I'm in a rut and don't know what to do...

[Eonwe5]

Hi everyone, 

this is my first post here. I have been walking on the path of self-development for roughly a year now, and now I find myself in a rut.

My main problem is having huge trouble keeping the fire of motivation alive that allows me to go beyond my comfort zone.

I spend the last year having periods of 2-7 days of grinding my ass off, working hard on myself and actually doing the stuff that I know I should do, then my motivation slowly fades away and what follows are a week or two of finding excuses, staying in bed a lot, curled up in my sweet warm comfort zone. Then I watch a motivational video that pumps me up, and the cycle starts anew.

One example of that is exercising. I have chronic upper back pain and I know that I should do 20 minutes of cardio every day.

So, what do I do? I get a flash of motivation, start hitting the treadmill for 4 days in a row, and then, boom, “ I‘m simply too tired today, I can’t find the time, my stomach is full, I’ll take one day off”.

I don’t exercise for two weeks, until another shot of motivation hits me and I tell myself for the twentieth time that from now on I will exercise every day, come hell or high water.

This also applies to my plan of drawing every day, talking to strangers in the street to improve my social anxiety, meditating, and all sort of other things that require me to use some willpower.

I don’t know what to do against it. When motivation kicks in I feel like nothing will stop me from now on till the day I die, and then slowly resistance creeps back in.

“well then just don’t give in to the excuses you make up!” -  If I consciously try to be aware of the “fakeness” of my  excuses I am able to push through them for some time. But eventually I start giving in to them anyway. Then a week later I will look back and realize that I messed up again.

I’m not sure whether this could be a biological thing, maybe I have some kind of willpower disorder or something. I have read a lot of books like “ The war of art” that deal with this kind of stuff, and they provide me with a lot of motivation for some time, but then it also goes away.

 

What could I do to make my motivation last longer, and not constantly switch between modes of being either totally out of or totally inside my comfort zone?

 

In the last weeks I have started listening to some “turquoise wisdom” from people like Eckhard Tolle or Mooji, which has lead to further confusion.

As far as I understand it (please correct me if I’m wrong) they are saying that you shouldn’t try to find happiness in thinking about a better future, because the present is sufficient and I should appreciate it fully instead of chasing the illusion of “becoming better” – To me this provides some excuse material, because I could just be happy inside my comfort zone and embrace it, because I am enough already. How should I think about that?

 

Any thought on this is more than welcome.

I wish you all the best!

Jonas

 

 

[Mu_]

Welcome to the forum.  Ya turquoise wisdom and orange wisdom seem counter to one another, but not really.  One says improve yourself, your weak points, things that you can do now to improve your current state so you can be happier later.  The other says enjoy yourself for what you are now (sorta).

This may sound weird but I say enjoy your comfort zone and embrace it and if you are really content then whats really the issue, but if doing this does not make you happy and your feeling like you should improve yourself, go about those things GRADUALLY.  From the little you said you sound like a all or nothing kinda guy.  As a bodyworker, yoga teacher, meditator and movement professional for 10+ years, I meet a lot of people who think they need to get work out regularly, like 5-7 times a week to get results.  Nah, just get a good 3-4 days in of an activety that gets your heart up and uses your muscles some, and have at least some fun doing it.  If you  slip up one day, dont go into the blame game, just do it the next day.

Changing a diet?  Don't go gung ho! with it.  Take gradual steps.  Like you want to lose weight, cut back on some of the sugars you eat for a month and maybe some of the bread/rice/carbs, like just some, nothing that makes you go damn this sucks, just a little at a time.  Next month do a little more, and ask yourself, how am I feeling with the changes, could I do a little more next month.  Just go slow, it will stick longer.

 

Ya just forget about the every day plan, just give yourself 3-4 days to do something each week and they can vary between when you just feel lazy, soif last monday you worked about, but this monday you don't want to, just go tuesday.  I suggest this with meditation, and any activity honestly.

Edited October 24, 2018 by Mu_

[fluidmonolith]

@Eonwe5

11 minutes ago, Mu_ said:

Welcome to the forum.  Ya turquoise wisdom and orange wisdom seem counter to one another, but not really.  One says improve yourself, your weak points, things that you can do now to improve your current state so you can be happier later.  The other says enjoy yourself for what you are now (sorta).

This may sound weird but I say enjoy your comfort zone and embrace it and if you are really content then whats really the issue, but if doing this does not make you happy and your feeling like you should improve yourself, go about those things GRADUALLY.  From the little you said you sound like a all or nothing kinda guy.  As a bodyworker, yoga teacher, meditator and movement professional for 10+ years, I meet a lot of people who think they need to get work out regularly, like 5-7 times a week to get results.  Nah, just get a good 3-4 days in of an activety that gets your heart up and uses your muscles some, and have at least some fun doing it.  If you  slip up one day, dont go into the blame game, just do it the next day.

Changing a diet?  Don't go gung ho! with it.  Take gradual steps.  Like you want to lose weight, cut back on some of the sugars you eat for a month and maybe some of the bread/rice/carbs, like just some, nothing that makes you go damn this sucks, just a little at a time.  Next month do a little more, and ask yourself, how am I feeling with the changes, could I do a little more next month.  Just go slow, it will stick longer.

 

Ya just forget about the every day plan, just give yourself 3-4 days to do something each week and they can vary between when you just feel lazy, soif last monday you worked about, but this monday you don't want to, just go tuesday.  I suggest this with meditation, and any activity honestly.

I can agree with this. I think the biggest difficulty is sustainability in a new practice. There doesn't need to be mandate to do something (like cardio) every single day, unless you're confident that you can sustain that activity forever. 

On the other hand, convincing yourself to do something unpleasant can be difficult, however it is crucially important. 

So I try to combine these two. It's ok to miss a day now and then to keep yourself sane (or more frequently as needed). But it's not ok to give up or to make excuses (e.g. too tired, not enough time, etc). In reality, there are rarely perfect opportunities to work on unappealing things, so we have to do it even when we don't feel like it. 

But all of this ignores motivation. By motivation, I am not referring to an inherent quality that some people have and some don't, or a quality that we need to build up. Rather I mean "why do you want to accomplish a goal?" If you're not really convinced that a goal is important to you, it will be hard to put much effort into to accomplishing it. To paraphrase one of Leo's videos (unfortunately I can't find which video it was to link here), we often drastically underestimate the time and energy that will be needed to accomplish a significant goal. This results in discouragement when we don't accomplish our goals as quickly or easily as we wanted to. To counter this, I would encourage you to contemplate why want you a specific result (e.g. the result of the exercise you mentioned). Spend some time considering why it's important for you. What will happen when you achieve it? What will happen if you don't? Try to assign a value to it. How much of your time and money is it worth to you? How much of your willpower? How much of your comfort? And realize that there is opportunity cost in accomplishing any goal. We all have finite time, money, and motivation. I would encourage you to make sure that your most important life goal is progressing acceptably first, and if not, work on that. Then, if you have extra time/money/energy, you can invest some into something else too. It's ok to say no to some practices in order to give you the resources to progress in more important ones. No one can be perfect at everything.

 

@Mu_ I have used exactly your dieting example to make changes to my own diet gradually and successfully. Things like drinking less sodas or less sugar intake in general. I don't say "I can't drink sugary drinks", I just say "I won't buy them frequently." And when I get accustomed to a reduced level of consumption, I can then slowly reduce consumption even more. I can look back over several years and see how much my diet has improved, but I think it will require the patience to allow such long time periods to accomplish lasting change.