December 16, 2024 • 23 mins
This week Kat is going solo to talk about one of those things that comes up in therapy all the timeeee. Motivation, and the possible lack of it. In this episode Kat explains why when people are searching for “motivation” they are often searching for the wrong thing. Plus, she gives 4 tips to help conjure up the energy that we may need to do that thing that we want to do!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I started to realize that not being an expert isn't
a liability. It's a real guest. If we don't know
something about ourselves at this point in our life, it's
probably because it's uncomfortable to know. If you can die
before you die, then you can really live. There's a
wisdom at death's door. I thought I was insane. Yeah,
(00:26):
and I didn't know what to do because there was
no internet. I don't know, man, I'm like, I feel
like everything is hard. Hey, y'all, my name is Kat.
I'm a human first and a licensed therapist second. And
right now I'm inviting you into conversations that I hope
encourage you to become more curious and less judgmental about yourself, others,
(00:49):
and the world around you. Welcome to You Need Therapy.
Hey guys, Kat here and you're listening to a new episode,
new Monday episode of You Need Therapy podcast. Before we
get into it, want to remind everybody that although this
podcast is hosted by a therapist and it's called You
(01:10):
Need Therapy, it does not serve as a replacement or
substitute for mental health services. But it's allowed to help
you along your journey. I decided it was time to
talk about for a whole episode, something that comes up
a lot during my work day as a therapist, meaning
a lot of clients are talking about this in one
(01:31):
way or the other, and it is motivation and really
more specifically the lack of motivation. So very often people
come into my office to make some kind of change
in my life. That's not news to anybody. There is
ninety nine percent of the time something that somebody wants
(01:51):
to be different in their life when they come into therapy,
when they come into my office and I meet them
and we talk why are you here? And we know
that for things to be different, we have to do
something different. And we also know, and if you don't know,
now you're about to know that the definition of insanity
is doing the same thing over and over and over
again expecting a different result. So, since we're not trying
(02:15):
to become insane by coming to therapy, we are wanting
something different, means that we have to do something different. So,
since we are not trying to become insane by going
to therapy, wanting something different means that we are going
to have to do something different. And this is when
this back and forth happens when clients make a plan
to try to do something or put some action steps
(02:36):
in place to reach some goal, and week after week
they come back in and they come to my office
and they're like, uh, I didn't do the thing. I
didn't do the thing. I didn't do the thing. And
it becomes this revolving door, like we make a plan,
you go, you don't do it. You come back, we
make a plan again, you don't do it. And this
whole cycle can sound different for different people. Sometimes when
(02:56):
they come back and they say I didn't do it,
their excuses. Times I just can't. Sometimes they just avoid
the fact that they didn't do it by bringing up
another topic. But you end up doing this song and
dance where the goal really isn't being met. And what
can happen is we can label the issue with this
goal not being met with a lack of motivation to
(03:17):
do something. And I want to talk about this today
because I think there's a way. I believe there's a
way that we can reframe this idea of I just
have a lack of motivation to change or act or
move in a way that can become more helpful. We
can reframe how we're looking at motivation, so we can
(03:37):
find more of a motivation and it can be a
more motivating way of looking at things. So I really
like the saying that says, whatever you choose, you're making
a choice either way. I think there's a million ways
that that is said. But whatever choice you're making, if
you're saying I don't want to do something, or you
do something, you're making a choice either way. And I
really like this because for me it offers so much power, like, oh,
(04:01):
I'm making a choice, and my end quotes inability to
make a choice is actually me making a choice. It's
not an inability at all. It's very empowering to me.
It tells you that you are doing something, you are
capable of doing something. You just might be doing the
thing you don't want to do. And the thing about
motivation is depending on how you view and how you
(04:22):
define it. To find it, sometimes you have to realize
that it's not really motivation that you're looking for and
that you need, which is why I want to reframe
this today. So when you look up the definition of motivation,
you'll find two different kind of answers. One talks about
the desire or willingness to do something, and then the
other one is an explanation or reason for why we
(04:45):
did or didn't do something right. So a reason my
motivation for going to the park was to get fresh air.
My motivation for starting this podcast was to help people.
