So, you have a dream, you even have a plan, but you don’t have the motivation to get it done.

How do you find the motivation to actually do what you want to do?

In today’s video, I share the real secret about motivation and what you can start doing to see results even when you lack the motivation to get there.

Resources Mentioned:

The Mindset Reset: https://ashleyvarner.com/mindset
Weekly Reset Free Guide: https://ashleyvarner.com/free
10 Self-Sabotaging Habits: https://youtu.be/tFt56NhQiIs

Highlights From the Episode:

You have a dream and you even have a plan, but all you lack is the motivation to actually get it done. So, how do you find the motivation to do the things that you want to do and see the results that you want to get? 

In today’s video, I’m going to be sharing the secret to having the motivation and seeing results, even whenever you lack any kind of motivation to get there. Let’s jump in. 

Welcome back to the Renewed Mind. I’m so glad that you’re here. If this is the first video that you’ve ever seen, make sure to hit subscribe, so that you can get videos every week on mindset, confidence, all from a biblical perspective. So, I am your host, Ashley Varner. I’m a certified Christian life coach, and I have taught women all over the globe about reaching their goals, being productive, changing their mindset, and balancing their emotions. Today I want to talk to you about what to do whenever you are lacking motivation and how to get that motivation. 

Your Brain Will Always Fight the Uncomfortable

The first thing that I want you to remember is that your brain will always fight the uncomfortable. So, our brains are not designed to do things that cause us pain or to get us out of our comfort zones. They are designed to protect us and keep us safe and so your brain is always going to seek out pleasure. 

It’s always going to work to avoid pain, and it’s also going to work to be efficient or conserve energy, basically, and so this worked really well whenever our ancestors were running away from wild animals and having to scavenge for food and those kinds of things. Now it can be detrimental to our success if we’re not aware of how our brain works and how to counteract that. 

Whenever you’re lacking motivation, what that means is that your brain is being hesitant about going out into the uncomfortable and so remember, your brain will never want to go towards the uncomfortable. 

It’s always going to fight that and so if you are relying on reaching your goals and seeing success just on your own motivation, it’s going to be a very uphill battle for you because you’re working against your brain. Your brain is going to fight being uncomfortable and really, in order to reach success and in order to see the results that we want to get, in order to have that motivation that we’re searching for, we need to get uncomfortable. 

Don’t believe the lie that you have to wait until you feel like it before you go after the things that you want, before you step out in faith, because whenever we believe that lie, whenever we believe that we have to feel like it like our emotions have to align with our success, that is whenever you’re going to sabotage yourself.

Don’t Believe the Lie that You Have to Wait Until You “Feel” Like It

Now, I have a video on 10 habits that will sabotage your success and I’ll leave a link in the show notes for you and in the cards.

10 Self-Sabotaging Habits: https://youtu.be/tFt56NhQiIs

But I want you to start getting comfortable with the fact that you don’t have to feel like it in order to take action. So often we wait until we feel like working out, or we feel like eating healthy. 

We wait because we want our emotions to coincide with the action. But what I want you to see is that your thoughts are what create your emotions and so if you want to have motivation, what you have to do is change your thinking. 

You will never feel like stepping out in faith to actually do the things that are going to improve your life or to take you closer to God’s purpose for your life. There’s always going to be that hesitation. 

So, Mel Robbins talks about the idea and actually, the habit of hesitating and so that moment in between you thinking that you want to do something and that hesitation before you act on it, that moment causes a signal to go to your brain that says this might be uncomfortable and then your brain goes into overdrive to try to figure out how it can keep you safe. 

The goal is to act, even though your brain is thinking that it’s going to be uncomfortable. Whenever you hesitate, whenever you know that you’re supposed to do something, or you have a goal to do something, and there’s an action that you need to take, whenever you hesitate, what happens is you are just creating time for your brain to think that there’s something wrong, to think that you know what, whenever she reached for that banana, there was no hesitation, so that should be fine. But now she’s hesitating to speak up in that meeting or send out that sales email and your brain starts thinking, why is she hesitating? 

Let’s figure out what the danger is.

