Sometimes the work you need to do the most is the work you want to do the least.

And that’s ok. Make peace with it, don’t get trapped in the mindgames and procrastination that await keenly for you to make that mistake.

Just accept that there’s no other way around it, remember that the best way to go about it is to just do it, right here right now, and that once you do, you’ll gain momentum and self-reassurance to keep yourself going in pursuit of your goal(s).

You’re tired, lacking motivation and energy to do the things you need to do. Sleep seems like a good option, except it makes matters worse. Postponing…is simply out of question.

Drugs, drinks, foods… they’re non-sustainable quick-fix patches to that internal void.

In times like these, your one and only option is your mind. Your mind has the capacity to get you back into action regardless of how worn out you are.

Make an internal statement: ‘nothing can stop me’. ‘Not exhaustion, not sleep deprivation and certainly not my lack of motivation’. ‘I choose to get up, I choose to do my work, I choose to complete all that requires completion’. Decide now that you are going to clear away all your pending tasks and goals.

So you get up, go back to your chair/desk and resume working, knowing the only obstacle between you and your goals is mere weakness, weakness learned. Refuse to be swayed by the current. Be like that brave rock that stands its ground against the overwhelming power of the current.

It’s just that simple. Do yourself a favour and stop thinking of it as merely postponing things.

It is death. Death of your goals, first and foremost. Death of your willpower as well. Opportunities are landing on you like waves on a shore. If you ride the first wave, the second one will be bigger and so forth. If you don’t, it’ll be smaller…

Squandering your time doing everything BUT what you know you need to do is being a spectator to the waves. Keep on watching and you’re never getting off the island.

You’re afraid of the big waves but that’s just the way it is. The fear of the wave must be smaller than the fear of staying in the island and dying. Hurry up, the waves keep getting smaller and smaller.

I don’t feel motivated to complete my work

Typical scenario. The reasons can be many, the excuses are plentiful and the justifications abound. None of it matters. The thing is, you’ve been dragged down to the gutters again.

You’ve forgotten where you were going…and you’re seemingly oblivious of where you’re currently heading.

It takes time and practice to break through old bad habits like procrastination and lazyness.   Expecting them to go easily and without a fight is kidding yourself. Self-discipline is an art that takes all your focus and concentration.

Step Number 1 is knowing with full certainty where you want to go
Step Number 2 is knowing why you want to go there
Step Number 3 is acknowledging there will be challenges along the way
Step Number 4 is accepting there will be temporary failures
Step Number 5 is being patient and not giving up

Commit stubbornly to the mastery of self-discipline and you will rapidly find out motivation is something you create for yourself, not something that you’re supposed to wait for.

When all previous attempts to motivate yourself into action have failed, turn to anger.

There’s anger because you care. There’s anger because you know how badly you wanted certain things to happen or take place. There’s anger because you dared to wish for something.

And it didn’t happen. Feel it, it’s there. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.

Acknowledge just how pissed off you are. If you’re not there quite yet, these will help:

1.- You failed yourself
2.- You’re a failure
3.- You’ll never amount to anything
4.- The nay-sayers were right, you’re worthless

Feel the full extent of your anger…turning to rage…turning to hate. Feel the power that brings. Now you don’t feel so powerless anymore. Now is the time to swear revenge on the world, revenge on your weak-self, revenge on the negative people that surround you. The doubtful, the critics, the nay-sayers.

Declare war, sear it into your being. Swear you’ll prove everybody wrong, including yourself. Be serious for once.

Now get off your motherfucking ass this very instant and go do something productive.

Trying to get work without motivation is like trying to start a car without gasoline. But I just filled the tank you say, well, although driving the car burns that gasoline at a steady pace, it  pales in comparison to how fast leaks in the tank will dry it up and keep it there.

What causes the leaks in the tank so to speak? Bad events is the usual answer. The thing is, events by themselves are meaningless. It is our interpretation of these events as positive or negative. It is our attitude that determines whether we will get back on track or be swept away. It is our willpower that dictates how ‘bad’ an event we can face and still stay strong and heading forward.

A secondary lesson comes into play: understanding there’s things beyond our control while at the same time remembering attitude and perspective are things always within our control. We must never let ourselves turn them against us.

Say for example there’s this person on whom you had deposited a great deal of expectation and hope. And let us say that you are overwhelmingly disappointed when not only the hopes and expectations not only come true but reverse themselves to unimaginable opposites.

A catastrophe for most people, surely. So what happens then? When you place your emphasis and attention on outside factors, specially other people…you are packing your motivation in big canisters and rolling them out the door.

It’s your power leaving you and being sent to a dumpster somewhere unreachable. Your hopes and expectations must be firmly placed on yourself. Your criticism, analytical eye, impatience, intolerance, rush, need, whatever…place all these upon yourself.

Quite rapidly you’ll understand why your tank had leaks.

If you become aware that you are stuck and then consciously decide to do nothing about it, tread carefully for you are reinforcing the habit of utmost mediocrity and carelessness. It’s paramount to taking twenty steps back or worse.