My motivation for making coffee is to get more energy,
Like there's a reason that I'm doing these things. And
I think when we think and when we talk about
(05:06):
the lack of motivation that we're frustrated with, when we
are saying like, oh, I just like can't get motivated,
or I can't find motivation, or I can't whatever, I
can't do the thing, I don't think we're talking about
a lack of a reason for our goal. I don't
hear as often people say I don't have motivation to
do this because I don't see why that would be
(05:26):
good for me. It's usually more something like I want
to do this thing, but I can't get my body
to do this thing because that thing takes effort and
energy and they might not want to spend time and
energy on that thing. So we labelize that I don't
have motivation or I can't find motivation, and then we
become victims. We become helpless. It's not my fault. There's
nothing I can do. I can't find the desire to
(05:49):
do this, so I can't do it. Now. This would
be fine if we only needed to do things that
we in quotes wanted to do, which if you're somebody
who's like, yeah, totally, that's how I am. We're adults.
No one can tell me what to do, and being
an adult means I get to make all the rules.
Then you're probably not going to love this idea and
reframe that I have because I think the dream as
(06:12):
a kid was that when you're an adult, you grow
up and you get to just do the things you
want to do, and you don't have to do the
things you don't want to do. I think about being
a kid and my mom telling me that I need
to make my bed, or clean my room or just
clean anything for that matter, or be home. At this time,
it's like, I can't wait to be an adult and
I'm never going to clean my room. But then you
get to be an adult and you're like, oh my gosh,
(06:34):
I really wish that my mom was here making me
clean my room, because that's why I cleaned my room.
And now I don't want to clean my room. So
being an adult doesn't really mean you only have to
do the things you want to do. You could do that,
I don't know that your life would be really looking
the way you really wanted to look. It really means
you are now in charge of finding ways to make
sure you get those things done that aren't very fun
(06:55):
because they still have to be done, and you might
not like the task, but the outcome of that task
might be important to you. I had a client years
ago who talked about a lot of work struggles with me,
and she had a good job, and she didn't necessarily
hate her job. I don't think it was her dream job,
but she would often talk about this inability to get
(07:15):
certain tasks done when she knew she was capable of
doing them, like more than capable of doing them. And
one day she came in my office and sat down
and was like, I figured it out. I was like,
what did you figure out? Tell me more? She said,
I figured out why it's so hard for me to
do these things that really aren't that hard. And I said, okay,
(07:35):
what did you figure out? And she said, I don't
like doing them. I do not like doing them. I
don't enjoy it, so that's why I put them off
and I don't do them. I don't remember exactly what
I replied, but I said something along the lines of like,
oh my gosh, wow, Like that's such a great revelation. Now,
I guess we got to look for something else, right,
(07:57):
Like what is? Where does that lead you to? And
this was a long time ago, so give me some
grace here, because I would not respond in this kind
of way today. But she was like, I'm going to
get into a different job. Like that's what this. I
just have to get a different job. And I was
telling my supervisor about this later and he just looked
at me and was like, we will not be encouraging
(08:17):
people to only do the things that they find pleasurable, Catherine,
That's not how life works. And I was like, yeah,
but like now, because she knows this, she can just
go find a job and she can do things that
she likes to do in this job. And he was like, well,
what happens when the next job involves a part that
she doesn't enjoy doing? Jobs that come with zero parts
(08:40):
that employees don't find pleasurable are extremely rare. Slash. I
don't even know if they exist. And that's true. Like
I love my job, but there are parts of my
job I do not like doing, but I do have
to do them still, And it doesn't mean that I
need to get a new job because I don't like
these tasks that I have to do, which feels very
elementary say, but I think it's important to say at
(09:02):
the same time, because we look at things and we're like, oh,
I don't like doing that, not going to do it.
I don't have to, and I don't have an eloquent
way to say it. But that's not how life works.
If we want certain things out of our life, we
cannot just do things that feel good all the time,
even though we have the ability to make that choice.
(09:24):
In my life, there are a million things that I
need to do in order to live the life that
I want to live that I will never want to do.
For example, I will never be super excited about doing
the dishes. It is just something that generally I do
not find joy in. I will never find joy in it.
