Ways to deal with Lack of Motivation : Reasons for procrastination
Ways to deal with Lack of Motivation : Reasons for procrastination
Right from top successful personalities to every single common man, inevitably goes through two things, that are lack of Motivation and Procrastination. These two things where most people struggle at. Its been a big problem for almost all age groups. As to achieve anything in this world, these things are going to play vital role. Lets have a look about dealing with them.
Motivation
For better understanding, Motivation and Procrastination are dealt individually. When we start with motivation, every motivation does have a "Purpose" behind it. So purpose can be considered as fuel or driving force or any appropriate rich fancy adjective you can append to it.
What is purpose by definition?, Purpose is simply defined as end result of any activity, you are trying to achieve. The level of seriousness/strength you have towards the end result is going to decide the strength of the purpose.
This very strength is extremely crucial in your journey. Based on this strength whether you drop at middle or you achieve the end result is going to be decided. So how this strength is going to play a role.
As regularly as divine sun appears in the sky, we often hear people saying the things, I lack Motivation to do something, I am losing the passion, It's getting tougher to make it going etc. For all these cases it simply indicates that we need to work on the strength of our purpose. The strength of the purpose at the moment you started the activity and the strength of the purpose now is no longer the same.
Its been tarnished and became weak. That is when we feel like we are losing motivation and it leads to consequences like procrastination or completely giving up. This is the fundamental root cause for all the so called "Lack of Motivations" I.e., the strength of the purpose is weakened.
Why and when does strength gets altered
Whenever we are going to pursue a purpose. We should selectively take decisions. Because the first rule for any purpose to be strong enough throughout the journey is, it should actually help you or it should help others including you.
It should carry crucial importance and it has larger and wider prospects that will enhance your life and others life. This is the fundamental rule for any purpose to be strong. Here the more people gets linked with the purpose the more stronger the purpose becomes.
That is why genuine spiritual leaders or organizations who does some self less service to society they never ever lack the motivation to continue the activities. As their purpose generally is based on welfare of whole humanity.
Nothing else in this world can beat the strength of that purpose. As the volume of people linked with the purpose is huge. The next comes out personal purposes which makes our life more efficient. Here when I say personal, it's never alone us.
Because, I saw some people lacks motivation to take up the walks their doctor recommended years ago. In this types of cases, people often delay the things because their strength of the purpose is weak, why? because they linked the purpose just to their own well-being.
But in case if they can link many more things to the purpose of walks, Like remembering the close people who are dependent on them for various reasons, considering the troublesome consequences they going to get for ignoring the walks, the financial burden they should face if something goes wrong with their health etc. In this way when we link many things with the purpose. The purpose gets stronger.
Because when a person is considered, his health is not just his concern. But every person in their family is going to get impacted in someway or other. Working for our self also means that we are working for our family too. Having this kind of wider awareness will give immense strength to the purpose. It's the same pattern that should be followed for any tasks.
Thus when we clearly understand the necessity of our purpose and try to strengthen it by linking it to many crucial things . The strength of the purpose remains strong and with little efforts we can maintain the consistency.
Let us take the example of two kids. One born into a poor family and other one into family having an above average financial stability. The boy who born into a poor family right from his childhood have seen many ups and downs.
Whichever be the problem he faced right from his parents health to the institution he study, everything just reflected their inefficiency of being poor. Where as our other character, the boy in above average case leads a normal life, acquiring every experience a normal boy goes through in his life.
He is well supported by his parents in all ways. A regular happy life. Naturally for education, they joined respective schools. The poor guy realised that the only way to come out of his inefficiency is to study well. Hence he formed a purpose of studying well.
The other guy too got inputs from his parents to study well and to achieve some decent life on his own. He too formed a purpose to study well. Both the boys purpose is same that is to study well. But the strength of the purpose differs for them.
Here the poor guy has got some solid and serious aspects that strengthens his purpose of studying well. He understands that only through study can he come out of his miseries. This gives strength to purpose on many folds. With this strength, he never going to face any lack of motivations or procrastinating kinds of things in his studies. Because his purpose is linked with needs.
