Turning Your Day Around When You Feel Unmotivated

Good afternoon, I hope you’re doing well today. Thanks for tuning in. Yes you heard that right. I said afternoon. This morning I failed to make a podcast episode like I promised myself. I just had super low motivation, trouble to get out of bed and I spent quite some time scrolling on instagram. This happens to all of us sometimes doesn’t it, and then we feel so frustrated that we wasted our time looking at stuff that doesn’t matter. At least that’s me. I sometimes find it hard to not get angry and disappointed at myself when I don’t do what I said I was going to do. But this anger and disappointment is very dangerous, because if I don’t watch out, I stay in that for the rest of the day. And then I just give up on my entire day completely. And get nothing done. But the thing that saved me today was that luckily, I had my boxing class, and I wanted to call it off, but I don’t have my trainers number, so I had to show up. And this was a blessing. Because boxing class was tough today, I got tired really fast and struggled to last complete rounds. But after I was finished with the training, I was proud of myself. Because I did something that I had absolutely no motivation for, but I did it anyway. And that’s when I decided that my day isn’t wasted, that I’m still going to do the podcast, and that I’m still going to work on music today. And I know today it’s going to be tough but I’m going to do it anyway. Today my trainer saved me, but what about other days? I’m not always going to be motivated, this morning is prove of that. How do we stay on track? I think for musicians, creatives and entrepreneurs this is what makes the difference between succeeding or not. If you are able to do the work no matter how you feel, because you are the one that has to hold yourself accountable. Nobody is going to that for you. And today I want to talk about that.

So on days of low motivation, the first thing that I think is smart to do that has worked for me is: Accept the situation and forgive yourself. Accept that today, you don’t feel at your best. If you don’t accept this you are going to put so much emphasis on the fact that you don’t feel good, that that is going to be the story you tell yourself today. That you don’t feel good and that you can’t do what you wanted to do. I have had a lot of days in the past where my day didn’t start right, and because of that I just gave up on the rest of the day too. Has this ever happened to you? But I’ve noticed that if I don’t beat myself up over the fact that I feel lazy. Forgive myself and don’t make it a big deal, I am allowing myself to move on with my day too. If I make it important, or a bad thing that I feel lazy, I’m making that idea stronger and then that becomes my reality for that day.

So that’s step one, acceptance. Then the second step that works for me is to break the cycle of laziness that you’re in by doing something else that is not what you feel like doing. That can be to exercise, to go for a walk outside, take a cold shower. Whatever. It has to be something that you don’t want to do though. For me it works best to do something that I don’t want to do, that wasn’t already in my schedule. So if I didn’t plan to go for a run that day, that’s what I’m doing. If you manage to do this, you’re going to shock yourself out of the story that you’re telling yourself that you are lazy, because you have proof that you’re not. Because you just went for a run, or did something else that was difficult. So now you know that you can do difficult things today and it’s easier to get to work. It’s very important that after the cycle is broken, you don’t distract yourself. Because for me, here I’m at a point where I’m very vulnerable to distractions and it can go two ways. I can either go back to scrolling on instagram and lose all my progress. Or I can put the phone away and start having a great day.

So, after breaking the cycle, so step three, what works for me is to reschedule my day where I get rid of unimportant tasks and just start working on the first thing that was in my original plan. And I’m not looking at the list of tasks, only at that one first thing. This helps me not get overwhelmed and just focus on doing what I can. Because that can happen to me sometimes if I look at everything I still need to do, does that happen to you sometimes?

The next thing that works for me is just to work on one thing at a time until the work day is over. What works best for me is to forgive myself in advance if I don’t manage to finish everything. This allows me to put focus in the task that’s in front of me, without being overwhelmed. I’m just going to keep working on the next thing until the work day is over. I might not finish everything that I planned to, but at least I turned my day around and made the best out of it. And a funny thing is, that with everything I do manage to get done, I get a little more motivated to do the next thing. And usually when the ball gets rolling, I do finish it. Somehow I got everything done that I really wanted to do that day in less time. And I actually even did more, because I also went for a run or some other thing that I didn’t plan.

Now, today. I had a cheat code, I had some external thing that forced me to break the laziness cycle. My boxing trainer. This made it so much easier, because I had to stop being lazy because someone else was counting on me. Where you can, give yourself some external accountability. Make yourself feel compelled to do stuff because otherwise it’s going to have some negative impact on your life. That can be that you don’t want to let someone down. Like I had with my trainer. But another great way to do this is with money. For example with this podcast, I promise that if I don’t have 300 episodes online in a year, I’m going to give one of my followers 500 euro’s. Now I have to try to do it every day, because I want my words to mean something.

With music you can do this too. You can make a deal with your friends, and say that you’re going to make a beat every day. And for every day you miss, you have to give your friends 10 euro’s. And at the end of the year if you don’t have as many beats as there are days of the year you are going to donate the remaining amount of days times 100 to a terrible cause that you absolutely disagree with. You ramp up the stakes to what you have to do. It can help motivate and keep you accountable for doing the work.

Now maybe you think I sound like overhyped amateur business guru who watched too many YouTube video’s and you think it’s insensitive how I talk about this because maybe it’s not that easy for some people. And maybe you are right, but I’m just trying to share what works for me. And I hope you believe me when I say that I have struggled with apathy and feeling depressed for quite some time too, and for me this was the solution. And hopefully that can be helpful to someone out there. So these were my thoughts on how to turn your day around when you feel unmotivated. I hope you found this interesting and enjoyed listening to this podcast episode. If you have some thoughts or feedback, please let me know. I’m trying to make this podcast as interesting, enjoyable and valuable as possible. My WhatsApp number is in the description. Thank you for giving me your attention this day. And if you feel unmotivated, I hope you can turn it around and still have an amazing day, much love!