Truth Bomb Tuesday: Most motivated people aren’t doing it well.
Motivating yourself is easy. Motivating yourself well is hard.
I was talking to one of my students about this after a session a little while ago. She was talking about how she never feels like she gets enough help around the house, and it stresses her out.
It gets into her, and she becomes cranky and scratchy. She doesn’t want to be that person, especially around the kids, but when you feel abandoned and unseen in your work, it’s hard to be squishy and loving.
There’s two things you need to do to fix this. First is, put your foot down and get some help. You deserve it. The kids and the hubby will hide behind the expectation that you’re going to do everything, and the more you let them, the more entrenched that expectation becomes.
So sit down and get systematic about it. Give everyone their chores. Change the expectations.
But the key to doing this well is coming at it from a clear and loving space.
And to do that you have to defuse the catastrophe bomb you’ve set for yourself.
Because when we started unpacking it, I asked her what would happen if she just didn’t do it?
A bolt of fear shot through her. Something close to panic.
Well, the dishes would pile up…
So..?
And the floors would be filthy…
And..?
And… the house would fall over!
No it wouldn’t.
Long story short, she had attached a sense of self-worth to having a clean house. If the house was clean, she was allowed to believe that she was a good person.
Don’t laugh. A lot of people have this idea. I think we get it from our mothers… who got it from theirs… and so on.
But what it meant was that if the house wasn’t clean, she was a bad person!
It’s a shame that we internalise this story, but it doesn’t happen on its own. We enable it.
We lean into this catastrophising, in order to motivate ourselves. The conversation goes something like this.
“We need to do the dishes.”
“But I don’t want to do the dishes.”
“Well if you don’t do the dishes, you will be a bad person and nobody will love you and people will probably throw stones at you.”
“Oh sh!t. I better do the dishes.”
The catastrophising creates urgency.
But then when we look around and see that no one else shares of sense of impending doom, we feel abandoned and unseen.
So we need to defuse this complex.
So before you start a task do 3 things.
First, stop and affirm to yourself that you are a wonderful person, deserving of love, and whether this task gets completed or not has absolutely no impact on that.
Second, find a joyful motivation for the task. I want clean dishes because I like to be in an orderly kitchen. I like to eat off clean plates. I value our health etc.
And three, if you can’t find a joyful motivation, then just don’t do it. It’s not worth it. There are long-term consequences to flooding your system with catastrophe and stress. And they’re not good.
Motivating yourself with catastrophe and stress is easy. Anyone can do it.
But motivating yourself with joy, is an art and an art you have to learn.
But once you do, the whole flavour of your life will change.
DB.