Even though if he faces lack of motivation or procrastination he can easily overcome it with little efforts as the energy comes from within. Where as the other guy too thinks in the beginning to study well. And as time passes by he slowly gets distracted towards other things. Gradually he starts lacking the motivation to study.
He frequently face lack of Motivations and Procrastinations. As his purpose didn't have enough strength, it isn't linked with serious aspects. This is where the difference of motivation arises between people.
However if a rich guy is very fond of attaining great fame or obsessed of achieving higher studies, then he too can get the stronger purpose that drives him successfully. Thus at the time of defining a purpose itself we must be aware and should make it as stronger as possible so that it gets linked with our self and we never face potential "lack of motivation" or Procrastination threats.
Procrastination
Procrastination is kind of unwanted guest that tries to settle down permanently. We often undermine it's capability where it slowly takes control over things without alerting us much. If we are not aware of some simple dynamics involved around the cause of procrastination, it's nothing but we are making our journey more and more complicated.
Procrastination mainly generates from our inefficient perception. For example when you set a 90 day diet schedule to maintain the fitness (you can replace your own example in place of diet). You may not face any difficulties in initial days. Everything goes well. But suddenly you tends to lose the interest or feel like you are lacking energy to maintain the same.
This could result in you abandoning the 90 day plan even before completing a week. Once we fail, it will be irritating, which takes down our confidence to bottom level. And when we later try to resume the plan, insecurities flare up as we have a memory of failing earlier.
The more times you fail the tougher the achievement becomes!. To avoid this possibility. Always take this approach where, once you set up a goal. You forget about tomorrow, day after tomorrow and n days later. All you concentrate on just today's work. Today you stick to your diet schedule perfectly and your job is done.
Be in that mentality where you always focus on todays job. You need to remember it at initial stages/when it's necessary, once you get into the flow things happen by themselves. Whenever you feel the threat of procrastination again remember the same daily tasks.
Never look into the future, never look into the past. Because when we look into future it's nothing but our brain collectively gathers all the work that needs to be done over a period of time and it imposes on us in present moment. The moment it happens we feel stressed and tend to lose energy which delays today's little job. Not only us no ordinary person on this earth can do such insane things to complete entire activity in one day.
When we literally think about goals all the time, our brain starts projecting into future and it brings all the unnecessary future stress. That is why the purpose of creating goals is just to give us a direction to go. Once we setup a route map we should forget about end result and concentrate on daily tasks.
When we just concentrate on today's work, As daily goals are relatively much smaller, our brain quickly jumps into the action as daily goals can be achieved easily. So when you set up a 90 day diet plan. You forget about tomorrow, day after tomorrow or n days later. You always concentrate on daily and short goals which ensures the progress towards end result.
It's also very important to not think about past achievements. Like some people count the days, for 35 days I have been following the diet. This approach also must be avoided. Because the moment we think about the number 35. Our brain again collectively gathers all the work we did for 35 days and it imposes on us in this moment.
But we never did that work just in a moment. It's a collective work happened over a period of time. Hence When we think about past achievements again the same pattern happens, this time where you get a subconscious feeling that I have been struggling for these many days/I have been successful these many days. A sense of revolt or lazy ness slowly arise in our brains.
Over a period of time it will gain enough potential to curb the actual plan. It's always best to stick to the small daily goals and think about the present work. Once you get into the flow you will feel comfortable in this approach.
Another advantage in this approach is that even if you fail for once or twice due to inevitable situations, as you are not maintaining any past and future records you can easily get into next day's work. In that way you never going to stuck at a point but you always going to move ahead.
Mischievous SELF factor
We have covered the aspects of Motivation and Procrastination. Which can be considered as internal factors which generally activates after manifesting a purpose. That being said the overall individual behaviour is what to be considered as "External Factor" that works beyond the scope of the purpose that could effect the activity we take.
