“I’m so unmotivated”

Feeling unmotivated?

How’s your new year’s resolution going?

There’s a lot of talk about starting new things and getting motivated, keeping old commitments going, managing your mental health, and balancing the work with avoiding burnout.

Let’s first distinguish being unmotivated from being mentally exhausted.

If you’re TIRED, don’t accumulate exhaustion and enter a downward spiral. Stop at a reasonable point. Take an early day off. Reset your mind. Go the f?k to sleep.

It’s normal if you just can’t or don’t want to do the task right now. But this feeling will pass if you break eye contact with that task for a while. Your energy is at least as important as time.

If you have the energy but still aren’t feeling motivated, that’s a separate issue. Being able to self-motivate is key. Otherwise, you might wait for a long time for things that make you say “I needed this today!” and do nothing about it.

Here are some strategies to fix the “unmotivated” issue:

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Transformation Requires Pain

Pain is a feature, not a bug.

Desire is, almost by definition, pain that comes from lacking something you want.

All living things are motivated by desire or pain.

If there’s neither, that’s stagnation. You become stale and obsolete.

Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”

To thrive, we require ongoing change, transformation, evolution. If thriving is an act of motivation and desire, transformation requires pain. It helps to embrace it.

Pain benefits those who can learn.

You Cannot Be Taught. You Can Only Learn.

This is a subtle difference but one to keep in mind if you’re looking for some perfect book, course, teacher, coach, silver bullet, etc.

This is focused on the wrong idea—that merely possessing a tool will solve your problems. Although the right book or a good teacher will inspire you or accelerate your learning curve, it’s not going to be much help if you’re not willing and ready to learn from them.

We agonize over finding the “best” teaching tool when we should be asking ourselves how to be the best student and absorb as much as you can from what you have.

Put another way, they will not magically deposit knowledge and wisdom into you. They won’t do the work for you. YOU have to make it work.

Just because you get a personal trainer doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get physically fit. Just because you get a therapist doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to become mentally fit (an extremely popular idea pushed by those who invested a lot into one or more).

It’s not about who’s teaching but how willing you are to learn and implement.

If You’re Stuck in Life, Consider the Counterintuitive Reverse Order

We believe in certain messages and assumptions we grew up with. Some have stood the test of time. Some can keep you stuck.

Feeling Frustrated and Stuck in Life

When you feel stuck in life, you end up being frustrated in unproductive ways that slowly decay your life if you don’t change things.

They say timing is everything. Then order, too, is everything. Sometimes the change you need to get unstuck is simple but powerful.

Here are some counterintuitive reverse orders you can consider:

  1. Action leads to motivation
  2. Choice leads to preference
  3. Skills lead to passion
  4. Doing leads to understanding
  5. Quantity leads to quality

Counterintuitive ideas like these are some of my favorite things to think about. I explain each of these below.

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