I won’t lie, I am feeling pretty despondent at the moment. You know that feeling, where you just want to sit in your pyjamas all day watching Gilmore Girls and munching your way through a whole bar of Dairy Milk? Yep, that’s where I am.

Motivation comes in ebbs and flows. There are some periods of our lives where we feel like we can take on the world. We have all these ideas and energy for projects, hobbies and goals, and we are super productive. Then, maybe something happens – things aren’t going so well at work, or in your personal life, you hit a wall, or maybe it’s just bad weather…. and all the balls start to drop. Things you found fun and interesting are just boring to you. And you know that you should get up off your butt and do something about it but just…. meh.

When this happens (and it happens to all of us), it’s important to remember that these things are always only temporary, and we have the tools to jolly ourselves up again. How do we do this? I’ve come up with a few tips to beating that motivation slump and get yourself back to being a Proactive Polly in no time.

Recognise your patterns

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have gone through these slumps enough times to know what your triggers are. For me, if I’m feeling undervalued at work I tend to lose motivation. What are your triggers?

Make a list of the past few times that you have found yourself in a slump, unable to get your projects off the ground. What were the circumstances surrounding it? What was going through your head at the time? What happened last time to get yourself motivated again? Keeping a nice little piggy bank of memories is helpful so you can whip it out when you feel that dejection and exhaustion hitting hard.

Once you’ve got this list, you are better equipped to understand what motivates you and what gets you down – and up again – in terms of achieving your goals.

Allow yourself time to be lazy

Huh? What? But I hate being lazy! This is a stupid blog, I’m not reading this!

WOAH, hold your horses there and hear me out. Sometimes the mere thought that we should be doing something more, that there’s something wrong with us for losing motivation, can be enough to paralyse us in to doing nothing. Beating ourselves up is not the way. Instead, I propose this – let yourself watch TV in your pyjamas and eat junk food, and do all those things that you simply just oh my goodness SHOULDN’T be doing. Allow yourself to be lazy, and be mindful that you are the one in control here. You’re letting yourself do nothing.

Have you ever been a hermit all weekend? Seen no-one, talked to no-one, gone nowhere…. and by the time Monday morning comes around you are just GAGGING for human contact? In the same vein, soon enough, after a while you won’t in fact want to be lazy anymore. You’ll be bored. You’ll want to set yourself new goals and try out new hobbies. Sometimes you just need to let yourself wallow in that laziness before you can get there. So go on, I give you permission to watch re-runs of How I Met Your Mother. You’re welcome.

Don’t wait for motivation to hit

Yes, sorry. This is the unspoken rule of motivation – you can’t wait for it to come back around. Once that wallowing and self-indulgence in your lack of motivation is over, it’s time to get back to work. The motivation will catch up sooner or later. And sometimes, it can not be there for a long time, and things can be difficult. Sometimes it can be really hard to lift our head off the pillow in the morning and do the things because, well, who cares? It’s important to know and understand whether this is a typical cycle of motivation waxing and waning, or whether it’s a sign of something more permanent, however. How long have you been unmotivated for? Does it mean that you don’t enjoy what you’re doing anymore, that you’re not interested? If so, that’s absolutely fine. But give it time and don’t quit as soon as that motivation dies down. When we first start projects, we are fuelled by excitement and drive and ambition, but after a while that just isn’t there in the same way (much like ‘the honeymoon period’ in a long-term relationship). It’s there sometimes, but a lot of the time it’s just hum-drum every day life. Learning how to stick through those down times and still achieve is the true key to success.

And look at that – I made myself do this blog post even though I had no motivation, and I’ve taken on all my own advice – BOOM! It’s done!

What are your tips for dealing with a lack of motivation? How does this make you feel? Would love you to share your comments below.

C x