How to Motivate Yourself (Part 5)
In this post I’m going to cover some of the common barriers faced in skill 4. Long story short: in that post I encouraged having specific goals and sharing them with your close and supportive friends.
If you are struggling with digital addictions such as gaming addiction or porn addiction, it’s best to focus on overcoming that struggle before trying to leap forward onto more complex goals.
I’ve had clients share their goal with their friends and loved ones and encounter resistance. So it’s worth taking about the kinds of resistance that you will get.
Source: Raghu Nayyar, Unsplash
First, anything you do that is worthwhile will be difficult in multiple ways. A personal book recommendation is the “War of Art” by Steven Pressfield that best explains that resistance is proportional to the meaningfulness and goodness of our goals (strongly recommended for those in the creative industries). From a psychological sense, if you aren’t being optimally challenged it’s likely you won’t feel engaged in your goal even when it’s meaningful. Side note: one thing to expect is that you will find days in which you don’t feel like doing the work towards that worthwhile goal (see skill 1) and you will encounter fear several times along the way (see skill 3 if the fear is overwhelming). Okay, so important goals have plenty of personal resistance but how about the resistance from criticism, mockery or perhaps contempt from loved ones, friends and family?
Well that’s sort of expected, and there are several things you can do.
The first step is to listen attentively, your friends and family have a different point of view and it might cast light on a blind spot that you have overlooked. Practice receiving feedback both negative and positive in service of your goal. There are a few handy mental skills that might help you lessen the impact of those comments and your corresponding thoughts. In psychologist’s terms, I refer to them as “cognitive distancing” or “cognitive defusion” skills that allow you to detach and remain calm when you hear harsh criticism from yourself or your critics, but that I’ll cover in a later post.
The second step is to assess if the feedback that you are listening is from a participant or a spectator.
Ask yourself:
Is this someone I love and respect?
Do I trust that this person providing this feedback has my genuine interests at heart?
Is this person speaking from experience in this or related domain?
If this person doesn’t have any experience in this or similar domain, what are they really trying to communicate?
Can I receive this message productively to make progress to my goal?
It is also important that you do this step privately and with respect.
Depending on the choices you have made in life, you’ll have a bunch of good friends and I don’t mean a cheer squad.
You need friends that will ground you and force you to reassess your goals if they are clearly unwise or unnecessarily risky. Now if your friends and family are advising against your goal, you have to make the tough decision of assessing if they are participants or spectators. If your criticisms come from participants, then pay attention to what is being said and look for actionable advice. If they come from spectators, pay attention, validate their concerns and communicate that you have fears too. Remember actively listening does not mean complying, that is your choice not anyone else’s. Sometimes, it’s worth keeping in mind that when others hear your goals it might trigger their own anxieties and their responses could be a projection of that.
The third step is acceptance. Take ownership and accept that the actions you take towards your goal are yours. You are responsible for your own successes and failures. To be frank, if you are attempting something ambitious you should expect failures, lots of them, and aim to learn maximally with each one. The biggest mistakes happen when you refuse to learn from failures. Now here’s the optimistic part to the third step: Accept that inaction will lead to nothing and that focused action toward your goal is infinitely more productive. I mean that in a deeply mathematical sense, because you zero chance of achieving your goals when you do nothing.
Source: Helena Lopes, Unsplash
There’s plenty to accept:
Accept that your only option is to participate and make an attempt.
Accept that any well-reasoned and focused action gets to closer to what you really want and know is good for you.
Accept that failures are good learning opportunities and that more knowledge and insight can help you readjust your action or tweak your goals so that you can increase your probability of achieving them. If you can accept all that then it makes listening to spectators that much easier and far less upsetting.
Accept that some people won’t say nice things, and accept that it might hurt when you hear them. Accept that you will likely do what is meaningful for you anyway.
Now depending on your social supports, you might feel that you are facing unnecessary resistance on a regular basis. There’s no doubt that’s a tricky situation, there’s a time and place where you might decide to surround yourself with people that are less critical (or maybe even supportive) of your goals. In the meantime, listen, assess and accept that you will always have some people that will have an emotional response to your goals.
Happy recovery!