Do any of these statements sound familiar?
Actually, every one experiences a lack of motivation at some point in their life. After all, it’s the path of least resistance, so easily taken when sluggishness deprives an individual of enthusiastic energy. People can become drained due to stress, poor nutrition, lack of sleep or doing the same old thing, day in, day out?
Nonetheless, for optimal well-being and to make the best or most effective use of a situation, opportunity or resource it’s important to know how to overcome those times when you lack motivation. As an entrepreneur, staying motivated can make the difference between business success and business failure.
The fact is that without motivation, you would stagnate. Imagine a pool of water that lacks movement. It eventually becomes stale and foul. People can stagnate too. Motivation is fueled by energy. If you stop moving or learning your life may not grind to a complete halt, but it can cripple you enough that sooner or later you lack the energy to care. You would not have any inclination to undertake responsibilities; sustain a friendship, or pursue greatness. If you have no life motivation, then chances are low that you’re open to doing anything at all. Eventually, lack of motivational energy can affect your over-all well-being and lead to mental depression.
One would think that the mere threat of stagnation should be enough to get that mojo or magic working again. However motivation is more than desire or willpower.
One of the keys to understanding motivation is to realize that motivation just doesn’t happen and it never stays at a constant level. Surely you have experienced exciting days when your motivation has been relentless, and you can contrast that against the times you awoke to a day when your enthusiasm ebbed and flowed. Motivation actually takes focus and needs to be elevated through conscious effort or choice. The difference often lies in whether you are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated.
When you are intrinsically motivated you are moved to act for the fun or challenge of doing an activity because the activity or experience is the reward. If you play a sport but only for enjoyment, you are doing it out of intrinsic motivation. The same could be said for playing the guitar, watching a comedy at the theatre, meditating, or reading. You are motivated by the personal satisfaction that you feel in doing it. Extrinsic motivation relies on receiving a fixed reward or avoiding a penalty. Usually you are not in control of either the reward or penalty, and when that reward or penalty is gone, your source of motivation disappears.
Examine your past desires, enjoyable experiences or achievements and determine if they were extrinsically or intrinsically motivated? Do you recognize the times that you were unable to sustain the motivational drive because you relied on external motivations. Compare that to the times you simply enjoy an activity to explore learn, or realize your potential. It is much easier to have enthusiasm for and stick to an activity with an intrinsic motivation because you are enjoying the process rather than depending on an external factor to bring you happiness. The fact is to have long term and sustainable motivation you need to engage in more intrinsically motivated pursuits because they supply you with unlimited motivational energy.
You can raise your intrinsic motivation by:
1. Nurturing your curiosity
2. Having greater control over yourself and/or your environment so that you can determine what you pursue.
3. Challenging yourself through experiences that increase your self-esteem.
4. Gaining satisfaction from putting your skills and performance to use in helping others or pursuing a shared goal through mutual support and camaraderie.
Still to understand motivation requires more than words. Intrinsic motivation can be traced to your basic needs and to the unfathomable power of your brain and its basic needs.
It is difficult to have the motivation to start working towards improving the finer aspects of your life or career, when your core needs have not been satisfied.
Your Five Fundamental Needs
You have five fundamental needs that form the basis for human behavioral motivation:
1. Physiological needs: Your survival needs include food and water, sufficient rest, clothing and shelter, overall health, and reproduction. These basic needs must be addressed before you can move on the next level of human fulfillment.
2. Safety needs: You need protection from violence and theft, emotional stability and well-being, health security, and financial security.
3. Love and belonging needs: Your social needs relate to the physical and emotional intimacy you have through your friendships and family bonds. Family bonds are with your biological family and chosen family. Your kinship with coworkers or membership in social groups also contribute to forging your identity and meeting your fundamental need to belong.
4. Esteem needs: Esteem is an ego-driven need which includes the belief that you are valuable and deserving of dignity and the confidence you have in your potential for personal growth and accomplishment. Your independence stems from self-esteem.
5. Self-fulfillment or self-actualization needs: Self-actualization describes the fulfillment of your full potential as a person. This encompasses your education, skill development or the refining of talents in areas such as music, athletics, design, cooking, and gardening—caring for others, and broader goals like learning a new language, traveling to new places, and winning awards.