I also hate doing the laundry. The moment where I hear,
like the ding ding ding on the washer that signals
(09:47):
me that it's time to put myself in the dryer.
I dread that moment because then I'm like, oh my gosh,
I have to go separate my clothes, hang all my leggings,
do this, do that. I don't like it. But the
thing is, I do wash my dishes and I do
do my laundry. And the reason that I am able
to find motivation to complete these things is not really
because I found motivation this like desire to engage in
(10:11):
this task. It's because I identify that these things are
important to me. I don't want ants all in my kitchen.
I don't want my sink to smell bad. Forget about ants.
I don't want bigger bugs in my kid I just don't.
I want to feel clean in my space, and I
also want to wear clean clothes. I don't want to
smell bad. I want to take care of the things
that I buy. So I don't want to clean my
(10:35):
clothes and I don't want to clean my dishes. But
there are other things that are important to me, and
so I do the task. My motivation comes from deciding
or identifying that something is or isn't important to me.
If it's important enough, chances are you're going to find
a way to do it, or at least find a
way to attempt to do it to start, and if
(10:55):
it's not you will maybe do it, maybe you'll still
do it, but most likely we're going to find an
excuse as to why you can't, and you'll become that
hopeless victim. Now I could stop here and be like, Okay,
that's my reframe, But I also know that we need
(11:15):
more than information, and we need more than knowledge. We
need ways in which we can apply that. So then
we can apply the information in the knowledge so we
can make some changes, changes that are going to feel
really good to us. And so how can I go
from feeling like I lack motivation to do the things
that I seemingly want or need to do to doing them?
(11:36):
Now we already started to talk about the shifts in
the thinking how we talk about it is this important
to me versus do I have this like excitement to
go do it? So instead of I can't seem to
find the motivation, we have to say things like I
can't seem to decide if this is important to me
or not. If it's not important to you, then okay,
I get it. Let's move on to something else and
(11:58):
work on something that's important to you. But again, rarely,
rarely are people talking to me about not being able
to do things that sound like things that aren't important
to them. For one reason or another, these things are
important to them. So let's talk about ways to apply this,
and I'm going to make it really easy. We're going
to have a list, because people love lists, So let's
(12:19):
start with number one. The first thing we got to
do is focus on what it is that you want.
Let's look at the goal of the task versus the
actual task, and what this is doing. This is actually
letting you look more at what you want and what
you're going to get out of doing this task than
just focusing on like a chore that you don't really
(12:41):
want to do. So if I can't find motivation to
let's say get up in the morning and go for
a walk before work. Okay, well, that task of walking
might sound really dreadful to you, kind of like the
task of me separating my clothes out of the washer
and putting them in the dryer. I don't want to
do that. But what is the goal? So why are
we actually setting up this task or chore? What's the goal?
(13:05):
What's behind that? What is the goal of a walk?
Is it something more than just going on a walk?
Is the goal of the walk to feel more energized?
Is it to take care of your health? Like, what
is that goal? Let's put that goal in the forefront
rather than the walk. Maybe you can't find motivation to
fill out job applications. I totally get that. You keep
saying I'm gonna do it tomorrow, I'm gonna do it,
(13:27):
and then you just like scroll on your computer. Okay, Well,
the task of filling out a job application sounds also dreadful.
But is the goal of filling out the application to
fill out the application? Or is the goal to get
a new job? Is the goal to feel happier in
my career? Is the goal to I mean, think about
what the goal could be and then we focus on
(13:49):
that instead of this chore. That again is so great.
So one, focus on what you want. Two after you
focus on what you want, really get serious and decide
what is important to you. Does that goal matter to you,
and it's very important it needs to matter. Is your
(14:09):
physical health important to you if that's the goal of walking?
Is having a job important to you? If that's the goal?
Filling out the job lovlication is having a clean kitchen
without bugs roaming around important to you if that's the
goal of doing your dishes. So at this point we
can move from a space of wanting to feel energetically
excited to do a task into a space where you
(14:31):
can say, I value this, so I'm going to do this.