It has the ability to impact the whole activity you going to take right from forming a purpose, maintaining the strength and achieving the goal. The entire process collectively is always vulnerable to that one single factor. That is our own "SELF".
Many people doesn't know that our own self is a 24/7 CCTV camera who watches us all the time and will be ready to derive definitions from our behaviours. So in that context, commitment should be followed in every aspect of life. For example if a person working in a office not committed to his work.
He doesn't care his work and pretends to be working only when boss comes by, and uses every chance to escape the work and lacks authenticity. When he does that, his inner self will get aware of this. In another scene when he decides to put down weight as he is over weight .
He plans the diet or exercise accurately. But when the day comes, he loses commitment to practice consistently. He tries his best but he cannot accomplish it. Because his inner self is following his own behaviour, where he did not give value to the "commitment" towards his work in the office. He should follow commitment in all areas of life. Even if he manages to put down the weight, it will be very hard and takes much time to accomplish the same.
That is why Vedas advice us to follow truth, righteousness, peace, love, non violence through all the three human mediums I.e., thoughts, words and actions in every area of life. It's not like we do part time spirituality where we follow them only in spiritual areas.
If that's the case, it doesn't matter even if you do many spiritual practices. It can be seen all over the world including India, people keep on engaging in worshipping dieties, visiting temples, involving in spirituality but when the real mundane life kicks in they put aside all those principles and do all kinds of non sense.
If that happens it's of no use in following spirituality. It should not be that way. Maintaining good conduct in all areas of life will give your inner self a unique direction and satisfaction, it assumes that "okay they are trying their best and loyal to me". Only when you achieve that state, you can expect a smooth progress.
Even a single failure in commitment in one area can effect some other area of life. We must ensure we do our best by giving a good impression to our inner self. When we are loyal to our inner self in all situations we will not get any commitment issues.
The reason why the three aspects thoughts, words and actions are stressed specifically by shastras is because only when we align all the those three in single direction I.e., maintenance of uniformity among all the three makes their energies don't get dispersed in different directions but concentrated towards single direction.
When all the energies collaborate in single direction the stability generates and the intensity increases!. It's not a Brahma Vidya (rocket science) to understand that, it's easy to handle a stable entities than the wandering entities. We maintaining uniformity in our thoughts, words and actions makes our own body and mind a stable one over a period of time.
As our energies aren't dispersed here and there but all of them are aligned and focused towards a single direction hence our brains and bodies get stable. When our body and brain gets stable, it becomes easy for us to handle them whichever the way we want!. We can drive them into any aspect we want to achieve with very minimal efforts.
For better understanding, In virtual interpretations it's just like we being the charioteer(our soul) driving a chariot(our body, mind) drawn by 3 horses(energies of our thoughts, deeds and actions individually). If every horse goes in random directions obviously it will be tough task for charioteer(soul) to control the chariot(body, mind) and he never reaches his destination.
Similarly if all the thoughts, words and deeds each one of them goes in their own direction, it becomes tough to have command over our own brains and bodies, rather we end up as victims of uncontrollable chariot.
But where as if all horses goes in single direction, the charioteer gets a chance to get hold on the chariot and can reach his destination effortlessly. Now he can drive the chariot in whichever the way he wants. Similarly if all the three energies of thoughts, words and deeds are aligned as single beam.
The stability generates in our body and mind as there are no dispersions or energy drains. When stability is generated it becomes easy task to handle our brain and bodies. That is the underlying mechanism existing behind the Vedas telling to maintain the same approach in all three mediums thoughts, words and actions.
Unfortunately people avoided them thinking them as some mere moral lessons. Thinking one in thoughts, speaking other through words and doing actions completely mismatch to the thoughts and words is nothing but energy drains and dispersions.
People may get a thought that what if we align all the three but in destructive or bad ways. Why should we follow good motives. It's a natural question that can arise in everyone's mind and logical too. However by virtue of its nature, destructive entities posses a quality where whichever that comes in touch with them they first pull away the energy from the same.
