How to get motivated during quarantine…

I have noticed a pattern with my clients, they have gone from…

“Oh sh*t what is happening” to…

“Hey this isn’t that bad, I always wanted to try working from home and resting more” to…

“How long is this going to freak’in last! I’m going out of mind a little bit and my motivation is going down the tubes”.

I think one thing we can learn from this is our mind always likes to tell us that we would get more things done if only we had more time, which if that is true for you - Yay you! But for the rest of us, that is a mind trick…

The mind is actually designed to keep us alive -- not to make us more productive.

Our mind’s programming comes from a time when we were living in the jungle facing life and death on a daily basis. We had to worry about things like whether we were going to get enough food to eat and whether we were going to be eaten by a tiger that day.

So in order to conserve our energy, our mind likes to tell us things like “Don’t move if you don’t have to, eat as many carbs as possible that way you don’t have to worry about going hungry, sleep more -- you can use that energy later, etc.”

I think you can see where I’m going with this… Our mind trying to protect us and keep us alive will just take the unstructured time we have and tell us not to exercise, eat worse, AND be a motivation killer.

Now you might be thinking -- if that is human nature, how do we get out of this loop?

01. Awareness

The first key will all change is awareness. If you know your mind is running a program that isn’t in your best interest for today’s circumstances, then you can pay less attention to it. I say something to myself like, “Thanks for trying to protect me mind, but I’m good, there are actually a few things I would like to do today and I think I will feel better at the end of the day if I’ve done them.”

02. Meditate

For some people this is hard and you may want to skip this step, but let me just say this…meditation is the practice of sitting quietly and separating yourself from your survival mind.

The more we can separate from our survival programming, the more we can see what we actually want to accomplish and how we want to take care of ourselves. If meditation is a turn off to you, you can also use whatever method you normally do to “clear your head”: take a walk, do a yoga video, talk to a friend.

03. Start small

It is really hard to get going when not a lot has been happening, so it’s important to set goals that are only slightly higher than what you have been doing already.

It’s about 1000x more psychologically satisfying to hit your baby goals and teach yourself that you are a person that does what you say you’re going to do, then to be a person who sets big goals and fails at reaching them day after day.

04. Create a structure that works for you.

Have you had the experience of saying, Tomorrow I’m going to________ (exercise, eat healthier, start my blog), and then tomorrow comes and you don’t do it? It’s because you haven’t figured out what structure you need to be successful.

For example, I know for myself I need to write down what I am going to accomplish each day, and I always put the stuff that’s the hardest fo r me to motivate myself to do at the beginning of the day because, if it’s at the end, I’m much more likely to talk myself out of it. Also, I don’t put it too early because that would be self-sabotage too -- I’m not a morning person.

05. Celebrate!

The thing that helps motivation grow the most is your ability to recognize that you are moving forward. Let me repeat that… The thing that helps motivation grow the most is to recognize that you are moving forward.

How I was able to write this blog today is -- I was so proud of myself for making progress on another project that I have been procrastinating on. When I made progress on that project, instead of saying to myself, “You should have done x,y,z weeks ago”, I said, “Yay, Jesse, you did it! That was something that was really hard for you to motivate yourself to do, and you broke through!” Then I did a little dance around my room and sat down and wrote this blog!