And because those two things they don't sound like that
big of a deal, but they can be exhausting. You'll
need some help keeping the momentum going a bit. So
that I told you, I'm giving you a list. We
have one, we have two, now we have three. After
we do that, we need to look at how we
(14:53):
can reward ourselves in a way that builds on the
work that we're doing instead of against it. And that's
something I see over and over and over. It's like, oh,
I did this, so I gave myself this reward, and
the reward literally like undid whatever task it was that
you did. It's like, oh, I cleaned the kitchen, so
I baked a cake. Like okay, that's awesome, you clean
(15:13):
the kitchen, but then you've just made a lot of dishes.
And that's just a silly example, but it kind of
describes what I'm talking about. We just have to make
sure that the rewards were giving ourselves don't undermine our goals.
Don't then send a message that you just did that thing,
but you're going to reward yourself in this way, which
means that you actually like this and you don't like
(15:35):
doing the task, so I like making a mess versus
cleaning and doing the dishes and having this clean kitchen.
Another way to look at that is if my reward
for doing the dishes every night for a week is
to say the next week, I don't have to do it,
you're reversing the momentum that you built. It works against you.
(15:55):
And something that's really important to tell anybody who will
listen is that a lot of achievement comes from people
finding ways to make the things they want to achieve
the easiest they can be. Achievement doesn't just come from
being strong and having willpower and just like doing it anyway.
(16:15):
People might say that, but when it comes down to it,
you have to find ways that make this the easiest.
So reframing it like I've been talking about makes it easier.
Doing something like this, like saying, oh, let's do the
dishes for a week and then don't do them. I
didn't think i'd be talking about the dishes so much
in this episode, but that makes it really easy for
you to fall back into an old habit, and it
(16:37):
is just very very tempting, an old habit of not
doing it and not caring, and again sends the message
that this isn't that this isn't important to you. So
another example, So I really wanted to work on wearing
normal clothes to work every day this year. There's nothing
wrong with it, but I oftentimes would wear leggings and
(17:00):
a sweatshirt and tennis shoes to work, and that is
totally fine. But I started realizing, like, hey, I really
like getting dressed, and there's a lot of clothes in
my closet that I want to be wearing. But I
just have gotten in this habit of putting the easiest
thing on going out the door and not thinking anything
of it. I really want to put more effort into
getting ready for work in the mornings, and so I
(17:24):
am wearing jeans a lot more often than I used
to wear jeans. I would not be doing myself any
favors if I put all of my leggings in the
same drawer as all of my jeans right, because I'd
open the drawer and I'd say, hmm, those leggings sure
do look cozy, and ooh, I can just put that
sweatshirt on it, and I can get out the door
and I can be ready faster and xyz. That would
(17:46):
be making my goal harder for me. Why do I
need to do that? We do not need to impress
people by how much temptation we can resist. I don't
know anybody who sits around and talks about how much
willpower somebody has and really really cares that much and
it really makes that much impact on their life. Like
people generally don't care about how much willpower somebody else has,
(18:09):
So you don't need to really prove anything to anybody else.
So if it makes it easier for you to wear jeans,
to put your leggings underneath your bed in a box,
guess what, that's what I do. And if I need
to work out, I will get the box out and
I put the leggings on and I head out the door.
But I don't have to have that conversation. Do I
wear a leggingstory wear jeanes? Do I wear leggings? Wear
jeans as I'm getting ready in the morning. So again
(18:31):
number three, find rewards for yourself that build on your
work instead of against it. I'm just this just came
to my head, but I gave examples of what not
to do, but with the dishes, Like instead of saying, okay,
after a week you cannot clean the dishes for a week,
you can take a week off. Well, what if after
I did it for a week, you can go get
that fancy scrub or brush thing that you've been looking
(18:53):
at at target, Like, find something that makes that thing
better for you or more exciting in some way. And
then number four pay attention to losses and not just gains.
So I know this one sounds a little bit weird,
like why should we pay attention to these negative things,
But it's because loss of version is a thing, and
(19:15):
sometimes looking at what you lose works better than looking
at what you gain. And it makes sense. Think about
how I talk about the fear of the unknown a lot.
