Why Wait for Motivation?

So you’ve got a dream, a goal or simply a task ahead of you. You’ve decided that it’s important, yet you’re just not feeling motivated to work on it. You may have heard of a few strategies to help get you motivated.

You could visual wild success to get yourself excited about taking action. Or, you could get motivated by conjuring up a fear of regret, thinking about what not achieving your dream or goal would mean for you. Both of these methods require significant emotional energy.

What if you’re just not feeling it?

There’s another option: decide that it’s okay to not feel motivated, yet decide to take action anyway. Why wait for motivation? This approach (similar to ACT therapy) requires the following ingredients: acceptance, future thinking and mindfulness. Here’s how it works:

Acceptance

Accept that feeling low in motivation is a normal part of the human condition? Some days will feel like this. There’s no need to expend emotional energy fighting it.

Future Thinking

Consider how much better you’ll feel in the future (sometimes just a few hours in the future) if you’ve taken a few steps toward your goal.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness will help you realize that you still have the ability to put one foot in front of the other, put pen to paper, hammer to nail, etc. Actions that are required to bring you closer to your desired outcome are still available to you even if you aren’t feeling excited about them!

Taking action even when you’re not feeling up to it has the power to build momentum as you start moving. This momentum might help to light a fire under your motivation. And if not? Well, at the end of the day, you can still applaud yourself for taking some steps toward your goal.

Will you stop fighting low motivation and take action anyway?

Image by vchal (iStock)