Why We Lose Motivation (And How To Fix It)

have you ever woken up one day with a complete and utter desire to tackle all of your greatest ambitions maybe you decide that you're going to become a pro athlete win the tour de france graduate from harvard or finally pay off that credit card debt that's been piling up for so many years well me too and so it begins we start waking up before sunrise we go out for a run we're eating healthy we're hyper focused on the goals that we are so determined to persevere but suddenly it comes to a screeching halt your alarm goes off in the morning and we don't get out of bed our newfound habits start to fade and we slip back into our old routines what happened here where did this motivation go and how can we get it back this is actually something that's happened to me quite often i would say every few months i'll sort of lose this mojo i'll sort of lose this drive that i've had for so long and what i've done is i've taken a step back and i've analyzed why i lose motivation in some cases and how you can get back as quickly as possible because sometimes this could be something that is totally unexplainable it's difficult to put your finger on it um and so i'm going to provide three primary points and and reasons uh why i think we lose motivation and how we can get it back as fast as possible now the first thing we need to understand here is that we sort of have this thing where if we stop seeing progress we can easily lose motivation i sort of call this like the progress motivation feedback loop it's almost a circle here where maybe we start with motivation we're motivated towards something so we work towards it which then leads to progress and when we see that progress it further motivates us it's almost like a staircase right we have progress motivation progress motivation but as soon as we start to see that slip in progress maybe we hit a wall we're running into a wall we start to lose that progress then suddenly we lose that motivation and sometimes this can be subconscious so the way that i see this is pretty simple i think it's important to focus on working smarter before you work harder this is going to be the best way to circumvent this instead of just trying to run through a wall that you're hitting try going around the wall and sometimes this can take a while but you can take a step back and analyze what you've been doing and how you've been doing it for example let's say that you want to run in the boston marathon you know how let's say that you want to win the boston marathon and so you set out you start running every day 50 miles a day seven days a week 365 days a year what's the problem with this well any runner would know that you need to take some easy days some off days some rest days to recover so even though you're running 50 miles a day you're focusing really hard on grinding and trying to work really hard to reach those goals but you're not working very smart you're working hard you're not working smart and i think this is sometimes the problem that people like gary vaynerchuk can throw out there and people misconstrue with words i don't think he means this but sometimes we can focus so much on working hard or we don't work smart and so my idea here for you is to continue to see progress focus on working smart then work hard with this youtube channel i spent three months working very hard on it and then i had to stop i said you know this isn't working i have 200 subscribers what can i do to fix this so i realized i started working smarter rather than harder and it tended to work out right so that's what i want you to do if you are running into any wall because that is going to significantly hinder your motivation if you stop seeing progress at any given point you always need to re-engineer and innovate to continue to grow all right so the next thing that i believe can hurt our motivation or we can start to lose motivation from this is when we set unrealistic goals and this can be goals that are both far too high and far too low now i'm going to let you in on a little secret i only hit about 30 to 40 percent of my goals that i set on an annual basis and i actually find this to be the sweet spot see if you're hitting all of your goals they're probably too easy if you're running an 8 minute mile at the moment and next year 12 months from now you want to run a mile 15 seconds faster you want to run it in seven minutes and 45 seconds what's the problem with this well it's a pretty easy goal to accomplish i mean you're only shaving off 15 seconds off of your mile time you can probably do it with not too much extra work and so because this goal is too easy to attain you're probably not going to work very hard towards it and you're going to find yourself difficult to motivate yourself towards reaching that because it's just too easy to attain and so you'll end up being lazy but on the flip side if we look at a goal of say you're running an eight minute mile and next year you want to beat the world record and beat el gurus and run in three minutes and 42 seconds this is probably going to be very difficult to do this is something that you can't just wake up one day and and end up in the olympics by next year and break the world record it's going to be really difficult to do that and so when it's too difficult you find yourself losing motivation sometimes of course subconsciously but when your alarm goes off in the morning and you look at it you think is this worth it can i actually reach this goal of breaking the world record and deep down you tell yourself it's not feasible it's not possible and so you then lose motivation from that as well so finding that sweet spot for me it tends to be when i set a goal or i have something that i'm motivated towards i'm working towards usually it's 95 of people think that you're crazy and five percent of people think that it's actually feasible or possible that tends to be the sweet spot you know you want most people to think it's not possible but you want some people to know that it is actually still possible okay now the third idea that i want to present to you is when we are lacking purpose we can lose motivation so the way i see this is you have to understand your drive and this is something that i really did take quite a bit of time to try to find out why i've lost motivation towards certain goals that i've set and sometimes it's because when you have to look at your purpose or the reason why you are working towards this uh if it's something personal if if it's something about you i find it's not as great of a driver as something that is far greater than yourself so if it's a personal goal let's say i wanted at one point i wanted to get this channel to a hundred thousand subscribers well it reached a hundred thousand subscribers and i was kind of scratching my head and saying well now what do i do i've already reached it i've reached that personal goal it was great um but if it's a goal that's far greater than yourself i think this can be such a great driver and i'll actually show you a couple of examples of people in in the coming minutes here um but look at somebody like elon musk actually you know so elon musk his driver it's far bigger than just himself he doesn't care about how much money is in his bank account he doesn't care about how many likes he gets on twitter because his goals are the things that he's motivated towards are so much larger than himself that it doesn't really matter about him it doesn't have anything to do with him now you could take this on a much smaller level not everybody wants to go to mars uh a lot of us can just focus on this on a smaller level when analyzing the things that you're focused on or motivated towards what is it what is it that's driving you towards that um if it's something like family right maybe you want to become financially free not just for yourself but more so can become financially free so that you can help your family so you can put your kids through college right and those goals and those motivators are far more uh impactful than something like yourself right you want to go help your community you want to take care of your community that's a far greater driver than just you as a person and your personal greed or anything along those lines that's something that i think is very crucial to comprehend so to summarize this very quickly focus on continuing that progress how can we keep this progress going work smarter before you work harder it's great to work hard but make sure you work smart first next thing i want you to do is focus on setting the right goals right not too high not too low and the third thing that you need to focus on is thinking about what's the driver what's the reason for what it is that you're motivated for and if it's something very personal you know sometimes your things change right sometimes i my goals change the things that i'm motivated towards they change and that's okay because we change as people but like i said if it's something greater than yourself you're going to find it much easier to be motivated towards that look at somebody like barack obama not to get into politics i usually avoid talking about politics but i don't think obama became president in 2008 because he just wanted to be president i think a lot of the driving reason why he was doing it was because he wanted to see the country go in a direction that he thought would be a good way so it wasn't just about him getting in the white house it was more so about putting the country in the direction that he wanted to see and i think that's a great driver as an example there okay so focus on those you can always think about shocking your routine as well you know if you're working on tuesday thursday change it up right change it up focus maybe monday wednesday friday work out different days start changing things up if your routine is boring it becomes stagnant you become stagnant you need to constantly change things up as well so thanks for watching you can tell us a little bit energized in this video because i was excited for it there's no script here i just make these videos because i love making them so make sure you subscribe to the channel and i'll see everybody in next week's video

Channel: Nate O'Brien

Views: 99,879

Rating: 4.9677968 out of 5

Keywords: how to stay motivated, how to get motivated, how to motivate yourself, nate obrien, nate, motivation, why we lose motivation, losing motivation

Id: TL-nDIl8RP8

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020