Why you never “feel like” doing what you need to do

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So many of us have it all backwards and we really end up hurting our long-term progress. We procrastinate on doing the things that we know that we really should do, the things that actually matter to our success. We tell ourselves that we will get to it after lunch. And then someone books a meeting, we end up on another phone call, and then we just “don’t feel like” doing the task. So it will wait until tomorrow.

Guess what happens then? We have this task in the back of our mind, spinning around. We know we need to get to it. And we feel bad about ourselves for not having done it already, like we had committed to ourselves. We had the best intentions, but came up short. So we beat ourselves up about it.

And then tomorrow comes, and we repeat the cycle. We did not sleep well, so don’t really feel like engaging in the task. Plus, we received a whole slew of email overnight, and we can quickly knock out responses to them; we feel better because we “made progress”.

But that task that really matters – it is still sitting there, lurking. Weighing you down. Causing stress.

Here is where we have it all backwards: mood follows action. You can’t do the important task when you “feel inspired”; it will never get done. You can’t think yourself into a positive frame of mind.

You do hard thing, and after doing it, you will feel good. Not the other way around! It is in the doing that we feel motivation, inspiration, and all the other positive emotions. Because once you knocked off the hard task that really matters, you took a weight off of yourself. You proved to yourself that you are someone that gets shit done.

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And most importantly, you feel good about yourself. That matters, much more than anything else we can do in life.

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Quotation that I have been pondering

We are always on a journey of “becoming”, never actually arriving. And that is okay. What really matters is that we don’t give up on the possibility of who we might become. As we age, we tend to “cement” our identities; it becomes harder and harder to change how we think about ourselves. We become “locked” in the definition of who we are, and limit our potential.

This quote from T. S. Eliot reminds us we can always change, regardless of what point we are at in our lives.

I feel that not only can we change; we have an obligation to change, to strive to become even more. We can hold two competing thoughts in our mind; “I am enough and am where I am supposed to be” and “I can become better”. Both are true.

The point is to keep making progress, to keep improving the quality of problems that we can handle. That is a life well-lived, which I think is what we are all truly pursuing.

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Journal Prompt

So many of us – myself include – struggle with motivation from time to time. It can be so difficult to motivate yourself to do the things that you know you should do, even when they are things you enjoy. Starting is the hard part. Getting started requires a bit of discipline, but that usually is not enough (at least not for me). Willpower simply does not cut it, not over the long term. I can get away with using willpower occasionally, but that depletes really quickly.

What makes the difference? Excitement. Unfortunately, as “grown-ups” we are so busy trying to be responsible adults that we often forget to do things that excite us. When we allow a bit of excitement into our lives, our energy level goes up. We all know this to be true, even if we have forgotten. That leads to this week’s journal prompt:

Spend a few moments noting what comes up for you. And then spend another couple of minutes reflecting on small ways that you can introduce a bit of this excitement into your life. I am confident that if you take a small action to add a bit of excitement into your life, and you pay attention to how you feel right after doing that, you will have a higher level of energy. And that will give you a bit more “juice” to push forward on the life you are building for yourself.

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Have an amazing week!!

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Tim

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