I once heard a speaker tell a group of young people something along the lines of “you want to have served well and devotedly” instead of wanting to serve well and devotedly. I have noticed this attitude comes up in many arenas of my life. I want to have clean clothes, but I don’t want to do the work of the laundry. I want to have won an award but I don’t want to put in all that effort.
The problem isn’t that we don’t want to do well or that we don’t want the reward. I think the problem lies in that tricky and sometimes elusive thing we call motivation. When motivation is there things happen, but when it’s not, you can’t do much more than scold yourself for being lazy.
Lack of motivation is often a symptom of being burned out or of a more extensive mental health disorder such as depression or ADHD or any of the many varieties of anxiety. In my experience most of us, influenced by our capitalist society, see lack of motivation as a sign that we are not doing or being enough. Sometimes we need treatment for our mental health concerns, sometimes we need a break, sometimes we don’t know what we need.
Sometimes we need to slow down and stop doing in order to give ourselves space to create the life we want. I’m working on a recipe for creating motivation in my own life, and while it has yet to be perfected, I would like to share some of the ingredients I’ve discovered so far.
Be curious and kind: I am better served by asking what is impacting my motivation rather than shaming myself for experiencing a lack of it.
Enjoy the journey: The end reward is a good reason to do things, but if I can put aside fear of failure and enjoy the attempts and the learning it’s going to be more fun (and fun is more motivating).
Change it up: I get bored easily which easily translates into low motivation. If I stretch my creative muscle and do something a bit different, I find hidden stores of that motivation gold.
Roll with resistance: Sometimes I find myself rebelling against the pressure to do, do, do. I can give myself permission to rest instead of playing tug of war in my head.
I'm still mixing and adding to my recipe. What are your ingredients?
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