5 Ways to Regain Motivation

I found this article linked to a tweet from Fit Bottomed Girl from The Huffington Post. It was exactly what I needed to read right now...and I thought I'd share it with you.

5 Ways to Regain Motivation
Robert Leahy, PH.D.

If you are like a lot of people, you know that there are things that you should be doing, but can't seem to get yourself motivated to do them. Whether it's exercise, dieting, getting work done, cleaning up your home or getting in contact with people you know, you simply can't seem to make it happen. This "lack of motivation" can get you depressed, as you feel you aren't getting things done, you can't lose that weight and you lose touch with the people who care for you. Here are five things you can do to regain your motivation.

What's the bottom line? Motivation is not the force that comes before the action -- it is you acting in your interests. Motivation comes after the behavior. And self-esteem is not saying, "I am wonderful because I exist." It's saying, "I take pride in doing what is hard to do."

Keep Your Goals in Front of You
Start with deciding on your goals, rather than focusing on how you feel.
Make a decision to become the person you want to be by doing what you don't really want to do.
Decide that you are going to be the person who loses weight, gets the job done and builds friendships. This means you will have to do what you don't want to do to become the person you want to be.

Stop Waiting For Motivation To Show Up

Imagine if you saw me walking in the street in front of my office and you asked me, "Why are you walking back and forth?" and I answered, "I am looking for my motivation. When I find it, I'll go to work."
Motivation is not the same thing as making a choice to act in your interests. Don't wait for your motivation to push you forward. Allow your goals to pull you toward the future. Act on your interests and values, not your feelings.

Rely on Habits Not Feelings
Don't expect to wake up in the morning and have a wave of motivation hit you. Focus on practicing the right habits every day -- whether you like them or not.
Choose to choose the things that are hard now so they become easier in the future. The more you practice the habits of doing the right thing (exercise, diet, getting your work done), the easier it becomes.
It's hard until it becomes easy. Be the person who can say, "I can do hard things." Learn that you can do things you didn't think you could do.

Do It Now, Feel Better Later
Accomplishing your goals is more about tolerating discomfort, delaying gratification and focusing on what is in front of you -- the challenge.
You might actually feel more uncomfortable, more anxious and more stressed as you make progress. If you do the hard things now, you will feel better later.
But you can feel better about doing the hard things now. Take pride in "constructive discomfort" -- building the mental muscle to do what you don't want to do. If you aren't doing something uncomfortable, then you aren't making progress.

Don't Wait to Feel Ready
You've done a lot of things you weren't ready for -- and you survived and grew. Doing the hard thing is a process of getting ready to overcome even more obstacles.
The biggest obstacle is yourself. Waiting to feel ready is just another way of saying, "I don't want to do it."
But you have to do what you don't want to do to get to where you want to go. Choose to choose rather than wait for the energy. You create energy by acting. When you exercise you notice the energy coming back, when you reach out to friends you find that they are there for you.
Simply knowing that you don't need to wait -- that you can choose to do things, act as if you were motivated, just do it -- empowers you. As one young man told me, "I realized I was able to do things I never thought I would be able to do."