Motivation’s Ghost

Motivation can be hard.  And there are a thousand, maybe eve a a million reason to procrastinate being motivated.  And it could be about anything – to exercise, to do work, to clean the house, organize, get a new job, or anything else that maybe we don;t want to do.  What I have found is that motivation, or lack there of, and procrastination go hand in hand.

Why is it so hard to get motivated to stop procrastinating, get off the couch and get busy doing the things we need to do?  I am not truly sure, but it is probably a combination of things depending on the person and situation. It is something I struggle with though, and many others do as well.

I usually procrastinate for several reasons – If I dread or do not enjoy the task.  If I am afraid it will take a lot of time.  If I am not sure if I can do it well.  And usually once I get started it isn’t all that difficult. It can also be hard to stay motivated when you are alone.  When you have others in the house with you, you can work on the buddy system, so to speak.  If the other person knows you are supposed to be working out every night, or cooking better, or working on whatever goal, they will ask you why you are jut sitting on the couch?  And then you are motivated.

Many times we set out with lofty goals for the day.  For me, I will get up early, do some PiYo, work hard at writing, do the documentation that I need, write blogs, work on the book, work out more at lunch, eat right, clean the house, cook a healthy dinner…and then I get home, get comfortable, and before I know it time slips away and it is 9pm.  Too late to start anything really.

Maybe the trick is time management, and not procrastinating so much.  Because if we did not procrastinate, time management would not be a problem. At least for me. I have read many things about how to  get and stay motivated. The term just Do It isn’t so popular and a part of our culture for nothing.  and that is what we have to do – is just do it.  we have to make ourselves get off the couch, do the work, the cooking, the cleaning, the exercises, the whatever.  that is why it is not easy. If it was easy everyone would be good at it.

It takes strength and perseverance to accomplish motivation.  And sometimes it takes something else.  I am tapping in to two things right now to help me. One is giving myself a deadline. The other is keeping my friend Melissa in mind.  before she passed, she talked about not taking your life or your physical body for granted.  She talked about how she used to resent having to exercise and would make any excuse not to do it.  Then, she got cancer and was too weak to move around by herself.  She said she would never resent having to do anything like that again. She would celebrate being able to exercise to move around on her own every day from that point, but she never got the chance.

So here I am, looking at the treadmill. And running is hard, though it feels good afterward. Obtaining our goals is hard. But something happens when you take the dread, procrastination and resentment out of the picture…you actually get motivated.  You love yourself despite of yourself – even of you don’t like everything about yourself or your life.

So motivation is slowly coming back. I call it Motivation’s Ghost, because he shows up just a little bit at first, here and there.  And then, if we grab on, maybe he will stay a little longer with each visit, until he is a regular.