Rekindling Motivation
Anxiety can leave you feeling paralyzed and overwhelmed. Depression can make it hard to get out of bed. Your inability to function then causes you to feel guilty and unproductive. You feel worse. It’s a vicious cycle – a downward spiral. How does someone who is anxious or depressed break away and get moving? How do you get some traction and get motivated?
In Mel Robbins’ book, “The 5 Second Rule,” she describes a strategy for coping with low motivation. She shares that most people are resistant to doing difficult things. It’s part of being human! We all have things we want to do, need to do, or should do, yet we don’t do them. And that makes us feel worse. According to Robbins, if we hesitate to act, we give our brains time to come up with excuses to avoid taking action. She reasons that when you get the impulse to work on your goal, you must take the first physical step toward achieving the goal within five seconds, or your brain will talk you out of doing it. This concept is ‘the 5 second rule.’
Robbins recommends as soon as you feel any hesitation to act, count backwards from 5 (5…4…3…2…1), and when you get to 1, you immediately take action toward accomplishing your goal. This tactic allows you to act before your brain sabotages you with doubts, fears, and excuses. If you’re lying in bed when the alarm goes off, as soon as you begin thinking about hitting snooze or not getting out of bed for the day, begin to count backwards from 5. When you reach 1, get out of bed and immediately start accomplishing your first task.
Once you start doing this, and taking action, you’ll feel better about yourself. Your anxiety and depression may naturally decrease as you are more productive. You may even develop a habit over the next few weeks, where it becomes easier to complete the task than it is to avoid it.
We are more than our thoughts. We are bigger! We can think about our thoughts and change the way we perceive the world. We can effectively outsmart ourselves. You’re in charge. Take back your power.
