and pulled in different directions as you try to find a way to get to what is important to you. You may experience brief bursts of motivation to do something and then lose motivation and start working on something else, or your motivation may be completely dry because trying to resolve internal conflicts quickly exhausts you and drains your energy. How To Overcome You have to dismantle the conflict of values and play the mediator. You have to get a part of yourself that represents different values to play on the same team again. Start by acknowledging the internal conflict. Take a piece of paper and draw a line in the middle so you have two columns. Write about the two different directions you're interested in, one in each column, and summarize with a statement what each section wants. Now select a column and divide it into sections: "Why does this section want this? What did you expect as a result? "Keep asking questions and writing down your answers until you feel like you have achieved the result that part of you wants. Now do the same for the other sections and watch as you reach a level where the answers in both columns are the same. In the end, all parts of you always want the same thing because they are all you. Now that you know what you want, you can evaluate the strategies each section supports and decide which strategies will work best. Lack of Challenges Challenges are another key motivational ingredient to consider. If your project doesn't challenge you to try or if the challenges are too small, we get bored easily and have a hard time staying motivated. We are made to live, grow, and we need constant challenges and opportunities to learn new skills. Without a challenge, our essential selves step in and demotivate us, telling us that we have strayed from what is right for us. How To Overcome Review your goals and the projects you are working on. Are they challenging enough for you? Will they require you to grow to achieve it, or hit the water in your comfort zone and only do the things you know you can do? Try setting your goals a little more challenging, take on projects that need you to thrive and find a new thing or two to learn to stimulate them. Having a Fixed Mindset There are two types of settings: fixed and growth. When you have a fixed mindset, you tend to believe that you have no control over your potential. You believe that your skills already exist and that new skills and bits of intelligence cannot be developed. You live with "that's all" thinking. If you have these thoughts, you may be suffering from a lack of motivation. Because if things are as they are, why should you be motivated to do anything else? What's the point of investing time in learning something new if you think it's impossible? How To Overcome To overcome a fixed mindset, you have to work on thinking for growth. People with developing thinking believe they can learn new skills and broaden their understanding. They see the experience as an opportunity to grow. They accept criticism and feedback, even if it is negative because they know it will benefit them. It is empowering and motivating because you believe that you can control your destiny. Goals Alone Will Not Get You There You're seeking too much motivation instead of focusing on developing new habits. The main reason most people think of a persistent lack of motivation is that, at the end of the day, none of us can be motivated all the time. People often say to me, "Wow, you're so motivated." But the truth is, I just look like I've been motivated all the time when in reality I've just been working hard on developing some key habits in the areas of my life that matter most to me. I know through the process of “Reverse Engineering” my goals, what new habits I need in order to ultimately get me to where I want to go. New Habits Create a New You You don’t need to be motivated to get up at 5 am every morning if you already been doing it for last few months. You don't need to motivate yourself to focus on writing every day because it's a daily habit. You don't have to motivate yourself to go to the gym every day because it's your new developed habit. You don't need to be motivated to do things you used to do in life, because habits are things we do regularly and automatically with little or no conscious effort or thought. Do a small part of your project every day and at a certain time it will become a habit and your actions will be automatically driven, meaning you don't need to be motivated to start working because it has become a habit and it is now made a different version of yourself. Once it becomes a habit, the most important thing above all else is Consistency. Bruce Lee once said... "Long Term Consistency, Trumps Short Term Intensity." Hopefully you learned something from this and how you can increase, or rewire your motivation for continued growth and success. Until Next Time, -Zak