Your Brain has Basic Needs
Your brain is in command of everything that is interesting about you: your memories, dreams, passions, thoughts, experiences, imagination, personality, and learning. Without your brain you cannot learn, reason, remember, predict, plan, or adapt your thinking process to make decisions, have beliefs, behaviors or expectations. Your brain needs you to provide a balance of nourishment, physical activities, sleep, rest/relaxation, social interaction, and a regime of stimulating exercises. Plain and simple, these are healthy choices that can shape how motivated you feel to engage in life. Even more importantly there is a relationship between these health concerns and cognitive decline and memory impairment.
Your core needs and your brain’s basic needs are compelling. When any one of them is demanding to be taken seriously it can be very difficult to motivate yourself to do anything else? It could simply be that lack of motivation is your wake-up call. You really DO need to sleep, eat, play, socialize or challenge yourself.
Are you able to find three minutes in your morning and three minutes in your afternoon to focus on breathing with intention? Can you set a timer to remind you to stretch and move around or to take your rest or relaxation breaks to recharge? That is only 16 minutes per day for a healthier brain and more motivation.
Can you connect with a friend or family member for a meaningful or enjoyable conversation twice a week? Can you get up fifteen minutes earlier to enjoy a healthy breakfast and pack a nutrition lunch? How about curtailing your time on social media or hours on Netflix to get an extra hour or two of sleep per night?
Please, say yes to these questions and rest assured that in the next month, your level of motivation will skyrocket.
Even if your core needs are met, you can inadvertently do things that directly affect how well your brain serves to motivate you. When that happens, when you are short on motivational energy, it can be even more difficult to pinpoint the root cause and then figure out how to fix it. There is good news, however, because none of the underlying causes of a lack of motivation are permanent. Knowing how your brain experiences motivation can help you understand why it isn’t always present and you can implement some strategies to harness motivational energy when you need it most.
Some common factors that affect your level of motivation are procrastination habits,
Let’s delve into the causes one by one. When you identify the root cause for you, pledge to tackle it head-on by simply implementing the solution. Test it by leaving your daily routine the same and adjusting only that potential cause.
1. Not doing enough
This is may sound peculiar, but it is very easy to feel shiftless and lack motivation when you are not doing enough.
Think about the last time you did nothing all day but lounge about in your pj’s for the entire day. You were not sick. You just lazed on your couch and binge-watched your favorite shows for the entire day. Even though you did nothing, did you feel that somehow it sucked the energy out of you? Compare that to a one of your busy days when you easily shifted your energy from one activity to another. You were in motion all day and still raring to go deep into the evening.
When you are experiencing low motivation it causes your brain to want to stay that way. But, once you disentangle yourself from your chair to get moving on something your brain will require less push to keep going.
You may like that comfort zone, but you and your brain need more action.
Starting is usually the hardest part. Make it easy to get started. Decide to do one small thing for only five minutes. Anyone can work or even engage in a dull activity for five minutes. We call this the push 5 rule.
Set a timer. Do that activity until the timer goes off. Do not watch the clock. If after five minutes it’s so unbearable that you have to stop, you are free to do so.
Examples: If you need to clean your refrigerator, start by cleaning just half of a shelf or one drawer. If you are writing a letter, instead of staring at a blank document you can start by putting the date at the top.
What most people find is that after five minutes of doing something, it’s much easier to continue until the task is done. By thinking about the task as something that may take only 5 minutes, it feels much less overwhelming and a lot more doable.
By simply working for a limited amount of time you went from standing still to moving – and according to the laws of physics, something that’s already in motion requires a lot less force to keep in motion. That’s how momentum works in your mind too.
When your timer dings to tell you five minutes is up, pick the next thing that you can spend five minutes doing. Small measures of progress help you maintain momentum over the long-run, which means you’re more likely to feel motivated to finish large tasks.
Eventually you can set a timer, and motivate yourself to stick to one task for 10 minutes at a time. Add another minute or two until you're able to feel motivated to work for at least 30 minute stretches.
Pay attention to when your motivation seems to dwindle. Force yourself to spend at least a five more minutes working on whatever you are doing.
One additional tip that is critical: Once you begin, focus on what you have done rather than what’s left to do.
