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Every Sunday I bring you an article, an interesting quote that has been on my mind, and a journal prompt, all related to working and living better.
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How To Motivate Yourself When You Feel Lazy And Uninspired
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Do you feel lazy sometimes? I do. I used to think that there was something wrong with me and beat myself up. I knew if I had the right level of motivation, I could achieve my goal. But how to find that motivation? Didn’t I know taking action towards my goal was the only way to make achieving it possible? I knew. And yet…
I realized motivation wasn’t what I lacked. What I needed was clarity.
The power of clarity can be transformative. Many of us live our lives in a perpetual state of confusion and inaction. We have big dreams, but they feel overwhelming and we don’t know how and where to start. The inability to take action leads to a sense of inertia, and Newton’s first law of motion kicks in (an object at rest will stay at rest unless there is a force acting on it.) This law of physics applies to our goals and dreams, not just physical objects.
Gritting your teeth and willing yourself to get going is not the best approach. Getting clear on what you want and why is more helpful. Motivation arises from clarity and understanding the next step to take.
Strategies for Gaining Clarity
- Visualize Success. Visualizing yourself achieving your goal will facilitate clarity and focus. Imagine what success looks like for you and what it would feel like to achieve it. Use all of your senses to create a vivid image in your mind. This brings clarity to your ‘why’, reminding you why this goal matters to you.
- Know Your Values.Understanding what your values are will allow you to know if you are chasing the wrong goal. Too often, the reason that you don’t feel motivated to move forward on a goal is because you don’t want to achieve it. I know that sounds crazy – but it is true. We will subconsciously self-sabotage if we strive towards something that is at odds with our values. There are multiple ways to achieve a goal. Understanding what your values are allows you to consider a path forward that aligns with what is most important to you.
- Write.Writing forces you to clarify your thinking. When you have all these ideas trapped in your head, they swirl around, get lost, conflict with each other, and leave you feeling confused. Putting the words out in the open where you can see them forces you to wrangle with them, organize them, and put them into a coherent structure. You can shift the ideas around and put them into logical groupings. This frees up your brain to imagine new possibilities rather than dealing with all the ideas that you already had swirling around.
- Prioritize.We try to do too much at once. That leads to confusion, a sense of overwhelm, and a lack of clarity. Decide what is most important, commit a small chunk of time, and work on it during that time. Tune everything else out and focus on that one task. It boggles my mind how much I can get done in a short time when I just commit to it and go. Making some progress will often leave you feeling inspired to keep going.
- Identify smaller steps. We don’t make progress because we don’t know what to do next. Setting a goal that is meaningful forces you to grow yourself, to stretch yourself beyond what you are capable of at the moment. It means there is a learning curve. You don’t know how to achieve your goal yet. The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. You don’t need to know all the steps to get you there. Knowing the next step is enough. Future steps will become more obvious as you go.
- Imagine the worst.Try to imagine the worst possible thing that can happen if you don’t achieve your goal. This may seem like a strange thing to do, given that I told you to visualize success earlier. It’s worth looking at it from both directions. One of the biggest (probably THE biggest) reason that we don’t take the action we know we should take is FEAR. Our dream is wonderful in our head. We imagine we will be so happy to achieve it and we want that feeling of accomplishment. But – we might fail. As I mentioned above, achieving a meaningful goal requires that we step beyond what we are capable of. And what if we try but fail? That might mean the end of our dream! That is terrifying to us, and so we don’t move forward. The dream lives on in our head. Imagine what the worst-case scenario is. How it would make you feel if it happened? What impact would it have on you? Would it be that bad? Might it just be a learning experience? When you understand that failure matters a lot less than you think in the grand scheme of things, you remove your resistance to progress. Instead, think of what you might learn.
- Get Outside Help.People often try to do everything on their own. There is value to learning by experience; it is one of the best ways to learn. But it is also the slowest way to learn. Talking to others who have learned what works and what doesn’t is invaluable; you can avoid wasting time making the same mistakes they made. Books are also a great way to learn from others. One of the most effective motivators is someone that holds you to account. This is one of the amazing benefits of having a coach; you have someone that will help you clarify what your next steps are and then they hold you to account for taking them. If you didn’t take the agreed-upon action, you feel bad at your next coaching session. In order to avoid that feeling, you will take the action. You will usually find a way. Sometime you will still not have taken the action and need to face your coach. I hate that feeling. Most of the time, knowing that I have to explain my failure to follow through to my coach is enough to force me into action.
Conclusion
Stop worrying so much about trying to motivate yourself. Instead, focus on getting clarity. Your motivation will arrive as your level of clarity goes up. Improving your ability to get clarity – and motivation – is one of the most important steps you can take to set yourself up for success.
If you need help to get clear on what you want from your career and how to go about getting it, I can help. Book your FREE call today and let’s talk.
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Quotation that I have been pondering
Here is a quote from Myron Golden that relates to the tremendous power of gaining clarity:
The longer you keep doing things the way you’ve always done them, the harder it will be to get the results you seek. Your existing habits and patterns lead you to where you are today. To go anywhere else, you must cultivate new ways of behaving and thinking.
Journal Prompt
You have limited supplies of time, energy, and attention, so you need to be careful of how you invest them. By giving too much of yourself to activities that don’t bring you satisfaction, you won’t have enough left to invest in what’s important. The result will be a life that does not satisfy you.
Which leads to a useful journal prompt.
Odds are you are putting too much energy into something that you don’t need to.
Be selective about where you focus your energy. The power of a laser comes through intense focusing of energy. Be like the laser and focus on what you are trying to shape.
