5 Simple Reasons You Are Not Motivated, And What You Need To Do About It.
Motivation is in your head. No one else can make you do it.
Do you ever find yourself thinking about how much you are going to accomplish sometime in the future, but then when the crucial time comes to actually put in the work, you are unable to find the motivation?
So what do we do at that time? We scramble like ants and bees. We start searching for podcasts on motivation, we launch the Youtube app on our phones and start watching endless TEDx motivational talks, or if more time permits — we pick up a motivational book. (Picking up a book — now that’s real motivation..!). Worry not, I have done it all. Though, am more of a book reader than a podcast listener. Kinda old school.
To think of it, it is so easy to think (yeah, I used the word “think” twice already) about our goals and how wonderful they are going to be, but if you can’t find a way to consistently work towards them it is easy to get frustrated and give up.
You have to, have to, hack it every single day. You are not going to get a truckload of motivation delivered at your doorstep by FedEx on one shiny morning. The sun does not shine all 24 hrs (well, yeah technically it does. But it does not shine on YOU all 24 hours, so get over it..!)
And if you are expecting that one fine day, you will get the necessary quantum of motivation “to do the thing that you want to do” (now it sounds like a song verse) and that you will achieve your dreams, then you are literally living in a self-imagined dreamworld and are fully out of your mind. There, I said it.
To achieve your dreams, you have to get going every day. You have to sharpen the saw every day. You have to push yourself every day. You have to brush your teeth every day. (Oh, wait. You do that already every day. If you don’t, then stay the hell away from me.)
Just like you can’t go to the gym on a Sunday and pump for 2 hours (am guilty of doing that sometimes). Reminds me, I haven’t hit the gym for the last 4 days and have to definitely go tomorrow, and guess what — it's a Sunday..!
The point is, you don’t get fit by exercising only on Sundays, you don’t lose weight by not eating food for a couple of days, you don’t muscle up by pumping iron for 2 hours at a stretch, and you definitely don’t smell good if you brush your teeth only once in a week (yeah, I know its kinda sick to bring that up again. But if you are not guilty, why bother at all?)
And that is why dreams can’t be achieved by doing 1 single thing sometime in the future. Future does not exist if you don’t make it come true with your efforts today.
Let me repeat that so it sinks in well and proper — The future does not exist if you don’t make it come true with your efforts today.
One step forward is better than not making any progress at all. Motivation is a product of our own minds, and we can have as little or as much of it as we allow ourselves given the right mindset.
Here are some methods that I have used in order to keep myself moving forward, even if it is just a small amount at a time. To be upfront — I have not yet attained nirvana or mastered each method, but that’s not my goal.
You Make Too Many Excuses
You might not want to hear this (so close your ears, but keep your eyes open), but a large majority of people who are having a hard time with motivation, make themselves feel better by making up excuses.
We have all heard people say, “I would like to start my own business but I don’t have the time”, “I work a full-time job and have kids, I don’t have the time to pursue my dreams”.
Almost always, people who say these things have the time to watch TV or to play video games, or worst they will talk about it with all their friends and families, post it on social media sites to get a million likes. But they will never actually get down to doing what is truly important to chase their dreams.
In the end, it is about priorities, it’s not that you don’t have the time. It’s just that you aren’t putting your goals in the front of the line.
If you want to take action and achieve your dreams, you have to start making the time for things that may be uncomfortable in the short-term, in order to reach your goals in the long-term.
Stop with the excuses, everyone has some time to work on their business and pursue their goals. The next time you catch yourself making an excuse, ask your kids (if you don’t have any, go borrow your neighbour's kids) to take a hammer and hit you on your pinky finger. They will absolutely love doing it. As for you — you will have learned your lesson in 5 seconds (or less).
So even if it’s just 30 minutes a day, practicing the guitar for example is not something you are going to learn overnight. But if you make excuses instead of taking 15 minutes out of each day to practice, you will literally never make it anywhere.
Stop with the excuses and take action. Or be ready to watch and feel the pain of your pinky finger getting smashed.
You Don’t Force Yourself To Take Action
Starting a business or learning a difficult skill is not always fun. And I do agree with that. I have started my own venture after spending 24 years working in various companies. Yeah, I have taken the plunge.