Choose to Decide Ahead of Time

Whenever you lack motivation, the first key is those first two points that I shared, the first is your brain will always fight the uncomfortable and the second is it is a lie that you have to wait until you feel like it before taking action. 

So, let’s talk about how you can get motivation or what you can do whenever you lack it. I want you to see that just like hesitation is a decision, you can make a decision ahead of time to act and that is where confidence really comes into play. You can start to make decisions ahead of time. Whenever you work with your mind, you work with your brain, in a mature way, instead of just having actions flow directly from emotion, you start to say, I’m going to think ahead of time about what I’m going to do. I’m going to make decisions ahead of time of what I’m going to eat, what I’m going to say, how I’m going to show up to my job, and then live those out. 

This really goes back to learning how to take your thoughts captive, and then let your emotions naturally flow from positive thoughts. 

Let’s go back to the example of sending out a sales email. If you have a business strategy for your business, for your company, then you have specific tasks in mind that need to be completed. Whenever you plan ahead of time, say you look at your week, you have your calendar and you say on this day, this is what I’m going to do, on Tuesday I’m going to do this, on Wednesday I’m going to have this meeting. What you’re doing is you’re deciding ahead of time, what kind of actions you’re going to take, so that whenever you wake up on Tuesday morning, you don’t have to rely on any feelings. What you have to rely on is what you’ve decided ahead of time and really, this comes down to doing the little things. 

I’m sure that you’ve heard of things like meal prepping and how that works for you whenever you’re trying to lose weight or get healthy. That’s why this works. Whenever you are planning your meals ahead of time, maybe you’re meal prepping, or you’re putting all of your lunches together at the beginning of the week, you’re deciding ahead of time to take an action, even if you don’t feel like it. So, not only are you making yourself motivated by making that decision ahead of time, but you’re also making it easier to follow through by that preparation. 

Whenever you are lacking in motivation, the key to moving forward is to decide ahead of time, the things that you want to accomplish. This is so important and one reason why I encourage vision boards so much, whenever you have a vision board and you see something up on the wall that you are working toward, just having that vision might not be enough. 

You may need to have a list of action steps to take, where you look at that goal and you write down every single action step that’s needed, from the smallest thing to the biggest thing and whenever you put those in your calendar, so you have the big vision, right? And then you set up these action steps to reach the goals that are on your vision board. 

The next step after that is to align your tasks with your calendar. So say on this day, I’m going to complete this task. On this day this is the task I’m going to take and then you grow your maturity in doing those steps, even whenever you don’t feel like it. 

I believe that motivation has become kind of this goal that we reach for and we’re just hoping for this magical emotion to come into our lives, to actually see success. But if you ask people who are successful in reading their Bible every day, if you talk to successful business owners, they are working with a lack of motivation. 

Okay, now sometimes there’s a motivation that encourages us to get something done, but motivation will only get you started. You can’t rely on motivation because our emotions are so fickle. One day you’re going to be excited about working, the next day whenever you haven’t seen any sales or whenever your clients aren’t coming in, or they’re not doing the work, it can feel really discouraging and you don’t feel motivated to keep going. 

What you have to do is stick to the plan, decide ahead of time the goals that you want to reach and the tasks that will get you there. 

This is definitely a game-changer whenever you think about your God-given purpose, because at the end of the day, you know, you have the thought in your mind that God has called you to this particular purpose, he has equipped you to do what he’s called you to do and so any motivation that might be gained or lost from day to day, all can stem back to how you know that you’re called. 

So, you’re not resting on the day-to-day emotions of motivation, whether or not you’re motivated to do the work or you’re not because you come back to that root knowledge, to that thought that you know that you’re called and whenever you rest in that truth, then your emotions lead out of that and your actions come from that. 

If you are lacking in motivation today, make sure to follow those steps.

Remember that your brain will always seek to be comfortable so you’re never going to find a stable source of motivation.

Remember not to believe the lie that you have to wait until you feel like it to take action.

And then the last is to decide ahead of time, the actions that you’re going to take, whether or not the emotion is there or not. That is going to help you whenever you lack motivation. 

I hope that this episode helped you and I really encourage you, if you enjoyed this, to subscribe. Make sure to let YouTube know that you want biblically-based content on mindset, productivity, and confidence and I will see you next time.

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