Making A Plan To Overcome A Lack Of Motivation

A lack of motivation can be a serious symptom of depression and other mental health disorders. It can also cause major impairments in our life. In this talk, Dr. Traci uses a highly effective psychological treatment intervention called a Behavioral Action Plan to guide you through how to make your own plan to overcome a lack of motivation.

Transcript

Hi,

This is Dr.

Tracey Moreno,

Psychologist,

And I want to talk about motivation.

A lack of motivation is one of the most debilitating problems we can experience.

And it happens,

Unfortunately,

When we're going through sadness and grief or anxiety.

So it's important that we make a plan to be able to overcome this lack of motivation because it can greatly impair our lives from,

You know,

Maybe it could be minor like just procrastinating and doing things last minute.

But maybe you still get it done,

But it causes a lot of stress.

Or maybe you have to cancel or change around your schedule at the last minute,

Which means now you become a little unreliable,

Maybe a little irresponsible,

Things like that could cause problems with relationships.

Because now you have to maybe cancel an outing with friends and finish whatever it is that you have to finish.

Or it can be so severe where we don't even have the motivation to get out of bed and shower.

So it's important that we make what we call a behavioral action plan.

Because everything seems so overwhelming,

We oftentimes have these expectations of ourselves.

And then we say,

Oh,

I need to clean the house.

Well,

That's a big feat,

Even when we're generally healthy.

But now when we have stress,

Anxiety,

Depression,

Sadness,

Whatever it is on top of us,

Cleaning the house is way too big of a project.

And so what normally ends up happening is we become kind of emotionally paralyzed,

We end up doing nothing at all.

So it's really important that we break things down to very minute,

The smallest baby steps that you can.

And get rid of any judgment you have.

Like if you used to be able to clean the house and keep it maintained and do everything and cook and take care of the kids and go to work and whatever it might be.

But remember that when we have emotional stress,

We cannot expect ourselves to be as motivated or productive as we normally are.

So when it becomes more difficult,

Instead of judging yourself,

Have a little compassion for yourself and start to work with yourself.

So in creating a behavioral action plan,

If we're going to take the clean the house for example,

Now I don't know where each of us are going to start at a different step.

Because like I said,

It's either maybe it's just common procrastination or it's we can't even get ourselves up to shower.

So you'll have to figure out where you are on this starting line.

But let's say you can't get up to shower,

Then that's going to be a process of maybe you get up and do something small to take care of yourself like brush your hair or some hygiene things,

Deodorant,

Brushing your teeth,

Not all in one day.

Each of these would be done possibly even in different days until you could actually work towards getting in the shower.

And maybe it's you just in the shower,

Maybe you're just standing there in the shower and you're not even using soap and shampoo or doing anything.

You're just standing there and getting wet.

You come out of the shower.

Hey,

You know what,

When you're depressed,

That's progress.

And then maybe the next day you go in and you stand in the water and you might feel like using some soap.

Okay,

Next day now you're in the shower using soap and shampoo.

Maybe you'll actually get to shave your legs one day.

And then you'll gradually move forward in that way.

So you could break it down to really small baby steps like that.

Or let's say if we're doing the clean the house example,

You can say I'm just going to focus on the kitchen.

If that seems too overwhelming,

Then maybe you just say I'm just going to put the dishes in the dishwasher.

Or I'm just going to clean the dishes that are in the sink.

It might be you know what,

I'm just going to wipe off the counters or I'm just going to take the garbage out today.

But every day,

Make a small goal for yourself and write it out.

This is a really important part.

When we write it out and make a goal,

It solidifies it,

Right?

It makes it more tangible for us.

And we're more likely to meet it.

Let's say exercising is your goal.

If you go out and make a plan to go out and exercise five days a week for an hour,

That usually doesn't last too long for the average person.

So in things like this,

We don't want it to just be a fad,

Right?

We don't want it to just be something that we do for a couple weeks and then two years later we're trying to do it again.

So shift your mindset to thinking of any of these changes as a permanent lifestyle change.