Even though we want something different than what we have now,
we sometimes say to ourselves, it's not worth the risk
of losing this thing that I have right now. It's
(19:36):
not ideal, but I know I can survive it. To
gain that thing that isn't really guaranteed. There was a
study done in twenty sixteen where scientists from the University
of Pennsylvania ask people to walk seven thousand steps a
day for six months, and some of the people that
participated in this were paid a dollar forty cents, which
(19:59):
is a random amount of money, each day that they
achieved their goal, and then other people that participated lost
a dollar forty if they failed to do the goal.
So if they didn't do it, they got a dollar
forty taken away, and then another group if they did
do it, they got a dollar forty. And the group
that had the dollar forty taken away hit their daily
(20:20):
target fifty percent more often, which is a large amount.
And it makes me think of how a couple weeks ago,
I was trying to motivate myself to cook dinner at
home and use the groceries that I kept buying at
the grocery store and save money and saving money like
this idea in my head of saving money, Oh, this
(20:40):
is better and it'll be fun. Like none of that
wasn't motivating to me because I don't really like to
cook dinner. And again it goes into my I don't
like to do the dishes. So I really struggled to
find motivation to stick with that goal. And so one
of the things I did is one talk to myself
off about whether this was really important to me, Like, really,
(21:02):
why am I setting this goal up? Does this matter?
Do I care if I'm if I'm saving money? Do
I care if I'm spending more time cooking my own food?
Do I really care? Why is it important to me?
And then I set up a challenge with one of
my friends where if I ate out that week, like
(21:23):
during the work week, like Monday through I did Monday
through Thursday, if I ate out after I bought groceries
to cook those meals for, I would have to paint
my friend's ceiling. Which painting the ceiling, I don't even
know how people do that. And she did it with
me too. I think hers was if she did it,
she would have to clean my bathroom, and I was like,
(21:43):
I'm not going to clean it until this challenge is over,
so be nice and dirty. And the thing is we
both did it because I did not want to paint
my friend's ceiling, she did not want to clean my bathroom,
and so I didn't just look at what I would
gain from cooking at home save money x y Z.
I looked at what it would cost me if I
(22:05):
didn't do that goal. And I think that's really helpful,
and I think it's something that can, like I said,
help build momentum after we have that initial motivation boost
when we identify something's important to us or not. So
those are my four ways to actually apply this knowledge
of what motivation really might be and what we really
(22:27):
need to feel motivated. So, like I said before, it's
really not about finding it. It's about shifting the way
we view it and then setting ourselves up for success.
Which sounds like I'm giving some kind of like business talk,
but I mean this in all aspects of our life.
You don't have to want to do something right. It
has to be important to you, and you have to
(22:47):
have some accountability, and you need ways to remove all
of the temptation that we so often want to put
right in front of our faces. So find ways to
identify that what it is that you want to be doing,
find ways to make it valuable, and to understand what
the value is that those things are going to give you.
I hope this was helpful and if you have any questions.
(23:09):
As always, you can email me Katherine at unitherapy podcast
dot com. You can follow me at kat van Buren
on Instagram and at You Need Therapy Podcast Until I
talk to you guys again on Wednesday for couch Talks.
I hope you have the day you need to have.
I started to realize that not being an expert isn't
a liability. It's a real guest. If we don't know
something about ourselves at this point in our life, it's
probably because it's uncomfortable to know. If you can die
before you die, then you can really live. There's a
wisdom at death's door. I thought I was insane. Yeah,
(00:26):
and I didn't know what to do because there was
no internet. I don't know, man, I'm like, I feel
like everything is hard. Hey, y'all, my name is Kat.
I'm a human first and a licensed therapist second. And
right now I'm inviting you into conversations that I hope
encourage you to become more curious and less judgmental about yourself, others,
(00:49):
and the world around you. Welcome to You Need Therapy.
