6 Steps to Revive Your Motivation When You Feel Like You Can’t Go On

Do you know the lady in the above photo?

No? Well, you should.

She is Bonnie St. Johns.

Bonnie was sexually abused between ages two and seven. At age five, doctors amputated her leg. She got an artificial leg and had to learn to walk again. Her mother was a single working woman, and the family was stuck in poverty. Bonnie said they always had ‘month at the end of money’.

But Bonnie created miracles. She didn’t just learn to walk again; she became an athlete. She was (is) black and lived in San Diego, where there is no snow. But she went on to become the first African American to win a medal in skiing at the Winter Paralympics.

Naturally, the question Bonnie gets asked often is, “How can I become motivated to be like you?” This question plagues everyone’s mind, including yours. And mine.

You want to improve your work skills. Or get fitter. Or read more books. Or use your time better. Or learn a new skill to make more money.

But one trait is always amiss – motivation. Lack of motivation stops you from fulfilling your dreams.

Your start doing something you enjoy, but give up when you must carry on. You reach for your smartphone during crucial moments of deep work, when you must block out distractions. You feel like you’re incapable of doing anything right.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Most people feel like you do. But that doesn’t mean you must resign yourself to this condition forever.

Contrary to the popular myth, imbibing motivation isn’t tough. You’ve almost cracked the code. All it takes to go the last mile is a tiny shift in mindset.

Ready to make the shift? If yes, read on. If no, you can go back to browsing the web and wasting your time. I won’t mind. I promise.

The Alternative to Motivation

Oxford dictionary defines motivation as “the general desire or willingness of someone to do something.”

Motivation doesn’t appear by magic. Nor are people born with it. It comes when, in Jack London’s words, “[people] go after it with a bat.” Intrinsic motivation comes from resilience.

Don’t train yourself to stay motivated. That’s impossible. Instead, train yourself to become resilient – to be able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult situations.

6 Authentic Ways to Develop Infallible Resilience

Here are 6 ways to develop resilience which will last you a lifetime.

1. Don’t Chase A Goal

You know what you should do. Yet, you don’t do it. Somewhere, in a dark corner of your heart, you’re secretly afraid.

If you walk regularly for a month, you’ll lose 5 pounds. To drop 25 pounds, you must walk regularly for the next 5 months. Sounds daunting already, doesn’t it? 5 months in a world where our attention span is less than 8 seconds, is an eternity!

Human beings suck at understanding causation. We can’t predict the results today’s actions will yield a few months hence. So stop trying.

Instead, do something because you enjoy it. Do it for the love, not for what it will get you.

Exercise for enjoyment, not to get fit. Read for the love of it, not to hit your annual target of books. Work on your project for enjoyment, not because it might get you a promotion. Enjoy meeting new people instead of networking for ulterior motives.

With time, results will follow. Sometimes they’ll come fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes, they’ll disappoint you. Sometimes, they’ll surprise you.

The more you think about your paycheck, your job title, about what people think of you, the less you focus on what’s at hand.

How should you focus on what’s at hand? How can you push yourself to do what’s important this instant?

2. Ask Yourself One Question

In her book Micro Resilience, Bonnie St. Johns highlights the futility of becoming resilient for the big things. Resilience to lose 25 pounds, to write a book, to work tirelessly for the next year, to fix a failing relationship, is arduous.

Instead, she suggests asking yourself – “How can I be more resilient in the next hour?”

Define resilience as small steps to take, and the task suddenly becomes doable. When the hour is almost up, ask yourself, “how can I be more resilient in the next hour?” The compound effect of your actions over time will yield astonishing results.

Alex Ferguson followed this technique during his stint as Manchester United’s manager. In Leading, he wrote:

"If you are in real trouble, it often seems like an impossible task to set things right. That happened to us in 2001 when we were 3 – 0 down to Tottenham at half-time….. There was deathly quiet in the dressing room and all I said was, ‘Score the next goal and let’s see where that takes us.’ I didn’t say something like, ‘We’ve got forty-five minutes to score four times.’ That would have seemed impossible…… (W)e did score one goal, and that led, inconceivable though it sounds, to a further four. We eventually won the game 5 – 3."

3. Learn

Doing the same thing over and over again eventually gets mind-numbingly boring.

Remember Sisyphus? He was a Greek king the gods punished with rolling a rock up a mountain every day, only to see it roll down every night? Who would want to live like that?

You can save yourself from feeling like him by investing in learning. People improve when they step outside their comfort zone. They improve when they stop doing what everyone else does.

Learn how to learn. Spend time every week enhancing your skills.

Related: 8 ways to learn new skills in minimum time

4. Stick to It

I admit. I suck with focus 60 percent of the time. At such instances, I’m secretly thankful for pending bills. Paying them lets me procrastinate.

But the 40 percent when I focus puts me in a state of flow! During that 40 percent time, I’ve –

1. Churned out an 1800+ word-article in less than 2 hours
2. Completed presentations from scratch
3. Designed campaigns and then sat back, watching as they yielded fabulous returns
4. Written in-depth answers on Quora
5. Laid out blueprints to connect with prospects, and implemented my plans to the 'T'.

and much more. I stick to my tasks, even when I don't feel like it.

Stick to what you do. This is a key step to develop micro resilience.

5. Increase Your Gaps

Everyone procrastinates. Even the productive people whom you (and I) envy. Achievers differentiate themselves in the gap.

For most people, the gap between productive times is large. For achievers, the gap between unproductive times is large.

You will slip up. That’s okay. What you do after that is important. Do you lie, face down in the mud, cursing your ‘luck’? Or do you pull yourself up and ask, “How can I make the most of the next hour?”

Increase the gaps between the days which feel wasted. Fill those gaps with constructive days. That way, you won’t berate yourself for a bad day. Instead, you’ll reflect on where you went wrong, and correct it the next time round.

6. Look Back

We’re taught to never look back, to never dwell on our past. Then why should you look back?

In your past, you’ll find instances where you were stuck, where you felt low, where you doubted yourself, when you felt like things would never look up again, just like you do right now.

But here you are, stronger than ever. You battled difficult times and beat the odds. Just the fact that you’re alive (and better) is proof.

Remind yourself of those times, and tell yourself you’ll do it again. It’s inevitable.

Nicolas Cole expressed it beautifully below:

When things aren’t going right, that means you’re moving someplace new. It’s unknown territory. You don’t recognize where you are yet. But look back and remind yourself of the times when you felt something similar, and then eventually found a clearing. When you doubted yourself, and then found your way.

Summing Up

Life isn’t what you enjoy when you get somewhere. The journey, the highs and lows, the victories and defeats, the calms and storms… that’s life. Resilience keeps you going through all those good and bad times.

You cannot master resilience once and for all. It’s a lifelong process, a game of you’re-getting-hot-you’re-getting-cold. You will have bad days followed by good ones, ugly days followed by beautiful ones, and so on.

Don’t turn your mind into either master or slave. Befriend it. Build resilience to stick to what’s important every hour. Do something for the love, not for rewards. You’ll achieve more in two months than you achieved in the last two years.

Go on. Start. And don’t stop. Happiness beckons.

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This article was originally published on the Aryatra blog.