2. The Force behind Motivation is Clarity
Uncertainty can lead to a lack motivation. When you are in a fog about what you want your brain has no direction or target. It needs clarity about what you want. Chances are, if you look back and assess any achievement, you recognize that at the heart of your motivation was having a specific objective. Clarity of purpose is a significant driving factor in achieving your ultimate desire. One you figure out a meaningful objective, your brain creates a motivational force that entices you closer and closer to your objective. Instead of worrying about “what if” and acting aimlessly you are driven to strive toward meeting that objective.
Boost you r Motivation
I dentify some compelling, exciting goals for yourself. Big goals and work goals are not the only thing on the list of goals that matter. The problem with only having big goals is that they can be awfully intimidating. Figure out what you need – big or small - to feel more satisfied in all the major areas of your life – physical, emotional, career, financial, spiritual, hobbies, behaviour modification. Write down whatever is essential to your growth, life satisfaction, or success.
Often, when we say this a common response is, “Why write them down? I’ll remember.” Not true.
First of all, when you think about the various aspects of your life, it is very difficult to contain thoughts that jump all over the map. Overtime you can lose sight of the reasons behind your decisions. When you write them down you are forced to organize your thoughts. Make them as specific as possible, and assign deadlines to each of them. Keep the list of objectives obvious. When you write something down, you're more likely to do it. Seeing them in your own handwriting reminds you that you think they are important.
3. Not Aiming High Enough
You want to set goals that are relevant to your life and measurable, but when you set goals that are too easily reached, it is easy to lose interest and get board. Limiting the scope of what you are willing to do by trying to remain within the confines of your comfort zone also puts a constraint on your motivation. When that happens lackluster motivation permeates other areas of your life. Ideally, you want to strike a balance between stretching yourself to excel and creating realistic objectives.
The key is to be ambitious.
There is great satisfaction in achieving a life-changing goal because you pushed yourself outside your comfort zone. There is no guarantee that you will achieve the goal each time you stretch outside your comfort zone. Growth happens when you are working harder and stretch beyond your comfort zone. It also helps build unshakable confidence.
Boost your Motivation
Set higher targets. Your brain is designed for complexity and edging for the opportunity to do anything new, different, or difficult. In general, you stretch your limits and push just a little further each time by doing more things that are challenging.
If you are prone to shy away from challenging activities, the key thing to remember is that it is only temporarily challenging. No matter what age you are your brain thrives on new challenges and is exceedingly capable of great feats of learning. It is outside the comfort zone where you acquire skills, live your dreams, solve problems, gain control and boost your motivational energy and brain power.
4. Body Language Dampens Motivation
Use your mind’s eye to create a vision of a person who is unmotivated. How do they sit? Upright or slumped? How do they stand? Imagine their shoulders, the bend of their back and overall posture. How do they walk? Head tucked into a make-believe shell or held high? Dragging their feet or a brisk pace?
Now imagine what a confident motivate person look like. You see the difference.
Boost you r Motivation
You are quite capable of creating instant motivational energy simply by mimicking the body language of a motivated person, the one you just pictured in your mind’s eye. Lift your chin and pull your shoulders back to straighten your spine. Put a smile on your face and add a spring to your step.
When you need a vibe to get you in that frame of mind, put on some lively music and dance a little before you head out the door. When you need to create the vibe at the office, sing the song in your head. To wake your body make a couple of high-stepping moves or spirited stretches.
Dress the part, too. Create a ritual at the same time everyday to get you in the right frame of mind. Make it a habit to have a shower and get dressed in something that makes you feel sharp and confident.
5. Motivation Loses Strength without Giving your Brain Specific Direction
You awake to a day with no commitments. You have a dozen great ideas about what you might do. But, it doesn’t take long before you notice that your early motivation has simply vanished. Why? What happened to those great ideas.
That is just it. They were ideas, not a plan of action. For your brain, it was too vague, too open. Your brain needs specific directions before it will initiate action. Otherwise, it is unable to focus for an extended period on a single thing.
Boost your Motivation
T o get fired up, instruct your brain to do one thing and tell it what will happen next. The more specific you make the actions the better your brain likes it and that alone increases your motivational energy.
