If a lack of motivation is affecting your life, you’re in luck, because you’re about to learn the 7 major reasons why you’re short on the motivational energy you need to successfully accomplish your goals and exactly how to fix each of them.
A lack of motivation can cause many problems for each of us. We may have trouble getting projects done, keeping our house clean, or giving the necessary energy to a new relationship. When we don’t have the motivation to improve our lives, we may find our overall well-being takes a hit.
Fortunately, by the time you’re done reading this, you’ll have the knowledge you need to unleash the motivational powerhouse within you. Here are the main causes of a lack of motivation.
1. You Don’t Know What You Want
Of all the reasons responsible for why you might be lacking in the motivation department, this first one is by far the most common: Either you don’t know what you want, or there’s a lack of clarity about what you want.
It’s tough to get motivated to do anything at all when we’re unsure about what we’re after in the first place. Conversely, once we take those fuzzy dreams we have and bring them into focus by writing them out as goals, then the motivation will flow naturally.
If you lack motivation in any area of your life, it’s likely because you haven’t decided in detail what you want in that area. And we can’t focus on something if we don’t know what we’re aiming for.
Solution – Writer Your Goals
If you’re experiencing a lack of motivation, keep in mind that you can’t hit a target that you can’t see. Identify some compelling, exciting goals for yourself in each of the major areas of your life – physical, financial, emotional, spiritual, etc. – and write them down.
Our thoughts are all over the place, and the first step to achieve your goals and increase personal development is to organize your thoughts. So, write your goals down, however big or small they might be. Make them as specific as possible, and assign deadlines to each of them.
As you write them down and revisit them regularly, they get further drilled into your head, taking you closer to your goals. Doing this small exercise helps you to remain focused, motivated, and lets you track your progress with ease.
2. You’re Not in Control of Your Physiology
Take a moment to picture in your mind what a person who has a lack of motivation actually looks like, physically. If a person is unmotivated, how do they stand? How do they sit?
Do they have good posture or bad posture? Are their shoulders pulled back, or are they slumped over forward? Is their back upright or rounded?
Now imagine what a person who’s totally motivated looks like. How does a person with motivation stand? Close and narrow, or open and upright? Do they walk with their head held low, or head held high? Are their shoulders slumped forward, or pulled back nicely as they walk?
Is their back bent forward, or are they sitting upright?
You could instantly motivate yourself by mimicking the body language of a motivated person that you just pictured in your mind’s eye.
Solution – Visualize Success
Motion leads to motivation. If you want to get motivated, learn to control your physiological state. One of the most effective techniques to overcome a lack of motivation is visualizing the process to your desired outcome. This helps you move in a positive direction and achieve your goal.
Close your eyes and focus all your energies on the minutest of details that will take you where you want to go. For example, if your goal is to write a novel, visualize yourself sitting at a book signing, talking with fans of your most recent novel. Try to bring to mind how you’ll feel, what you’ll see, where you’ll be, etc.
Doing this exercise every day inspires you to keep going and increase your motivation. The vision of attaining success will drive you to do better while instilling belief and confidence.
3. You’re Not Aiming High Enough
Whatever we seek to accomplish – writing a book, losing weight, achieving the perfect relationship with our significant others – it’s the degree of desire we have to accomplishing those goals that ends up becoming the crucial element to achieving them.
But too many people try to set limits on their desire, which can cause a lack of motivation. They tell themselves and others that they don’t need wild success. This kind of thinking is dangerous because when we limit the scope of our desire, we limit the scope of what we’re willing to do to reach our goals. And when we limit the scope of what we’re willing to do, we limit the scope of our motivation.
Solution – Fight Your Fear
When we’ve got puny, uninspiring goals, we tend to feel lethargic and unmotivated to achieve them. On the flip side, when we’ve got huge and ambitious goals, we feel empowered and invigorated to take action towards achieving them.
But what’s holding us back from setting the massive goals? Our fear. Identify the fear that is pulling you back and tackle it.
If you don’t face your fear head on, you cannot expect to conquer it and renew your motivation. Ask yourself: What is stopping you? What are you scared of? Once you accept your fear, you can work on an action plan and think of solutions to overcome it. Then you can set massive goals and take massive action.
Push yourself to your outermost limits. You’ll find that the more action you take, the more motivated you become to continue doing even more.
4. You’re Overwhelmed
Have you ever been so stressed, so overwhelmed, under so much pressure – that you’d rather say, “Screw it. I don’t even care,” than to continue marching forward with whatever you’re trying to do?
Whatever the cause, one thing we know about feeling overwhelmed (or stressed to the gills) is that it can drain motivation, big time.
Solution – Focus
Maybe you took that point I made earlier — about aiming higher and 10X-ing your goals to get you motivated — to heart. But maybe you also aimed a little higher than your current capabilities. If that’s the case, lower the bar bit-by-bit until you hit your sweet spot (which is somewhere between your current capabilities and a goal that’s just hard enough to achieve that you have to stretch a bit to achieve it).
5. You’re Prone to Procrastination
Another thing that can cause overwhelm – which leads to a massive lack of motivation – is when we don’t have enough clarity about what to do next. This ambiguity leads to procrastination, and procrastination leads to a lack of motivation.
Solution – Take Action
Take whatever it is that you lack the motivation to do, and chunk it down to an immediate, doable next action you can take immediately.
Your motivation loss and procrastination go hand in hand. Every time you procrastinate, your motivation levels take a greater hit. The only way to bring an end to this loop is to stop procrastinating.
Next time you find yourself putting off something for “later,” stop and assess the reasons behind it. Get to the root of the cause and eliminate it in order to overcome this poor habit of procrastinating, which is sabotaging your life and mental health.
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