No matter how fulfilling your job, there will be days when you can not summon the enthusiasm for it. What makes the experience undermotivation particularly frustrating is that the solution seems as though it should be clear: what you need, you say to yourself, is more motivation.
So you are surfing the web for motivational tips (visualize your goals! Reconnecting with 'core values' you!). You remind yourself you want to buy a mountain bike, or a family you have to eat. But it's rare that all these works: instead, undermotivation dig in your heels, making progress harder than ever.
There is a reason for this, although it's one that all teachers motivation industry has a strong incentive to conceal: tried to "get motivated" can often make things worse. The real problem is not that you do not feel like taking action. Instead, it is a basic assumption that you need to feel like you can take action before acting. Which explains the hidden trap "motivation" advice: this is not about how to get things done, but about how to get in the mood to get things done.
It does not matter if it produces a feeling of enthusiasm is a simple matter of repeating affirmations in the mirror, or record an optimistic Anthony Robbins quotes for your monitor, and glancing occasionally. But as research by Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner and others have repeatedly pointed out, our efforts to control our emotions through the sheer power of the will can end up with self-sabotage: resolve to get "psyched" about some interesting tasks, and it is all too easy to end up stuck in the gap between the emotions you are feeling and one you want to feel. Visualizing your goals can backfire, as it can repeat the slogan for yourself. By internalizing the idea that you need to "get motivated", you accidentally put an extra barrier between where you are and where you want to be. Now you not only have to complete certain tasks. You've set yourself a task much harder feel like doing it too.
Trying to "get motivated" can often make things worse.
Fortunately, there is a strong alternative, crystallized by psychology author Julie Fast in eight words pithy phrase: ". Do not wait until you feel like doing something" When you get caught up in negative emotions on the job, resist the urge to try to stamp them out. Instead, get a little far - away from your desk, focus on your breathing for a few seconds - and then only a negative feeling, without trying to eliminate it. Then take action with emotion. Typically, negative feelings will soon disappear. Even if they do not, you will be one step closer to meaningful achievement.
This approach is one aspect of what is known in Buddhism as the "non-attachment", and it's no surprise that one of its foremost practitioners, Japanese psychiatrist Shoma Morita, strongly influenced by Zen. Like James Hill, a contemporary practitioner Morita Therapy, shows, many of our most significant achievements can be done even if there is no enthusiasm: "Did accurate to assume that we have to 'cope' scared to jump off the high dive at the pool, or increase our confidence before we ask someone for a date, "he asked. "If it is, most of us are still going to wait to do things."
Morita itself has some surprising advice for those who suffered due to delays and other woes: "Give up on yourself." He means that trying to stop being "a procrastinator" or "lazy" is a waste of time disturbing, what matters is action. "Please be the best that you can be perfect," he continued, "and the start of things you want to accomplish before you die." Do not worry about getting motivated.