How do I motivate myself to do the important things when I don’t feel motivated?
“I’ve noticed that my motivation to start my own freedom business is always at an all-time high when I’m at work, sitting at my desk, with the realization staring me in the face that I do not want to spend the rest of my life sitting in a cubicle all day every day… I feel a burning desire to take immediate action towards a freedom business. The only problem is that I’m at work so I can’t! When I’m finally on my own time and can focus on learning and creating the motivation is still there but not nearly of the same caliber.
Have any of you experienced a similar situation? If so, do you have any tips or tricks to channel, on command, that same level of motivation that I feel when I’m face to face with the reality of what my life will continue to be if I don’t take action now?”
Dear Creative Like Me,
I usually find myself in the same situations after work. A burning desire to work my pursuits — to write, learn, connect, code, design, write songs and build successful business — but also the need to rest.
Such a paradox —When I finally have time for what my soul is pining to do, I feel unmotivated to do them. (Heck!) Even more so recently since my energy hasn’t been great, and my three-headed demon.
The need of rest is good, but after resting, it’s easy for me to slide into mindlessness, which is the enemy.
Rest is equally important as effort, but mindlessness is the enemy to creativity.
I know I need to spend time creating and pursuing my goals, but I feel exhausted, obligated to other things and others, and reluctant to do so. (Even though I know doing so would create a better reality for me!) ‘Maybe Tomorrow’, I think. (But you know what they say about tomorrow.)
So what’s an motivated unmotivated creative to do?
One solution I’ve found is to
first re-energize yourself.
Go for a walk
Mediate
Talk to a friend / loved one
Read
Workout
or do something you enjoy that’s restful yet mindful
and second, sit down and
Start with purpose and intention.
It doesn’t have to be the best thing you’ve ever done, it just has to be something.
You just have to start and stick with it for as long as your able.
Oddly enough that lazy, tired feeling I have fades away once I start and keep pushing through. I think this idea goes along well with one of Dale Carnegie’s strategies for removing worry and despair by ‘losing yourself in doing.”
Taking action consumes your mind and leaves no space for exhaustion.
My feeling of reluctance and fatigue doesn’t completely go away, but I become more comfortable with it, each day I do it. I think that’s how most people find their success, they learn to thrive in un-comfort. They make the uncomfortable, comfortable and do so continuously.
Personal success comes to those with the largest comfort zone.
Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner, Renaissance Man. April 18th 10AM EST, Chattanooga TN
If this article helped, let me know in the comments below, or via email: josh@renaissanceamanlife.com.
“The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.”
— George Bernard Shaw
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
— Zig Ziglar
“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”
Whenever I purchase a new notebook, everything feels so fresh and clean. Each blank page has the potential to be my next great idea (such a bragger). A song, business idea, design, personal insight, or blog post (much like this one I hope). But then my jumbled thoughts and multi-disciplined life grabs its messy hands on it. I jump from one thing to the next. Sometimes I’ll leave a great thought on a nearly blank page unfinished. (dun tun dahhhh)
The mess itself doesn’t bother me (… too much 🙂
It’s the fear that my ideas will never leave the notebook. Ideas trapped in another book of ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybe somedays’ on a shelf gathering dust.
Your ideas are the path to your best-self, but if they only exist in your notebook or head, do they even exist at all?
Ideas are meant to be shared.
Ideas are meant to be made.
Ideas are meant to be challenged.
And ideas have an expiration date.
It’s okay if you have to start over. Sometimes you must step back before you can step forward.
We all need a fresh start sometimes.
A fresh starts can be exciting if you look at them the right way. Instead of a past mistake or failed attempt, you have a clean page, a new today.
A fresh start begins by pausing —
Seeing what’s working and what’s not, what needs improvement and what whale fails that need to be avoid in the future.
After all, life is a series of fresh starts, big and small, don’t you think?
Growing up, endless summers, high school, college, first apartment, falling in love, finding fulling work.. everything is a new beginning. Every day is a new chance to be someone better than the last.
Fresh starts are what The Renaissance Life is about.
I personally don’t want to be old and grey before I live a live of creativity and boldness.
No, I must start today. I must make each day a fresh start. I must push through any fear I face.
And when I am old and grey, I hope to remember that fresh starts never end, and are ultimately what life is about. If future me is reading this, I hope you look at my struggles and pursuits fondly and see a life well-lived. And remember old man, it’s never to late to turn the page.
Grab a fresh page and take action on your new life today.
Then do it again the next today.
Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner
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related wisdom
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
— Seneca
“Every day I feel is a blessing from God. And I consider it a new beginning. Yeah, everything is beautiful.”
“Failure will never overtake thee if thy determination to succeed is strong enough” — Og Mandino
Ugh not another blog Post about failure!!
I’ve come to appreciate the humor of failure and setbacks.
You can read more about my story on a recent post, My Three-headed Demon, but suffice it to say, failure loses it’s bite when it keeps happening to you again and again.. “Oh, that’s on fire now? Haha okay. Ah, well… where was I..” When you lose your health, or when a big bad wolf comes knocking, everything after becomes minor quibbles and hilarious. The word ‘success’ has been run into the ground and lost its meaning, but in my mind a successful life begins when you change your perspective about what it means to fail. To those who have made it (whatever it may be for them), failure is feedback — humorous quibbles. palm to face moments. Bumps on your journey to look back fondly on. Decision points in the road, whether to continue, apologize, try again, or give up.
Think of failure not as something you are, rather something that happens to you.
Failure is a force that overwhelms us.
It’s something outside of our desires and intentions that wants nothing more than for things to stay the same. Think of failure like a brisk wind — from the wrong perspective, it will steamroll you and knock you down; from the right perspective it’s a force that can propel you forward, an updraft that your outspread wings can catch.
Perhaps your intentions were incorrect. You had high hopes for the project but things just didn’t work out like you wanted. Or perhaps you were right, yet butting up against circumstances outside of your control. Regardless of the fact, what are you going to do about it now?
Action Step: failure happens. Now what are you going to do about it?
If we (and the world) are malleable, open to change, then failure is the yin to that yang. It’s the doubt smiling in your ear, saying ‘you can’t do this, why even try?’. And when you do try yet fail, there it is again, ‘you might as well give up’.
Failure is the enemy, but should not be hated. As painful as it may be, once you see begin to see failure as feedback, it becomes less fatal and more of a pivot point. Your story goes from, ‘I’ll never make money’, to ‘What I’m doing isn’t working. What can I change / experiment with next?’ or ‘why do I suck so bad?’ to ‘everyone sucks in the beginning. I just need to keep pursuing’.
See failure as the enemy of your enemy, and use it to your advantage. ‘That sucked big, now what can I do next?’ Because the real enemy is complacency.
This is an essential perspective of The Renaissance Life and pursuing creative work. Failure goes hand in hand with creativity. Failure is the artists story. Innovation usually begins with failure. For example, look at this list of successful people who failed first.
Unless my failure equals death, my failure isn’t fatal, its an overreaction. I can keep persisting.When we fail and give up, we are giving into a negative outcome. However, there’s always a way to flip failure into a positive outcome. The hard part is getting your mind to accept that, and letting go of the upsetting fact that you failed in the first place.
Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner
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related wisdom
“Few of our failures are fatal.” — Tim Harford, author of Adapt.
“I want this so bad that I’m going to keep going UNTIL it works. Other people are doing it, so I can to. I just need to keep going until it works.” — Jeremy Frandsen, from Internet Business Mastery
