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How to feel more motivated
Do you ever wish you were more motivated? I hear this often from my clients, and I want to tell you how I coach them to get things done anyway.
The first question I’ll ask is: “If you were motivated, what would you be doing?”
I asked this last week to someone in a workshop I was leading for graduate students. “I’d be writing more consistently on my thesis,” they answered.
Writing is a tough one for many people, especially if you work on your own deadlines. When no one is holding you accountable, it’s easy to put writing off until the inspiration strikes. But if you’ve tried taking this approach, you know that it means writing very infrequently.
“Great,” I told the graduate student, “so what’s getting in the way of writing your thesis?” As with most people I coach, their answer came down to some version of “I don’t feel like it.”
This is where most of us get it wrong: we think how we feel in the moment is relevant to our ability to take action on what’s important to us. This is simply not true. If you wait to act until you feel like doing something, you’ll always be at the mercy of a whimsical mind.
The truth is that small wins motivate you to continue. Productive people don’t wait for motivation to fuel action. They act anyway, knowing that producing results fuels…
