How to Motivate Yourself (Part 1)
Often in therapy one of the most common issues is motivation. Specifically the lack of it! Now for some clients, lack of motivation is often considered a symptom amongst others such as low mood, poor concentration, poor sleep and more. There are many ways that I work with low motivation, and it depends on your individual circumstances. But there are some major themes worth sharing:
First, we’ve got to understand the role of emotion or feelings when it comes to doing the things we want to do. When we’re in a chronic low mood due to depression or struggling with recovery, we often don’t feel like doing anything at all. We often label this as feeling as ” I’m feeling unmotivated”. For all my clients we break this down and examine this feeling and its related thoughts. For most people, feeling unmotivated often means that checking for pre-emptive positive emotion before we commit to doing an activity.
The most common example is regular exercise.
“I don’t feel like exercising today”
“I don’t feel like catching up with my friends”
The checking of positive emotion prior to action is our experience most of the time.
Now, what if I told you that was only half the story. In fact, you can build the positive emotion (or reduce the experience of negative emotion) that typically motivates you. For example, the first time, you decide to go for a morning walk, you might feel “unmotivated” or “lazy”. But if you can somehow manage to get up and walk anyway, you might find that once you started it wasn’t terrible. The 2nd attempt at your morning walk, you might still feel “unmotivated or lazy” but it’s probably going to be slightly less. Repeat 10 – 15 times, you might notice that you sort of feel like going for a walk mixed with some laziness. Repeat for 30 times, now something strange occurs, you might actually feel like going for a walk, you might look forward to walking and if you didn’t walk that day, you might feel slight agitation to walk.
But hold on, it was only a month ago you were completely unmotivated to walk and now you’re the person that wakes up to walk. Relying on the prior emotions associated with doing an activity that you want to do and know is good for you is a double edged sword, because there will be times in which you’ll opt out of what you intended to do. Understanding that some days you’ll have the positive emotion and some days you’ll have negative emotion towards your intended activity, accepting that fact, and moving forward anyway is a critical skill for any accumulative long term goals. Plus doing the intended thing that will increase “motivation” anyway!
It sounds like an ironic problem to have, since if we could do the things that we wanted to do despite the negative emotion (or the lack of positive emotion), then the problem would disappear.
Source: Agelesspix, Unsplash
I think there’s 2 things that you have realise to unlock some motivation:
You can deeply accept that positive emotion is not a mandatory but a preferred criterion for doing that good thing you intended to do.
You have the ability to develop strengthen, build or weaken your motivation. Motivation grows based on your actions especially if it’s practiced and repeatedly rewarded.
In the big picture, the difficulty of trying to build a good habit is often much smaller than the lifetime benefit of maintaining your helpful habit. Fortunately, you have the ability to unlock the motivation to move you toward your goals. Take heart, suck it up, keep at it and happy recovery!