Can’t Get Motivated? Try Dwelling on Your Success
We all go through personal rough patches in our lives. A job loss. A failed project. A tough breakup. Or maybe you just can’t get motivated.
Whatever the situation, these kinds of periods often feel like they’re “our fault” and can be very disheartening when they happen. They can often leave you feeling like a big ol’ giant failure.
Trust me. I’ve been there.
Less than 5 years ago, I was out of a job and hitting the employment search like thousands of others the world financial crisis hit pretty hard. You can read more about that on The Change Blog if you wish.
Long story short – I eventually bounced back and am doing pretty well now, but it was definitely a difficult. It was more mentally taxing than any situation I’ve ever been in.
In these kinds of times, it can be a very powerful exercise to practice what I call “dwelling on your wins.”
See, a lot of people tend to dwell on their failures. When they feel like they’ve failed, they obsess over what went wrong. They worry to the point where they can’t sleep or eat. The stress starts to pile up, which affects their mental state and ability to bounce back.
This starts affecting their health, and sometimes they never recover from it.
It’s one thing to learn from your failures, but it’s another thing entirely to dwell on them. Don’t do the latter. It’ll get you nowhere fast.
A smart old lady I used to work for as a teenager once told me “Worrying is like a rocking chair. It’s something to do, but it’ll never get ya’ anywhere.”
That’s stuck with me my entire life.
So whenever I go through a rough patch, whether it’s a total and utter failure, or I’m just feeling unmotivated, it really helps me to revisit my past successes.
Here’s how you can do this for yourself. I highly recommend you try it.
Dwell on Your Wins With This Simple Process
Think back to a time when you were just on fire. You could do no wrong.
Maybe you were crushing it on a bunch of awesome projects. Maybe you had just gotten a nice promotion. Maybe you were going to the gym a lot and feeling really motivated.
What was it that was driving you during these successful stretches in your life?
- Did you have a goal you were reaching towards?
- Were you eating differently?
- Was your mind in a really great place for some reason?
- Were you getting guidance from somewhere (maybe a popular self-improvement blog :))?
What was it? Why were you so focused?
Often times, when you’re going through a patch of success in your life, it’s because you’re in heightened mental state. Something is pushing you along and driving you towards your achievements. The most successful people in the world know how to keep themselves in this mental state. It’s something Tony Robbins talks about frequently.
But it’s not an easy thing to do. Life gets in the way. You tend to get distracted, complacent, and lose your motivation. That can lead to stretches of “running in place” and even failures.
In these times in your life, your successful mental state is completely turned on its head from what it was during your state of success. When you’re going through these rough patches, you need to do all you can to harness that positive energy from your successful mental state to get you back on the right track.
Write down everything that comes to you during your reflection. Over the next few days, review these key points and use these to create a plan of action to get yourself back to this state.
This is exactly what I did five years ago to get back on the right track, and it’s simple for you to do as well. This tiny exercise can be a huge for your success in your life. Use it frequently.
Now, Answer These Two Questions to Begin
Are you going through a rough patch right now? Maybe you just need some extra motivation. To help you dwell on your successes, share a story of your own here. Just answer these two questions.
- What did you achieve during your stretch of success?
- What was your primary motivation during this time period?
I’ll respond personally to each comment and help you determine what behaviors you can harness from these times that you can use to rise to the top again.