So before allowing something to engage and continue with them, they drains away energy first. And the second thing to be considered is, it becomes tough to follow negativity in all thoughts, words and deeds level. For example if a person got a thought of cheating someone. It's a destructive/negative thought by nature. So at thought level it's classified into destructive thought.
The second is word level. At word level too he should portray the same negativity towards other person. If he does that for example if a person tells to someone that he is going to cheat them, will the other person accept that?. Obviously not , so at word level he should get to constructive/positive side where he need to sugarcoat the words. And after gaining trust, he cheats other.
Hence it's hard to keep up all the thought, word and action level alignment in destructive/negative actions. However even if we achieve that alignment, as by its default nature negativity drains out energy, it's just like even before we reaching the destinations our chariot horses are going to become weak (due to massive energy drains as they got in contact with negativity) and eventually die. Thus when negative emotions are not promising enough to reach our goals, it's wise to avoid them.
Like in our daily lives we see many people cheating others in someway or other. Like a businessman cheating their client. A labour cheating their boss. An employee lying to their manager. A CEO manipulating their employees.
Ourselves do get into scenarios where we get a chance to cheat/lie. It happens to almost everyone. So even though it may seem effortless to cheat or easy to choose inappropriate ways, we must always avoid it. Because for the sake of the momentary situation or momentary benefits it's foolish to decrease our overall efficiency.
Overall efficiency is just like our efficiency/capability to deal with life throughout the span we live here. So every momentary approaches we go through daily life are going to impact that overall efficiency. Thus when we take up some negative thoughts, negative words or negative actions we obviously aim for momentary benefits or for short term results.
But that very approach is going to alter your overall efficiency. We should never forget that we eventually come across such numerous momentary situations. Let's say you face 1000 momentary situations for a period of time. So sacrificing your overall efficiency for single momentary situation is nothing but you are decreasing your efficiency for the next 999 momentary situations.
Thus compromising life level entity for the sake of momentary benefit is no lesser than a foolish act. Just because, as we got a chance to cheat others and we cheating others simply means that we are decreasing our overall efficiency.
Because there is no alignment in thoughts, words and actions which leads to energy dispersions which further impact your overall efficiency. And when some other activity pops up in another area of your life, you struggle to handle it due to your poor overall efficiency . Without surprise our life becomes full of friction with issues like lack of self esteem, procrastination, disturbances, lack of motivation etc.
This is also one of the underlying mechanism works in karma principle (what we do to others we going to get them). It's our own subconscious brain ruins us. Hence we should never compromise on our overall efficiency for the sake of momentary aspects.
When we have high overall efficiency (which is accomplished by trying our best in aligning all the three thoughts ,words and actions in a constructive direction) without any energy dispersions we can set many number of goals and accomplish them with full of ease throughout the life. This alignment maintained for longer times further activates the wider scopes beyond the material world. That is where the real spirituality arena lies in and it wants to bless us phenomenally.
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The reason why your confidence got destroyed is because you thought that you are alone responsible for the end result, 100%. Which actually not the case with reality. So you yourself put that burden on you. And obviously when things doesn't work the entire responsibility comes to you. You will get stuck in failure patterns by your brain. So rather when we understand there would be much more factors that comes into picture we never get stuck anywhere. By Understanding this, We neither get any anxiety or other issues for success we achieve, nor we get any confidence issues or obstacles for failure we face. We will be always ready to aim many things for many times. So just remember "Do your best forget the rest".Forget even about the result. Because we only have control on doing activities, but we never have any command or control on outcomes. If anyone having the control on outcomes, then he/she is no lesser than god.
Hence Before taking any activity be aware that it's success or failure is exposed to many factors. And your only job is to put your efforts in best possible way. If you face a failure, check yourself whether there is any corrections you should make from your side and try again. As this time other factors may work in your way!. Who knows? And here the strength of the purpose comes into picture. If purpose is strong or genuine or worth for multiple attempts, you will do it effortlessly. Or else no matter how much you try you can't keep it up.