Real Talk About Feeling Unmotivated

You know how sometimes you wake up and you just don’t feel like doing anything? Feeling unmotivated happens to me more often than I’d like to admit.

Happened yesterday. And last week. And while writing this post. #gofigure

Every time it happens, I get frustrated at myself. Which, of course, only makes my unmotivation worse. Yes, I know unmotivation is not really a word. I’m ok with that.

But I’m not ok with feeling unmotivated. I struggle against it. A lot. I resist it like crazy. And then it gets worse.

Something I’ve been working on lately is allowing my feelings, whatever they are, to exist. As I’m sure you’ve experienced for yourself, that’s not always easy to do. It can be downright painful.

But I’ve discovered it’s necessary when I’m unmotivated. Because the more I resist it, the less motivated I feel. It’s a vicious cycle.

Feeling Unmotivated

For me, being unmotivated is an intense apathy and disinterest. It’s an emptiness inside. And it sucks.

All I want to do is lay in bed, watch Netflix, or sleep. I don’t care that I have deadlines, a schedule to keep, or things that need to get done. I just want to buffer and avoid my enigmatic feelings and pretend nothing matters.

Because if it doesn’t matter, I don’t have to do anything, right?

Here’s my model (one of them, anyway):

C: work

T: I don’t feel like it today.

F: apathetic

A: walk away from desk, lay in bed, watch Netflix, nap, eat snacks, buffer, avoid, find distractions

R: don’t feel it / don’t do it

That’s the story my brain tells me. Not motivated? Cool, sit back and relax. You can catch up tomorrow.

But of course there’s no such thing as catching up. It’s the great lie I tell myself to make me feel better.

And the kicker is, I know it’s a lie. Which is where the resistance comes in.

The Resistance

Resistance always hits me as a form of guilt or self-defeat. I beat myself up for not being better. Smarter. More dedicated.

I ‘should’ all over myself. Aka, tell myself what I should be doing instead. I should be working right now.

I also use ‘I’ll never’ against myself. I’ll never get where I want to be. 

And my brain never misses the opportunity to tell me I’m not good enough. It’s practically a given.

Basically, I make a conscious or unconscious decision to not work, and then call myself names for not working. It’s the most ridiculous cycle.

And it only makes me feel less motivated than I did before. Who can win there?

No one.

Allowing My Feelings

Now when I say I’m working on allowing my feelings, I mean I’m trying to be ok with them. To not resist them. Because as I’ve just explained, resisting a lack of motivation only creates an internal battle in my mind that I never win.

So what’s a girl to do?

I used to think I could just change my thoughts or feelings and keep moving. But it’s not an instantaneous shift for me. It takes days (or sometimes weeks) for my awareness to turn into transformation.

And that does nothing for me in the moment of feeling unmotivated.

So I decided to allow my thoughts and the emotions they create to exist. To believe that they’re not a problem.

I start by adding a simple phrase onto the end of my thoughts.

I don’t feel like it today, and that’s ok.

That simple shift takes me out of self-judgement. It lets me feel unmotivated and apathetic about something, but still make progress.

The progress is not as quick. It’s not as easy. But it’s ok. I accomplish something.

And that gives me two things: the ability to celebrate getting something done despite a lack of motivation, and evidence that I am capable of doing hard things, even when I don’t feel like it.

Both of those help me the next time I don’t feel motivated. Which means I’m able to work through it faster than the last time, and get back to work.