Is it tough, you may ask? Are you kidding me? You cannot define the decision of taking the plunge by just calling it “tough”. It's a gigantic ass-cracking roller-coaster ride. Some days are fantastic, and some are a drag. Sometimes the future looks bleak, and sometimes I can clearly see all the seven colors of the rainbow (my wife says I am color blind, so I have no freaking idea what colors of the rainbow I am seeing)
So don’t even get me started. If you want to know how it's going, give me a shout for a couple of beers and we can then talk. You are paying. Remember, am the one who has taken the plunge.
Until then, here is the thing — Taking action, helps you move forward, even though one step at a time. Even though there could be some days when you feel shitty right to the bone. But you know are doing it for a purpose, to build on your dreams, to make a difference in your own life and to the people around you.
Here is the juice — If you keep your purpose in front of you at all times, you will be able to pull yourself up even on a bad day (remember FedEx does deliver motivation at your doorstep) and sharpen the saw — one inch at a time.
And that applies to anything that you want to achieve. Learning to play the guitar by doing endless finger exercises or working on your next book can sometimes be the last thing you want to do when you get home from a long day at work, are hungry and tired, and have no energy. You can try Red Bull or put your head down and just get on with it.
The difference between those that find success and those that fail is the internal motivation factor. You must be your own driving force, you cannot rely on someone else to tell you to put your head down and get the work done.
You have to be willing to do this yourself, you must force yourself to take action. Be your own motivation and you will realize your dreams. Successful people motivate themselves, and this is how they are able to have wins over and over again in their lives.
You must be willing to be uncomfortable and beat yourself into shape when you are feeling unmotivated. When you are tired, be hard on yourself and force action.
You Don’t Have A Schedule
Most people, including myself, have their hearts in the right place but can be extremely unorganized.
Setting up a schedule for yourself, will not only hold you accountable for putting in the work on any given day, but it will also help you become more productive when you actually do decide to put in that work.
Take, for example, starting an online blog or just writing a personal journal.
It is great that you devote around an hour a day to writing and working on your blog, but it doesn’t help if half of that time is spent tweaking the design of your site or spending an hour looking for the perfect image (been there and done it as well), which will yield no real return on your time instead of writing content.
You want to focus on what is important, especially if you don’t have a lot of time to spend in the first place. Set a game plan and write-up a schedule for yourself. Dedicate as much time to your goals as you can. It doesn’t matter if it’s your fitness routine, learning to play the guitar, starting a business, or even if you want to achieve perfection of singing while in the shower. Hey, who am I to judge?
If you set a smart, calculated schedule for yourself, and check off each successful day, you will be much more productive during the time you are actually spending on the task.
Doing even a little bit is 100% more than doing nothing at all. Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed with the results.
You Forget The Why
How many times have you told yourself after you just ate a pint of ice cream, that from tomorrow onwards you are going to start that diet, and this time you are sticking with it, come hail or storm (or even bucket loads of ice-cream)?
But then come to find out, next weekend you eat an entire pizza (and then foraged your refrigerator for that pint of ice-cream that was leftover from last weekend). More often than not, this is because you forgot the WHY.
You lost the motivation because you have forgotten what you were working so hard for.
It is so easy to fire yourself up at the moment and lose perspective a few days or weeks later and throw it all out the window. The important thing to keep reminding yourself over and over is why am I doing this?
What is my long term goal?
It helps to have a whiteboard or a piece of poster board up on your wall, somewhere that you can see it every day with a clear map of your goals and the endpoint you are hoping to achieve.
You think that is too much to do? After all, you have to first figure out the size of the whiteboard, take out a measuring tape, then research the quality and brand of the whiteboard, then go out and buy a whiteboard (or order it online), figure out a place on the wall to put up that board, then take permission from your spouse that you are going to remove her art painting (gifted to her by her mom) from the wall to put that boring whiteboard on which you are going to draw something that kinda looks like a map, and then look for a hammer to nail it in (remember that hammer that your kids used to smash your pinky finger? yeah that one. How the hell can you forget that?), and then finally draw a freaking map of your goals (after you have erased it a gazillion times just to get that line straight)
If you can’t do all this, then don’t do it all. Don’t have a goal or dream of achieving great things. If you can’t even do this much, your dream is not worth it. You can go back to eating that pint of ice-cream.
The key to action is that, if you can remind yourself each day of why you are sacrificing so much of your time (even when looking for hammer and nails), you are much more likely to keep your willpower and motivation because you can remember how important the goals you have set for yourself are to you.
