When I have bad – what motivates me 

Sometimes I just don’t feel like doing anything, although to be honest, it happens quite often. If I do something, it’s usually not what I should be doing, like I watch series when I should be cleaning up, or I draw while I should be working. I know that… well, that’s not what you should do, because an active life has a lot more advantages. So what do I do when I really don’t feel like doing anything at all?

Read more: When I have bad – what motivates me 

I also sometimes don’t feel like doing anything

It’s Monday, 7 AM, and I don’t feel like doing anything.  I know that I should get up, but I stay in bed instead, thinking: what will happen if I don’t get up? Maybe I will lose my job. Maybe my language teacher, with whom I have a class today, will get angry again and stop teaching me. Maybe …, or maybe none of those things will happen.

But at some point I think, is staying in bed really worth all the things I could lose? No, it’s not. So I get up, even though I don’t feel like. And that’s the main problem, because life is full of situations when you don’t really feel like doing things. You may like your job, your language classes, your dance club or writing a blog. You may like your life, and yet there’ll be a day when you simply do not feel like doing things. OK, enough. Let’s be more precise – what to do when one day you don’t feel like doing that?

How I fight with my bad mood

Bad mood is something I have been fighting with for many years. One day could be fine, and the next day I would wake up wanting to just skip this day. Unfortunately, it’s not how it works.

In this kind of situations, being passive is the worst you can do. Sitting in one spot or staying in bed leads to unnecessary overthinking of the bad mood and additionally, may leave you with a crooked spine. For many years, I had a strong tendency to analyse my moods, which often made me go from little discomfort to remembering all my failures. It was like a snow ball effect, the more I thought about how bad I felt, the worse I actually felt. Why being aware of it is important?

Now, when I feel bad, I try to get up and do something productive. It might be something that produces tangible effects, such as writing, drawing or cooking. I mean a kind of activity the effect of which can be evaluated immediately, and also something that in regular circumstances is not what you do every day. I learned about this easy effect during my psychology classes. When you see that your actions have some positive sens, you start to think positively and you have bigger “tolerance” also towards the things you do not want to do.

 

What do I do when I get the hump

In reality, a bad mood is not a big deal. Sneaky hump is much worse, it attacks when you least expect it and takes away all your will to live and joy of life.

When I had the hump, I found it hard to think positively. It’s because in this kind of situations, thinking about things which should make you happy did not really work. To fight the hump, you have to go through the layers of gloom and indifference. Do something that makes your reptilian brain happy?

In my case, that was good food, sleep, physical activity and sex. It was the first step to overcome the hump, but not the last one. Then it’s time for the second step, that is productivity. The whole trick is to do something completely opposite to what the hump tells you to do. If your bad mood makes you feel like staying in bed, you should get up and do something concrete.

What motivates me

As we know, there exists negtive and positive motivation.

Negative motivation is based on fear. I go to work because I don’t want to be evicted for not paying rent. I go to the dentist because I don’t want to have false teeth at the age of 25. Negative motivation is easy because it’s based on deeply rooted human instincts.

Positive motivation is an inner drive taking us towards a defined goal. Positive motivation could be money, will to self-develop or social position. Positive motivation can also be a result of morality – helping people is an activity connected to positive motivation. Paradoxally, if you want to achieve something, that’s positive motivation, because it’s based on a reward.

My biggest motivation is the desire to be independent. The less active you are, the more you need other people; in a way, you become addicted to them. It works both ways. The more active you are, the more independent you become. Free from people with whom you do not want to live and work. My biggest motivation is the desire for freedom; freedom which can’t be achieved without action.

My tricks for motivation

Various rewards have always been my best motivation. Such as some kind of relaxation, or some knick-knacks bought for a part of my salary. It’s important to set the order though; first work, then reward. Someone might say that it’s a primitive solution. Maybe. But it works for me, while calling upon the feeling of duty, morality, force majeure and sense of life has no effect.

Anyway, there is no perfect and universal way to get over the hump and be highly motivated; a solution that would work for everyone. Motivation is definitely not a universal thing and different people tend to motivate themselves in different ways. Negative motivation is stronger, but also more destructive; and positive motivation is something you simply need to get used to. Reward yourself, not necessarily with material objects. Like this, you strengthen the positive incentives; and the more of them in your life, the less stress, and the more good activity.