When life gives you lemons.. you should go check if the seeds you sowed at spring time were those of lemons. That is a very bad metaphor I am using to try to tell you that whatever stage of life you are in right now, you most likely know that you could’ve done something different to make things better.
I was raised to be lazy, you see. My grandmother used to tell me I have all my life to work, cook and clean, so I should read and play while I am still a child. So, read and play I did.
The downside of such an upbringing is that you miss vital life skills, including the skill of doing things you don’t want to do when they need to be done, like your dishes, the school assignment, or working on your business idea.
Because, many years later…
I got motivated to build a business, worked hard on it for a while, it bloomed, so I sat down to do the bare minimum. Guess what – the business started giving the bare minimum income. I motivated myself to bring it back up, so I did that, my income jumped back up so I sat down to relax and live life as I knew it. Guess what… yep, money disappeared again. This was a tango dance I did for a while until it hit me… I was lacking motivation and that was the reason I was failing in life.
Absolutely every area of my life has suffered because of lack of motivation at some point – mental health, physical health, house chores, friendships… the list is endless.
Now that I am nearing my 40s now, laziness is scheduled for Sunday afternoons and the rest of the time I am busy actually living life, on my terms as much as I can, motivated or not.
Here’s how I did it, and you can too.
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Motivation Isn’t a Bus…
Motivation is basically an emotion, and just like any other emotion, it is often too wild to control. It isn’t something you can rely on because it isn’t a bus, it has no bus stop, no time table. It isn’t something you wait for to hit you so you could move your behind and do something about your situation. Also, it isn’t a dog to train to answer to your commands.
All that doesn’t mean motivation isn’t important. Not at all. In fact, thanks to motivation, the driving force behind many of our actions, humanity has progressed so much over the millennia on Earth.
Nearly everything we do or don’t do is based on being motivated to do it or not.
But it has layers, and it can often work against us as well. It can be strong enough to make us run towards a goal that has an end date (such as the aforementioned school assignments, projects’ deadlines, and more), but it could also push us into scrolling on the phone instead of cleaning our home, pulling an all-nighter to watch a favorite show instead of getting a good night’s sleep and so on.
So, motivation isn’t the issue at all. It is something much deeper and very individual. Let’s talk about it.
People say “Know your Why” but…
Imagine this: It is Friday afternoon. You’re back from work, have no special plans for the weekend, nothing that’s an emergency – you just need to satisfy your basic needs and live happily ever after until Monday.
But you want to have a good weekend reset. Your house might need a deep clean. It would be great if you meal planned, especially if you have children. Adding a few activities is a good idea and you certainly want to go for it. Maybe you will have time to work on that side hustle you keep researching. Taking a few minutes for weekly budgeting would be absolutely awesome, too.
Friday evenings are the hours with the best intentions for the weekends. You get motivated to do it all, you have a clear idea of what needs to be done. Most importantly, you know your Why – because you will start next week prepared and organized.
But Saturday morning is spent rolling around late in bed, because you deserve it. An uninterrupted scroll through the phone is a must, taking extra time to enjoy your coffee is self-care. By 12 you realize half the day is gone, so you tell yourself you’ll do the bare minimum today, relax well, and bundle everything else together for tomorrow.
Do I need to tell you that Sunday scaries are just around the corner? You feel miserable and dread another week because you just made plans for the weekend that needed your focus. Now that focus is gone, the weekend is gone, your good mood is gone.
You knew your “Why?”, so why did you fail at acting upon it?
You gave yourself a choice
Let me ask you a question.
Why would you wake up at 6am Monday morning to go work for someone who said you need to be at the office at 7:30 am to do the thing they hired you to do?
Why would you follow someone else’s rules, guidelines, deadlines, but not yours?
Why would you keep your promises to someone from work, to your friends, to your family, even a promise you gave a stranger, but you wouldn’t keep the ones you gave yourself?
It all comes to one thing – THEY didn’t really give you a choice.
Your boss would likely fire you if you decide to go whenever you want to work instead of when they told you. Not handing in your assignments would fail you at school or uni. Not keeping your promises to your friends and family would make you feel like a bad, unreliable person.
But you?
You can be flexible with yourself. You can cut yourself some slack. You will be fine with it. You can be the unreliable person to yourself… right?
I know, it doesn’t sound right when I put it this way. But it is the truth.
I hate the word discipline
No, seriously, I have issues with it. When I hear the word discipline I imagine a 3am military run around the neighbourhood while being shouted at by an angry, bulky man. I try not to use it often, even if it’s among the group of personality traits one must possess to become who they want to be.
Because this is the one. Who do you want to be?
What is your vision of your personality? Not your perfect personality, but the one that just makes life better. The version of you that actually exists inside of you, but keeps getting stepped on by your own lazy self.
Who is she? What are her excuses for not doing things? Does she have excuses at all? I don’t think so. She doesn’t give herself the choice of not doing something. If she could wake up to make money for someone else Monday to Friday, she can work on her side hustle at the same time on the weekend? What about sleep? She goes to bed at a reasonable time or, honestly, just gets on with the lack of sleep like a mother of a newborn would – they both don’t have a choice.
The difference in it all is that when the lack of choice is pushed upon us, we just take it – we do the thing, we go where we need to, we are responsible enough about it. But when that choice is 100% in our hands, somehow, we feel confident enough to wave it off, like the one thing we wanted to do for ourselves doesn’t matter as much as a promise to the manager we don’t even like.
The Version of You
Find the version of You that sleeps inside you and occasionally nudges you to let her out. Find her, release her and let her lead you towards the life you actually want to live.
Stop listening to the chase of short-term dopamine, of doing things the comfortable way, of seeking the easy now regardless of how sorry you might feel about it later.
Just to make it slightly visual to you and a trick to use when you need to give yourself the nudge:
- Kitchen staff clean the kitchen every evening, making sure everything is spotless, ready for the next day. When you lack the motivation to clean your home, think of it as a restaurant’s kitchen – you are resetting everything for the next day, for yourself.
- New moms respond to their babies’ cries 15 times a night sometimes, then they wake up and need to keep moving through the day with the focus of someone who’s slept 8 hours. Think about that this Saturday morning when you try to convince yourself a lie-in is allowed instead of chasing your goals.
- A shop owner opens the doors at 9 am regardless of their family problems, because customers don’t care about those problems. Your side hustle doesn’t care about your problems either – all that matters is that you showed up.
It is fine to wait for motivation to hit you. But once it does, use it to build up the momentum and the personality trait that can carry you through. It requires focus on what needs to be done because you want it and that’s it. You may call it discipline, I call it a version of me that makes no excuses – we are both correct.
Instead of Conclusion
Instead of a conclusion, I will give you the task of your life – what are the fruits you want to reap next season? Lemons? Again? What will you sow today that you will care for until it grows into your best version of life, and the best version of you?
And once you figure that out, summon that future version of you, let her control things starting today, starting now (no need to wait for Friday). Follow her lead until you become her. It takes a while, it takes some energy, and it takes a sacrifice or two, but it is worth it. My lazy girl era is over. What about yours?
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.