The challenge is to act, to refuse to stay still. To refuse to be swept away. To keep on ‘fighting’ your own weakness and self-destructive impulses, not reinforce them.

Sometimes all it takes is a good beating.

Sometimes too much freedom is a dangerous thing. Having no one to respond to, having no one but yourself to check on you, the door is wide open for total apathy. Make yourself responsible. Judge yourself, boss yourself, push yourself.

Fake the feeling of duty, fake the obligation, fake the deadline if you have to.

Failure to get yourself back on track after being consciously careless is pretty much game over. Stay sharp.

Steven Pressfield said it best – in his case, he was speaking of writers – :

“The hardest part is sitting down”

Not only do I agree but I thought I’d share a good example which can help motivate oneself to get started. Think of parachuting off a plane. Everything up to the point where you actually have stepped out of the plane is  - for the average person – nothing but a highly stressful experience.

The anticipation, the fear, the doubts, the nervousness. It just creeps right in and eats you alive. If you’ve decided to make it happen, you’ve taken step one. Step two is boarding the plane. You can still decide not to jump but you’re even closer to the point of no return.

However, the ultimate showdown is getting out of the plane when the time comes. It’s the only thing that matters. Deciding to jump is nothing, boarding the plane is nothing, paying the cost of the trip/event/experience is nothing. ALL that matters is getting your ass out of that plane, no matter what.

And, the good news is that if you do it, even though you’ll be scared shitless for the first 5 to 20 seconds, eventually you will realize that nothing bad is actually happening. If you fight your fear and negativity, you might even achieve the ultimate goal which is to embrace, accept and enjoy the experience.

Take a good, critical look at your life. Divide the aspects that you like from those you don’t. Leave the ones you like for now. Let’s start with the sad bunch. For example:

Your financial situation
Your relationship
Your job

The next step – and in my opinion the most important one – is to start by acknowledging, assimilating, taking in, grasping or whichever term is strong enough for you…that what you’re doing in regards to those topics is just wrong, period.

The fact that they’re not yielding the desired results is a definitive indicator that you’re doing it wrong. So start with this, begin my embracing the tough reality. It doesn’t matter how long or hard you’ve tried. The fact is, it’s not working.

It’s time to stop and analyse what is going on. Given the complexity of life itself and the millions of differences and unique characteristics in each of our own paths, it’s impossible to account for and individually assess them all. What I can say however, is something I’ve found never to fail me. Experimentation.

For the sake of examples, I will use the 4 cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. Let’s say that ever since your problems started you were headed north. Alright, it’s time to pick a different direction.

It’s better to try another approach, path or way of doing things altogether than to waste any more time wherever you are. Chances are, if you didn’t achieve your objectives already headed in that direction, you never were.

And, because achieving said objectives is our key desire and intent, we take the risk, we dare to take another route or path, we dare to approach it from another angle.

From personal experience, the simple act of:

1.- stopping what you’re doing
2.- re-assessing your goals
3.- taking another path / route

Is good enough to let us know where we’ve slipped off and how to correct it.  Don’t forget that some of the most successful people in this world, and quite surely in your particular field too, went through a long list of approaches, routes or methods. Very rarely does someone nail it on the first go.

What separates those who finally broke-through from those that didn’t is the number of different angles, attempts, fixes and corrections between where they started and where they are now.

You may refer to these as ‘temporary failures’, but ultimately the only true failure is to give up and stop trying.

To wrap this up, if you’re not satisfied with where you are now, if you’re not achieving your goals, if you’re seeing no progress, then that’s a clear indication that change is due.

Short Term Satisfaction: junk food, alcoholic drinks, drugs, tv, computer games, sex, etc.
Long Term Satisfaction: real food, water, supplements, reading, building businesses, making love, etc.

The differences are obvious and profound:

Short Term Satisfaction is immediate pleasure and gratification. The problem is, it goes away just as fast as it came, if not faster. Hence, a little is never enough, you always need more to bridge the gap and fill the void.

Long Term Satisfaction is delayed pleasure and gratification. The good thing about it is that when it finally does come, the feeling or benefits are long-lasting.

Compare the difference between having one chocolate versus grilled meat. The joy and pleasure of eating chocolate doesn’t last very long while the meat leaves you full and satisfied for several hours.

The same principle applies for every important category of life:

The one night-stand versus the meaningful relationship.
The shallow chit-chat versus the deep conversation.
Staying up late watching tv versus staying up late working on your business.
The magic pill vs actually eating and exercising properly.

There’s no need to further dwell on examples, essentially the principle is the same for every aspect of life.

Short Term Satisfaction makes you sloppy, lazy, loosens your grip, melts away your willpower and resolve.

Long Term Satisfaction makes you patient, sharp, strategical, builds your willpower and your determination.

One path leads to mediocrity, the other leads to success. Which path will you take? When it comes down to it, “life” pays very little attention to your wishful thinking and a great deal to your actions and attitude.

Everybody says they want to be successful, but in the end, merely a handful act and think successfully.