3 Lessons on Getting Yourself Motivated

All of us have struggled with motivation at some point in our lives. It may be a daily struggle or a feeling you get once in a blue moon...

April 21st, 2022

All of us have struggled with motivation at some point in our lives. It may be a daily struggle or a feeling you get once in a blue moon. Perhaps you can’t be bothered to do the chores or the shitty task you’ve been given at work. No matter what it is, we’ve all been there.

I’m not sure when it first happened, but at some point in my life I decided to be arrogant enough to say to myself “I will only put effort into things I want to do”. Essentially adopting a mindset that I am above the “need to do” things in life. As a result, I have experienced a constant mental battle to generate any sort of motivation to do things I need to do but don’t necessarily want to do, and let’s face it, there are plenty of those in life.

Thankfully, as a result of the journey I am on, I have learned a few lessons that are helping to shift my mindset. Some of these pay be obvious to you, and if they are, hats off to you — you’re much better at this than I am. For the many others who I’m sure experience the same lack of motivation that I do, I hope you find value.

Lesson #1 — Build Strong Habits

If you’ve read my blog “5 Lessons About Creating Life Changing Habits”, then this concept will hopefully be familiar to you. It sounds reasonably simplistic but I cannot make this point strongly enough — daily and weekly habits will ensure you get all those shitty chores and tasks done without a second thought.

Since reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, I have created a number of daily and weekly “habit stacks”. I refer to them as my daily and weekly resets. As an example, I have created both a morning and evening stack, which look something like this:

Morning

  1. Make bed as soon as I get out of bed

  2. Have a full glass of water as soon as I get downstairs

  3. Take vitamins before having coffee

  4. Exercise before I go upstairs to get ready for work

Evening

  1. Unload and load the dishwasher

  2. Wash and dry any other pots

  3. Empty kitchen bins and empty the cats litter tray

  4. Wipe down all kitchen surfaces

  5. Put pillows/blankets away in the living room

  6. Make peppermint tea and go to bed

Creating these habit stacks puts my mind into an automatic routine based on a trigger (e.g. getting out of bed) or the completion of the previous task. In essence, I have programmed my brain so they when a specific event/trigger happens, I take a specific action. It may sound silly to those who don’t struggle for motivation but for anyone who does, creating something similar to these stacks is a great place to start.

Lesson #2 — Just Start

The second lesson I’ve had is from “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” by Mark Manson. In the book, Mark discusses how motivation doesn’t have to be the trigger for getting started with something. A lot of us, me included, won’t do something unless we’re feeling motivated to do it. We wait for our brain to say “okay, let’s go — I feel like doing that thing now”. Mark argues that this doesn’t need to be the case.

The point Mark makes is that motivation is just one aspect of completing any activity. The other two are inspiration and action. He then goes on to point out that most of us view it as “inspiration will lead to motivation, which in turn will lead to action”, when in actual fact, you can start with any one of those three. Not feeling motivated or inspired to do the chores? Start with action, the rest will follow.

I’ve been applying this rule recently and as simply as it is, it works. Whenever I don’t want to go for my morning run because I feel too tired (in reality, I just can’t be arsed), I put my shoes on and take the first couple of steps out the door. Next thing I know, I’m half way through my run.

Sometimes, all you need to do is start.

Lesson #3 — Make Your Bed

The third and final lesson comes from a video I’ve watched a few times on YouTube. It is a speech by Admiral McRaven and it one that you will come away from feeling like you’re able to achieve anything.

In the speech, he covers ten lessons but I want to focus on just one today. That lesson is “make your bed”. As part of his Navy SEAL training, he had to make his bed perfectly every single day. To summarize, he goes on to say that when you make your bed, you have already accomplished your first take of the day. From there, you will feel encouraged to do another task, then another, and then another. Then, at the end of the day, you’ve accomplished many. He also hammers home what I now believe to be a vital point — the little things in life matter.

Finally, and I love this part, he says that even if you have a terrible day, which we all do, you will get to come home to a perfectly made bed. Encouraging you that tomorrow will be better.

“So if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed” — William H. McRaven