It’s Monday morning. You had a great weekend, slept for 9 hours, and you’re completely drained.
5 days until you can have fun again seems like eternity.
Every day drains you a little more. Getting on task takes more mental energy than you even have.
It’s hard to believe how exciting work was just a little while back. The days would fly by, you had so much energy that you couldn’t fall asleep at night. You did the best work of your life.
What happened? You’ve lost your motivation.
Losing our motivation is like being sick. It makes everything seem worse than it is, and we just want to go to bed.
Regaining Motivation
This article originally had 6 practical tips for regaining motivation. Exercise, talk about it, take a break, etc.
Then I remembered what I’ve learned from my insanely empathic wife: nobody is looking for advice when they are demotivated. They are looking for empathy, listening and encouragement.
If you are demotivated, please remember this:
Becoming demotivated is normal. It happens to everyone and more frequently than anyone would like to admit
It seems hard to fix and it is hard to fix, but it is not unfixable
You know yourself better than anyone else. Follow your own advice and slowly the snowball effect will be replaced with an upward trend
Your loved ones want to listen and help. Allow them to do that
Your manager and peers want to know too. Sharing how you feel isn’t complaining
A Single Word of Advice
There is a single piece of advice too important to not be shared.
Look inside and seek to understand why. Be honest with yourself. Take however long you need to get to the bottom of it. Demotivation happens for a reason.
This will allow you to avoid two traumatic scenarios.
The first scenario is trying to “work on yourself” when the problem is your environment. If your work environment is not right for you, whether because it’s toxic, you don’t gel with your manager, or you just don’t love it, trying to get motivated from within will be a sad waste of your time.
The second scenario is the opposite one – changing your environment when the problem is internal. I’ve seen people leave great jobs and wonderful peers behind only to end up deeper in the demotivation hole. It’s a shame and counterproductive to change your environment when demotivation comes from the inside.
Understand yourself to help yourself.
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