Hey guys, Kat here and you're listening to a new episode,
new Monday episode of You Need Therapy podcast. Before we
get into it, want to remind everybody that although this
podcast is hosted by a therapist and it's called You
(01:10):
Need Therapy, it does not serve as a replacement or
substitute for mental health services. But it's allowed to help
you along your journey. I decided it was time to
talk about for a whole episode, something that comes up
a lot during my work day as a therapist, meaning
a lot of clients are talking about this in one
(01:31):
way or the other, and it is motivation and really
more specifically the lack of motivation. So very often people
come into my office to make some kind of change
in my life. That's not news to anybody. There is
ninety nine percent of the time something that somebody wants
(01:51):
to be different in their life when they come into therapy,
when they come into my office and I meet them
and we talk why are you here? And we know
that for things to be different, we have to do
something different. And we also know, and if you don't know,
now you're about to know that the definition of insanity
is doing the same thing over and over and over
again expecting a different result. So, since we're not trying
(02:15):
to become insane by coming to therapy, we are wanting
something different, means that we have to do something different. So,
since we are not trying to become insane by going
to therapy, wanting something different means that we are going
to have to do something different. And this is when
this back and forth happens when clients make a plan
to try to do something or put some action steps
(02:36):
in place to reach some goal, and week after week
they come back in and they come to my office
and they're like, uh, I didn't do the thing. I
didn't do the thing. I didn't do the thing. And
it becomes this revolving door, like we make a plan,
you go, you don't do it. You come back, we
make a plan again, you don't do it. And this
whole cycle can sound different for different people. Sometimes when
(02:56):
they come back and they say I didn't do it,
their excuses. Times I just can't. Sometimes they just avoid
the fact that they didn't do it by bringing up
another topic. But you end up doing this song and
dance where the goal really isn't being met. And what
can happen is we can label the issue with this
goal not being met with a lack of motivation to
(03:17):
do something. And I want to talk about this today
because I think there's a way. I believe there's a
way that we can reframe this idea of I just
have a lack of motivation to change or act or
move in a way that can become more helpful. We
can reframe how we're looking at motivation, so we can
(03:37):
find more of a motivation and it can be a
more motivating way of looking at things. So I really
like the saying that says, whatever you choose, you're making
a choice either way. I think there's a million ways
that that is said. But whatever choice you're making, if
you're saying I don't want to do something, or you
do something, you're making a choice either way. And I
really like this because for me it offers so much power, like, oh,
(04:01):
I'm making a choice, and my end quotes inability to
make a choice is actually me making a choice. It's
not an inability at all. It's very empowering to me.
It tells you that you are doing something, you are
capable of doing something. You just might be doing the
thing you don't want to do. And the thing about
motivation is depending on how you view and how you
(04:22):
define it. To find it, sometimes you have to realize
that it's not really motivation that you're looking for and
that you need, which is why I want to reframe
this today. So when you look up the definition of motivation,
you'll find two different kind of answers. One talks about
the desire or willingness to do something, and then the
other one is an explanation or reason for why we
(04:45):
did or didn't do something right. So a reason my
motivation for going to the park was to get fresh air.
My motivation for starting this podcast was to help people.
My motivation for making coffee is to get more energy,
Like there's a reason that I'm doing these things. And
I think when we think and when we talk about
(05:06):
the lack of motivation that we're frustrated with, when we
are saying like, oh, I just like can't get motivated,
or I can't find motivation, or I can't whatever, I
can't do the thing, I don't think we're talking about
a lack of a reason for our goal. I don't
hear as often people say I don't have motivation to
do this because I don't see why that would be
(05:26):
good for me. It's usually more something like I want
to do this thing, but I can't get my body
to do this thing because that thing takes effort and
energy and they might not want to spend time and
energy on that thing. So we labelize that I don't
have motivation or I can't find motivation, and then we
become victims. We become helpless. It's not my fault. There's
nothing I can do. I can't find the desire to
(05:49):
do this, so I can't do it. Now. This would
be fine if we only needed to do things that
we in quotes wanted to do, which if you're somebody
who's like, yeah, totally, that's how I am. We're adults.
No one can tell me what to do, and being
an adult means I get to make all the rules.
Then you're probably not going to love this idea and
reframe that I have because I think the dream as
(06:12):
a kid was that when you're an adult, you grow
up and you get to just do the things you
want to do, and you don't have to do the
things you don't want to do. I think about being
a kid and my mom telling me that I need
to make my bed, or clean my room or just
clean anything for that matter, or be home. At this time,
it's like, I can't wait to be an adult and
I'm never going to clean my room. But then you
get to be an adult and you're like, oh my gosh,
(06:34):
I really wish that my mom was here making me
clean my room, because that's why I cleaned my room.