Don’t let yourself forget the WHY, and eventually, you will make it much further down the road to the WHERE you really want to be.
You Try Too Much At Once
If you want to achieve a large goal you have to make small steps to get there. Didn’t I say the same thing earlier? Well, am saying it again to make it sink in.
The biggest mistake people make over and over again is setting an ultra-high goal (remember you are not Elon Musk), getting super pumped up about it for the first few days, and then realizing how hard it is to actually work towards the goal they give up.
This is the downside of setting unrealistic goals and trying to get everything done all at once. Nothing great comes overnight, no matter how hard you work at it.
By setting your sights on achieving the small steps (or even one step) it takes to reach the bigger goal, you can set yourself up for making milestones and small wins to reinvigorate your motivation.
Try writing out a roadmap with checkpoints along the way (you ought to have become better now making such roadmaps), or just keep reminding yourself that making small consistent progress is better than burning yourself out by going balls to the wall and gassing your tank.
Final Thoughts
Lastly, nothing is more important than having a colossal belief in yourself. None of the above will matter if you don’t listen to your own voice, your gut, your intuition (and your kids). Remember they are still holding that hammer in their hands.
Having a supreme core belief is your spark. It belongs to you, it's inside you. You just need to figure out a way to ignite it. Do whatever it takes to keep that spark alive and burning. Sure read books, listen to podcasts, watch TEDx talks, or even come back to this article to read it again, but remember it’s all in you. You hold the key to your head and to your motivation.
Think of it as your car engine. You crank-up the car by igniting the spark plug. The fuel is already in there. And once it’s all lit up, you move forward in 1st gear. And then you rev up, and off you go chasing your dreams.
In my publication Any Given Sunday, I mostly write stories about parenting, being a dad, motivation, fitness, and some off-beat controversial topics.
I am also very passionate about F1, and run a publication — Formula One Forever where writers from across the globe contribute to this publication
Some more thought-provoking stories from Any Given Sunday —
Dad Stories
⭐ Say Hello! To The 4 Year Old Forrest Gump
⭐ If You Don’t Pick Up Your Kids Now, You’ll Surely Regret Later
⭐ How to Extract A Commitment From Your Teenager?
⭐ That Day When Dads Took Charge Of Their Kids For 1 Day
⭐ Your Kids Need To Sleep For Atleast 8 Hours. Otherwise, The Consequences Are Quite Severe
⭐ Teachers, Stop Asking Children To Click Pictures. Instead, Do This One Thing
⭐ If a 9 Year & 4 Year Old Can Climb 69 Floors, What’s Really Stopping You?
⭐ The Real Truth About The Discovery Of The Indus Valley Civilization
Motivational Stories
⭐ If I Miss A Rep, I Punish Myself. And The Results Are Amazing.
⭐ Top 15 Quotes from The Navy Seals That Will Motivate The Hell Out Of You Everyday.
⭐ 5 Simple Reasons You Are Not Motivated, And What You Need To Do About It.
⭐ To Merely Want to Do Something Is Not Enough. You Need To Take Action.
⭐ To Earn Respect, You Have To Look Sharp
⭐ How To Manage Negative Talk From Negative People?
⭐ Making Promises To Yourself Don’t Work. Never Will.
⭐ When Disaster Strikes, Just Say The Four Letter Word.
⭐ Fail You Must. History Is Full Of People Who Failed & Bounced Back
⭐ Achieve Personal Glory By Embracing Your Challenges With Open Arms.
⭐ Why You Should Apply For A Job That Says, “Men Wanted For Hazardous Journey”
⭐ Be Different. Become Different
Off-Beat Stories
⭐ The Information Tsunami Is Sucking You In. And You Don’t Even Know It. (Part 1)
⭐ The Information Tsunami Is Sucking You In. And You Don’t Even Know It. (Part 2)
⭐ Women Should Stop Trying To Walk Shoulder To Shoulder With Men (Part 1)
⭐ Women Should Stop Trying To Walk Shoulder To Shoulder With Men (Part 2)
⭐ Women Should Stop Trying To Walk Shoulder To Shoulder With Men (Part 3)
⭐ 26 Amazing (Or Not) Things That We All Can Do During Humanity’s Downtime
⭐ Trust Your Common Sense To Beat The CoronaVirus
⭐ Why 2500 deaths/day is Creating a Bigger Panic and Emergency than 17,000 Children deaths/day?
