How to Find Motivation in Ruts and Everyday Life‬ – Passion and Potential

On today’s episode of Passion and Potential I’m talking about how to find motivation in ruts and everyday life. I get asked quite often, how do I stay so motivated? But if I’m going to be bluntly honest, it’s not that I’m always motivated. Certainly I have my highs and lows. So, I take advantage of good days when I have them. But, I don’t put pressure on myself. The hard part is you’re not always on a high, waking up with drive to just go do it.

Certainly, it takes discipline to be productive frequently. However, you should embrace your desires and urges to do things. For example, if you’re feeling creative, create; Similarly if you want to clean, get up and clean. But maybe you just want to cuddle with your cat and watch tv, that’s ok too. Above all, embrace what your body is telling you to do.

The problem is when I fall into ruts for days. I’ll be fully honest, it happens a lot during winter. So here is the 4 steps I use to help me gain motivation and organization when I’m in a rut.

4 Steps to Help You Find Motivation

I recommend getting out a notebook or paper so you can do these steps yourself. During this, I’ll be showing you my brain dump and I hope you’ll do one with me! You can repeat this as frequently as you need. It’ll help you find motivation and organize what you need to do.

1. Brain Dump

Firstly, do a brain dump and write down every single thing you want to do. Everything you want to try, complete, accomplish, create. In other words, literally anything that comes to mind.

During your brain dump don’t think about how many steps it takes to do something. Instead just list anything that you want to get done. By doing so, we’re not going down rabbit holes because they can make things feel unachievable. Above all, in this step we just want to get our ideas on paper.

Here’s what I brain dumped:

• Wild flower painting
• Write emails
• Organize my clothes
• Redesign my website
• Do the dishes
• Paint my kitchen
• Design a client magazine

2. Categorize Your Brain Dump

So, you’ve listed out everything you want/need to do. After that, you’re going to sort through and categorize everything on your list. When doing this, 5 categories I like to use are: Easy, Creative, Hard, Time Consuming, and Requires Mega Focus. So, next to everything that you brain dumped onto your list, note what category(s) the idea is in. Above all, organizing the list helps you find motivation based on how you feel. That is to say, you can pick things to work on according to how you feel on a given day.

Here’s how I would categorize my list:

• Wild flower painting – creative
• Write emails – easy
• Organize my clothes – time consuming
• Redesign my website – hard, time consuming
• Do the dishes – easy
• Paint my kitchen – easy, kind of creative
• Design a client magazine – creative, requires mega focus

3. Give Yourself Deadlines

Thirdly, you’re going to go through your list again and give yourself realistic deadlines. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself that you push yourself back into a rut. Also, identify what things you need to do daily or weekly, like writing emails and doing dishes. As a result, this list will help you prioritize deadlines and identify routines.

Here are my deadlines:

• Wild flower painting – end of the month
• Write emails – daily
• Organize my clothes – beginning of spring
• Redesign my website – beginning of spring
• Do the dishes – daily
• Paint my kitchen – end of February
• Design a client magazine – beginning of spring

4. Hold Yourself Accountable

Finally, you need to hold yourself accountable. So, take your brain dump list and hang in somewhere in your home. That is to say somewhere you can see it everyday to remind yourself of your goals. Certainly, you don’t need to work on everything everyday. But, if you don’t feel motivated to do anything, try to do some easy tasks.

I hope this helps you find motivation to achieve your goals

In conclusion, I hope you can use these steps in your life. Brain dumping is amazing so I hope it helps you as much as it’s helped me. Remember, always start with the small things if you aren’t motivated to do a lot.

Thanks for tuning into Passion & Potential

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til next time my friends – Arastasia

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