Motivation.

For me there is no such thing as motivation. On those days where I do not want to do anything, just getting out of bed is hard, let alone showing up and doing things I know are good for me in the long run. I have tried to find the motivation and it never comes. So what do I do? I just show up. I just do the first thing. If it's writing an article, I just pull out my computer and open a word document. Every time I just start the task seems easier to do than to resist. I believe that we are our habits so having good habits leads to success.

“Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.”

― Steven Pressfield

I did not feel like writing today at all, but I pulled out my laptop, opened a word document and started putting words on the page. This is likely not my greatest article but that is ok, for me it’s the fact that I showed up today that is important. That I still showed up to work, and did the work. As I type this it is getting easier, the resistance is still there but at the end of the day I’m writing and that is all that matters.

So often I have so much resistance, but the difference between me and others is that I still do the work. More often I do not let this be a reason to quit. I do have to scale back sometimes and it means I am doing too much or I am taking too big of steps. This is the beauty of small steps. If I am experiencing a lot of resistance then I know I am growing, but I might need to scale back. Almost every time I show up it turns out that it's not as bad as I thought and it was my resistance just blowing it out of proportion. I do not understand why we as humans are predisposed to laziness. I know that I am going to feel great on the other side of it and I try my hardest to focus on that.

For me it's all about just starting. Once I start I am in it. I just have to do that first thing then it's like, well I am already in it so I might as well finish it. It's like how I will accidentally watch an entire season of a tv show on Netflix. Because it just rolls into the next episode before I can even fish the remote out of the couch. Before I know it I have 600 words on the page and I’m like well at this point I might as well finish.

I believe that who we are is our habits. What we do every day is what we are. So for me if I want to change myself it's about changing the habit. The secret to changing habits is to make the habit you want to do easier and the thing you want to avoid harder. For example when I wanted to play less video games what I did was I pack up my PlayStation back into the box and put it in a closet. So every time I wanted to play it I had to unpack it and set it up. Then when I was done playing I had to put it back. So after doing that a few times I just didn’t feel like it was worth taking it out anymore and I stopped playing it. Then for something that I wanted to do I just made it easier. I wanted to start journaling, so I kept it right next to my bed with a pen. This way it was easy to do. Whenever I want to create a habit I do this. I remove obstacles for habits I want and I add obstacles to the ones I want to break.

What I have observed over and over about myself is that the days where I have zero motivation are the most important days to show up. I also use this to look at it and make sure it's something that is important to me. If I am consistently avoiding something then this could be an indication I am taking on too much and need to scale back. It's perfectly ok to scale back. If it's important just do less of it. Maybe I took on too much too quickly. When I started comedy the advice I got was to get on stage as much as possible. I took this as doing 2-3 shows a night. I found it really hard for myself to do that. It wasn’t until I scaled back and slowly added more shows every month that I was able to sustain it. So now if I am feeling a lot of resistance I look at it and ask myself: is this habit still serving me? If it isn’t maybe I should stop, if it is I just need to start. I know I always feel better after so motivation or not I’m just going to start and see what happens.  

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Thank you for reading, You’re doing great. 

Bjorn RG.