Three Simple Tips for When You Can’t Get Motivated

In my conversations with hundreds of widowed people, I often hear things like:

I need to clean the kitchen.

I have 60 pounds to lose, but I keep eating junk and I can’t get off the couch.

I need to deal with that stack of bills, close that account, and get another death certificate.

I should get started decluttering so I can pack up this house for the move.

The tires are bald, the gutters need cleaning, the tree needs pruning, and the garden is full of weeds.

Have you ever felt disgusted with your current result, yet can’t seem to get motivated to do anything to change it?

Perhaps you want to want to, but it ends there. Because when it comes down to it, you don’t actually want to.

Rather than feel motivated, often in life after loss we feel overwhelmed. Motivation prompts action, while overwhelm leads to inaction.  

As if the loss of our person wasn’t enough, widowed people instantly have double the responsibility, twice the tasks, all of the decisions, and often half the income.

I remember being scolded by the man at the oil change place for waiting too long to have the oil changed in my vehicle. So, let me get this straight, I’m supposed to watch my husband die despite my best efforts, figure out how to live on one income, will my heart to beat, manage ten acres and also feel motivated to get my oil changed on time?

I think there should be someone standing there handing out trophies for any widowed person who gets the oil changed at all in the first five years.

Whether it’s deferred maintenance or a cluttered home or pounds to lose, it’s understandable to lack motivation – understandable but not insurmountable.

If you’re faced with a lack of motivation to get done what needs doing, here are three tips that can help you to generate actual, authentic, action-prompting motivation.

• Consider whether it really needs to be done. The brain likes to suggest that a million things need to be done immediately, and that simply isn’t true. Make a list of what your brain suggests should be done right away, and then select only one item for now. Write down the specific action you would need to take in order to get started.
• Motivation, like any feeling, is caused from a thought. What thought would make you feel genuinely motivated to take the actions you want to take? Make a list of possibilities and choose the one that feels the most true. Try it “on for size” to be sure it creates motivation for you.
• Choose to think that thought on purpose, feel the motivation it creates, and then watch drive the action you want to take. Don’t expect to start and finish a big project - just get started by taking the first action.

Taking any action from a place of genuine motivation is a big win. It shows us that we can create any feeling by choosing a true thought that, for us, genuinely creates the feeling we want to feel.

We can’t possibly feel motivated all the time because we must also make room to feel all the other feelings that are demanding our attention. But at times we do need to generate useful emotions such as motivation. Give yourself time and space to take care of you.

If you absolutely can’t seem to do what needs to be done and motivation seems like a thing of the past, I’ve got you. My coaching program called Life Reconstructed is designed to help. It is all the tools and resources I wish I had in my own journey, along with a community of people who get it. Simply click here  and we’ll see if it’s a fit.