And now I don't want to clean my room. So
being an adult doesn't really mean you only have to
do the things you want to do. You could do that,
I don't know that your life would be really looking
the way you really wanted to look. It really means
you are now in charge of finding ways to make
sure you get those things done that aren't very fun
(06:55):
because they still have to be done, and you might
not like the task, but the outcome of that task
might be important to you. I had a client years
ago who talked about a lot of work struggles with me,
and she had a good job, and she didn't necessarily
hate her job. I don't think it was her dream job,
but she would often talk about this inability to get
(07:15):
certain tasks done when she knew she was capable of
doing them, like more than capable of doing them. And
one day she came in my office and sat down
and was like, I figured it out. I was like,
what did you figure out? Tell me more? She said,
I figured out why it's so hard for me to
do these things that really aren't that hard. And I said, okay,
(07:35):
what did you figure out? And she said, I don't
like doing them. I do not like doing them. I
don't enjoy it, so that's why I put them off
and I don't do them. I don't remember exactly what
I replied, but I said something along the lines of like,
oh my gosh, wow, Like that's such a great revelation. Now,
I guess we got to look for something else, right,
(07:57):
Like what is? Where does that lead you to? And
this was a long time ago, so give me some
grace here, because I would not respond in this kind
of way today. But she was like, I'm going to
get into a different job. Like that's what this. I
just have to get a different job. And I was
telling my supervisor about this later and he just looked
at me and was like, we will not be encouraging
(08:17):
people to only do the things that they find pleasurable, Catherine,
That's not how life works. And I was like, yeah,
but like now, because she knows this, she can just
go find a job and she can do things that
she likes to do in this job. And he was like, well,
what happens when the next job involves a part that
she doesn't enjoy doing? Jobs that come with zero parts
(08:40):
that employees don't find pleasurable are extremely rare. Slash. I
don't even know if they exist. And that's true. Like
I love my job, but there are parts of my
job I do not like doing, but I do have
to do them still, And it doesn't mean that I
need to get a new job because I don't like
these tasks that I have to do, which feels very
elementary say, but I think it's important to say at
(09:02):
the same time, because we look at things and we're like, oh,
I don't like doing that, not going to do it.
I don't have to, and I don't have an eloquent
way to say it. But that's not how life works.
If we want certain things out of our life, we
cannot just do things that feel good all the time,
even though we have the ability to make that choice.
(09:24):
In my life, there are a million things that I
need to do in order to live the life that
I want to live that I will never want to do.
For example, I will never be super excited about doing
the dishes. It is just something that generally I do
not find joy in. I will never find joy in it.
I also hate doing the laundry. The moment where I hear,
like the ding ding ding on the washer that signals
(09:47):
me that it's time to put myself in the dryer.
I dread that moment because then I'm like, oh my gosh,
I have to go separate my clothes, hang all my leggings,
do this, do that. I don't like it. But the
thing is, I do wash my dishes and I do
do my laundry. And the reason that I am able
to find motivation to complete these things is not really
because I found motivation this like desire to engage in
(10:11):
this task. It's because I identify that these things are
important to me. I don't want ants all in my kitchen.
I don't want my sink to smell bad. Forget about ants.
I don't want bigger bugs in my kid I just don't.
I want to feel clean in my space, and I
also want to wear clean clothes. I don't want to
smell bad. I want to take care of the things
that I buy. So I don't want to clean my
(10:35):
clothes and I don't want to clean my dishes. But
there are other things that are important to me, and
so I do the task. My motivation comes from deciding
or identifying that something is or isn't important to me.
If it's important enough, chances are you're going to find
a way to do it, or at least find a
way to attempt to do it to start, and if
(10:55):
it's not you will maybe do it, maybe you'll still
do it, but most likely we're going to find an
excuse as to why you can't, and you'll become that
hopeless victim. Now I could stop here and be like, Okay,
that's my reframe, But I also know that we need
(11:15):
more than information, and we need more than knowledge. We
need ways in which we can apply that. So then
we can apply the information in the knowledge so we
can make some changes, changes that are going to feel
really good to us. And so how can I go
from feeling like I lack motivation to do the things
that I seemingly want or need to do to doing them?
