“…… GO FOR IT”
It took me a whole month to finally put something tangible into writing because I was waiting for motivation to come, but I eventually decided to start writing this article without motivation. And that is the bad thing about waiting for motivation — it just won’t come till you decide to start something.
It doesn’t come till it sees you’ve decided to work without it (and best believe that it’s better to learn how to work without motivation). It’s almost like a situation of a person who’s been given so much attention and realises one day that all that attention is gone, then, he or she tries to become too obvious so as to get that attention back.
Sometimes, my excuse for not writing articles is because I don’t feel motivated enough. But who says I have to be motivated to write articles? I read a book or rather, I started reading a book, it’s titled “the five seconds rule”. In plain English, it’s about doing whatever it is you want to do within the time frame of five seconds. It’s an effective way to stop procrastinating and kill the "I don’t feel motivated" mentality. In The five seconds rule book by Mel Robbins, she said that as soon as you have the instinct to act on a goal, you have to do it in not more than five seconds, otherwise, your brain will kill that instinct.
Thing is, as simple as it is, it only takes five seconds for five seconds to be over, so if you don’t make the decision to act on that instinct ASAP, sorry, but you’ll have to wait to feel motivated enough to even think about carrying that action again, let alone deciding to actually carry it out, it could take about a month to get that kind of motivation again, trust me!
But you see, it’s not hard to deal with being disciplined because for a fact, being able to do this requires a certain level of discipline, a disciplined person understands the importance of going through with set out plans, that is; honouring commitments, so here’s one healthy and effective way to carry out actions towards achieving your desired goals(trust me to only give you a plan that worked and is still working for me)—write them down (the action/actions needed to be carried out to achieve your goals) and allocate times— set times and timers or alarms for each of the actions to be carried out. Tested and proven, so don’t doubt it.
However, there’s a problem; laziness, overconfidence or sheer unwillingness won’t let you write these goals down and allocate certain times to take action because you think having them in mind is more than enough, but it’s not. There’s a different level of commitment that comes with setting timers on when you want to take a certain action. For example, you want to read a book, so you set your alarm to remind you to read that book by 9pm everyday. With how annoying alarms can be, I bet you’ll want to pick up that book and stop the alarm in no time.
Atomic habits by James clear will give you a better understanding on the need to stop waiting for motivation because it’s not coming. He made a point— what makes the difference between people who stay consistent and those who don’t is the ability to keep working even when they don’t feel motivated. It’s easy to work so hard when you feel motivated but what about when you don’t?
It’s hard trying to achieve our goals and dreams especially on days when our morale isn’t high enough to work, but sorry to break the news to you, because those are the defining moments, those are the moments that count the most because it is when you are the most conscious about deciding to stay committed to your goals.
Making a commitment means you’re choosing to go all the way for that thing, choosing to go all the way implies that your commitment still stands even on the days when there’s little or no motivation or reason to continue.
So, get over the idea that you need motivation to work because you don’t. You just need to be disciplined enough to understand that the motivation won’t always be there, and most times, all you just need is to take that action first, start without the motivation and see how it begins to work out well.
Recommended books; the five seconds rule, atomic habits and the 15 invaluable laws of growth. These books will help you understand the importance of discipline and the fact that those who have become big in their lifetime worked more on the days they didn’t feel motivated enough. The first book will help you deal majorly with procastination because more often than not, procastination comes from a lack of motivation, so it’ll help you understand and stick to the rule and end procastination as well. The second book will help you steadily build good habits, and in a particular chapter, you’ll see and understand why waiting to be motivated is just a myth. And finally the last book will help you understand that to grow you’ve got to be intentional about your actions. And that you can’t always wait to be motivated to take certain actions, you just have to do it immediately it pops into your head.
It’s not rocket science and you don’t need to overthink it, don’t wait for motivation. Don’t fall for that trap, choose to go all out for your goals and choose to stay committed to them with or without the motivation you think you need to achieve these goals. I’m sure you can do this! So go for it.
You can get those books at https://www.pdfdrive.com/
