When your motivation isn’t working.

I can’t be the only one that feels dejected right now? Anyone else feel like there is afoot on their neck? Am I the only one that is looking back at the past and wishing that I could go back? It feels like for every inch I gain that I lose a mile. If I turn to look at others they seem to be so far ahead of me that it is physically sickening. Every idea that I’ve had someone has beaten me to the punch in implementing.  Do you hate it when somebody else did the same thing that you did but better?  My family has tried to motivate me and it’s just empty words right now. What do you do when the motivational quotes just don’t motivate you anymore?

If you’re like me, you started this journey to meet a need or to right a wrong or maybe you just felt that you could do better. Life is funny. Try to be more or do better and you face conflict at every turn. Try to leave your station and get met with obstacle after obstacle. Loved ones who you feel like never really got behind your dream… let’s be honest they didn’t even understand the dream. In less than a year I’ve been the textbook definition of morose half a dozen times. I was down 15 pounds and doing a good job of being motivated about sticking to my diet. I was out marketing every day. Then the rejections began coming and the car needed a few repairs which stopped me for a few days. Then I missed a day at the gym which became a couple of weeks and then when this Coronavirus hit.   That coronavirus was a petulant strumpet just sucking up all the wind in my sails. I got down and isolated. I even spent one day trying to figure out if time travel was possible so that I could curb stomp every person that spoke some famous line that people used for motivational speeches. I loved watching the old Charlie Chaplin movies as a kid but if I got that time machine working he was going to catch these hands. I ask again, what do you do when the external motivation doesn’t motivate you anymore.

I guess there are only two choices now. I can either turnaround and run with my tail stuck between my legs or I can forget about feeling and remember my purpose for starting this journey. The former looks appetizing and at times draws me like a siren’s song. Like that siren’s going back will surely mean death. No not a physical death but the death of my dreams and aspirations, a death of the promise I gave my grandmother in that damn bed. A promise I made to myself after watching that woman struggle for the last 13 years of her life. Sure I can make a killing just being a 9-5 Therapist but I did that and felt empty.  The time I’ve spent striving and pressing towards this dream, this goal has not been easy but when else have I felt more accomplished. So for me this is a simple decision.

I keep pressing, I keep climbing mountains and running through walls. My purpose and my triumph is on the other side. A good friend told me once that “Anything worth having is going to require a fight.” The time is ripe to relish the small victories, to grab hold of every foothold and propel myself off of it like a rocket unto the next. Needless to say, I haven’t gotten around to building that time machine so Thomas Paine is safe for the moment and I will leave y’all with a quote from him “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”