So we want to go about it again back to those baby steps.

So if you're going from doing nothing,

You have to think what is an attainable goal?

What is a goal that I could actually easily accomplish?

Not a goal that's going to challenge you.

So you would want to make a goal that maybe you go one to two days a week and you just go out for like 15 minutes and do whatever,

Whether it's a walk or a hike or maybe you're riding the stationary bike or the treadmill or whatever it might be.

And then once you get used to that,

You'll move it up and go and maybe you make the goal,

The next goal,

Maybe it's two or three days a week,

But you would stay at that 15 minutes,

Right?

You're only going to change one thing at a time.

So you wouldn't want to go from two days a week at 15 minutes to now three days a week at 30 minutes.

That's too much.

So do it very slowly and gradually and change one small thing at a time.

So go up to that three days a week and maybe you increase it from 15 minutes to 30 minutes or 20 minutes and go back and forth by,

You know,

One step at a time changing the number of days that you work out and then the length of time you work out.

And then there's also the intensity and you're going to slowly build on all three of those things.

Another common example that people want to do is maybe eat a little healthier or that's to lose weight.

And I always say never make your goal to lose weight.

Instead make your goal to feel good about yourself and live a healthy lifestyle.

Saying we're going to our goal is going to lose weight is usually a mind trap for us and we end up sabotaging ourselves.

So changing our mindset in ways like that usually is very helpful.

So with this I always,

Again,

You don't want to go in and say I'm just going to eat chicken and rice and vegetables until I lose 10 pounds.

Well sure you can lose that 10 pounds.

You're probably not going to be a pleasant person to be around during that time.

And what's going to happen to your weight after you stop and go back to eating the way you did before?

You're most likely going to gain that back much quicker than you lost it.

And then what that leads to is what we call yo-yo dieting which ends up just slowing down your metabolism even more.

So you don't want to get into that trap either.

Again we're looking for baby steps to build upon permanent lifestyle changes.

And the smallest thing can make a big difference.

So let's say you drink soda.

Let's say you drink soda every day.

You don't want to say I'm going to cut out soda.

Again too much,

Go back to baby steps.

So what you would want to do is cut down on soda instead of drinking it seven days a week.

Maybe you allow yourself to drink it five days a week.

You don't want your mind to feel like it's being restricted because we always,

It's our human nature to want what we can't have.

So as soon as we say we're going on a diet and we need to lose weight,

Now you may have never liked chocolate in your life but now all you want to eat is chocolate.

So again a big part of all of this is like a mind game that we need to play with ourselves.

So we would go from drinking soda seven days a week to maybe the five days a week and then you'd eventually maybe cut that down to three days a week until you could get it down to zero.

And then you would move to maybe something else.

Maybe you cut out let's say fast food and again to cut it out gradually if you eat more things that cause cholesterol and are more fatty like red meat.

And just gradually cut those out over a long period of time because it is very scientifically proven that if the slower that you lose weight or become fit the more likely you are to maintain that.

If it's fast we're not likely to maintain it and that's just going to put our health and even bigger risk and defeats the whole purpose of what we're even doing.

So make a plan break it down into small attainable easy to achieve goals.

Write those goals down put reminders in your phone maybe tell a friend you know join a group where you know you're doing it together whatever type of motivation and to be held accountable you need incorporate that too.

Whatever support we can have the better and that is your plan your behavioral action plan for overcoming a lack of motivation.

Good luck to you.

Thank you.

Reviews

Very helpful. This made me realize I’m trying to make too many major changes all at one time and explains why I feel so overwhelmed and depressed. I look forward to trying these doable steps. 🍉❤️

Simple but effective strategies. What's the best way to eat an elephant kind of thing! Thank you.

Thank you for always breaking down, into manageable steps, whit is needed to make changes, no matter how small, in my daily life. 🙏🏻🦋

The slow, gentle and achievable approach you recommend here is exactly what I needed. Thank you Dr Traci. 💖🙏🏻

I found this very helpful. Thank you 🙏🏻