If it happens to be a big project, you may have to break it down into smaller, manageable pieces, so that your brain recognizes them as specific orderly steps.
There is an added bonus to giving your brain a specific instruction and having a plan for what will happen next. It allows you to fit in rest breaks to allow your brain to recharge and relaxation breaks so you can quiet your thoughts from the busyness of doing.
6. Messy Identity-Based Mental Behaviors Diminish Motivation
We all use self-talk as a way of responding to things we have done well or poorly. You may react positively using self-talk that is encouraging and give you confidence. Take the energetic words or exclamations of triumph you use when you are feeling a motivational high. Hurrah! Wow! You are animated. Action verbs such as stimulating, exciting, inspiring, or enthusiastic barely describe how fulfilled you feel.
You may also react negatively, choosing lethargic words or messy statements that can deplete you of motivational energy.
Sometimes the subtle differences in our choice of phrasing can make an incredible difference in how you sustain your motivational advantage.
Take these two statements:
There’s a big difference between those two statements. The first is an example of someone who identified with their mistake. The mistake and the person are one.
The second statement makes a clear separation between the person and the mistake. The person is not stupid, he or she just did one foolish or ill-advised thing.
Your brain actually reacts differently to statements that begin with “I am…” as opposed to “I feel…” When you say "I am" you're actually making a statement about your identity. To your brain this implies permanence of that emotion state.
Do you identify as a person who is unmotivated by using statements such as:
These are blanket statements that imply you are not motivated. Repeated often enough you brain believes it to be true and whatever motivation you did have will definitely vanish.
Boost your Motivation
Train your brain - Do not identify as a person who lack motivation. Instead, decide to be the person who feels incredibly motivated on a regular basis. Reinforce that decision with language that affirms that message and train your brain. Say, “I am motivated!” often enough and your brain believes that to be part of your identity.
Use language as a tool - in recalling incredible highs of your best experiences, use those emotions and the words that describe them to influence a motivational vibe. On the days when you may struggle to get going and need a trigger, use action words in your vocabulary. It will help you to recapture motivating energy.
7. Feeling Overwhelmed With Work and Responsibilities
Even when you are accustomed to an overwhelming schedule, the constant hectic pace of your job, family responsibilities or social life could be killing your motivational drive. A disproportional balance between your work and life could also add to your stress and affect your motivational energy.
Lack of motivation could mean that burn-out has snuck up on you. Outwardly you think you can keep up the pace forever. Inwardly, your mind is sending up warning signals and insistent on having a break to unwind and find balance.
Boost your motivation:
1. Work with your body’s natural ebbs and flows. You body's energy has its own path and you are naturally more energetic and motivated at specific times of the day. Work with it. Determine the hours you have peak energy and be intentional about capitalizing on your most productive periods. Recent studies indicate that working in 90-minute blocks followed by a real break, turns out to be the most effective way to manage your energy level.
Plan to do your most intense work without interruptions then. Let the people in your life and organization know what this time is dedicated for. Save your harder tasks for when you know you will be in the best headspace. Use slower points of the day to take care of easier, logistical tasks. Perhaps a 40-minute nap in the afternoon recharges you.
2. Try to start work and end work around the same times every day. Separate work from your home life. Create situations that give self-care and pleasure a definite place alongside achievement.
3. Reframe your day to make sure your schedule includes “me-time” in between those hours of work.
8. Focusing on Motivation Simply for Yourself
You can enjoy every step of your journey, learn from the good and the bad, and relish in the perks of achievement but, when you focus solely on yourself, at some point motivation seems to meet a weak point.
Boost your motivation:
When your motivational energy flatlines, don’t give up.
Do not Rely on Quick Fixes
Do not rely on short-term remedies like taking a break, listening to motivational songs, or downing energy drinks. While these strategies might work for a while, they’re nowhere near as effective as finding long-lasting motivation.
Flexible thinking allows
you to think about something in more than one way. It plays a key role in reducing anxiety, as well as not being overwhelmed or stifled by unpredictable circumstances in
your life or workplace.
Inspiration can strike when you least expect it, but that is an inefficient way to develop an idea or approach decision-making and problem solving. Instead, try one of these 7 quick and easy individual brainstorming techniques.
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