(11:36):
Now we already started to talk about the shifts in
the thinking how we talk about it is this important
to me versus do I have this like excitement to
go do it? So instead of I can't seem to
find the motivation, we have to say things like I
can't seem to decide if this is important to me
or not. If it's not important to you, then okay,
I get it. Let's move on to something else and
(11:58):
work on something that's important to you. But again, rarely,
rarely are people talking to me about not being able
to do things that sound like things that aren't important
to them. For one reason or another, these things are
important to them. So let's talk about ways to apply this,
and I'm going to make it really easy. We're going
to have a list, because people love lists, So let's
(12:19):
start with number one. The first thing we got to
do is focus on what it is that you want.
Let's look at the goal of the task versus the
actual task, and what this is doing. This is actually
letting you look more at what you want and what
you're going to get out of doing this task than
just focusing on like a chore that you don't really
(12:41):
want to do. So if I can't find motivation to
let's say get up in the morning and go for
a walk before work. Okay, well, that task of walking
might sound really dreadful to you, kind of like the
task of me separating my clothes out of the washer
and putting them in the dryer. I don't want to
do that. But what is the goal? So why are
we actually setting up this task or chore? What's the goal?
(13:05):
What's behind that? What is the goal of a walk?
Is it something more than just going on a walk?
Is the goal of the walk to feel more energized?
Is it to take care of your health? Like, what
is that goal? Let's put that goal in the forefront
rather than the walk. Maybe you can't find motivation to
fill out job applications. I totally get that. You keep
saying I'm gonna do it tomorrow, I'm gonna do it,
(13:27):
and then you just like scroll on your computer. Okay, Well,
the task of filling out a job application sounds also dreadful.
But is the goal of filling out the application to
fill out the application? Or is the goal to get
a new job? Is the goal to feel happier in
my career? Is the goal to I mean, think about
what the goal could be and then we focus on
(13:49):
that instead of this chore. That again is so great.
So one, focus on what you want. Two after you
focus on what you want, really get serious and decide
what is important to you. Does that goal matter to you,
and it's very important it needs to matter. Is your
(14:09):
physical health important to you if that's the goal of walking?
Is having a job important to you? If that's the goal?
Filling out the job lovlication is having a clean kitchen
without bugs roaming around important to you if that's the
goal of doing your dishes. So at this point we
can move from a space of wanting to feel energetically
excited to do a task into a space where you
(14:31):
can say, I value this, so I'm going to do this.
And because those two things they don't sound like that
big of a deal, but they can be exhausting. You'll
need some help keeping the momentum going a bit. So
that I told you, I'm giving you a list. We
have one, we have two, now we have three. After
we do that, we need to look at how we
(14:53):
can reward ourselves in a way that builds on the
work that we're doing instead of against it. And that's
something I see over and over and over. It's like, oh,
I did this, so I gave myself this reward, and
the reward literally like undid whatever task it was that
you did. It's like, oh, I cleaned the kitchen, so
I baked a cake. Like okay, that's awesome, you clean
(15:13):
the kitchen, but then you've just made a lot of dishes.
And that's just a silly example, but it kind of
describes what I'm talking about. We just have to make
sure that the rewards were giving ourselves don't undermine our goals.
Don't then send a message that you just did that thing,
but you're going to reward yourself in this way, which
means that you actually like this and you don't like
(15:35):
doing the task, so I like making a mess versus
cleaning and doing the dishes and having this clean kitchen.
Another way to look at that is if my reward
for doing the dishes every night for a week is
to say the next week, I don't have to do it,
you're reversing the momentum that you built. It works against you.
(15:55):
And something that's really important to tell anybody who will
listen is that a lot of achievement comes from people
finding ways to make the things they want to achieve
the easiest they can be. Achievement doesn't just come from
being strong and having willpower and just like doing it anyway.
(16:15):
People might say that, but when it comes down to it,
you have to find ways that make this the easiest.
So reframing it like I've been talking about makes it easier.
Doing something like this, like saying, oh, let's do the
dishes for a week and then don't do them. I
didn't think i'd be talking about the dishes so much
in this episode, but that makes it really easy for
you to fall back into an old habit, and it
(16:37):
is just very very tempting, an old habit of not
doing it and not caring, and again sends the message
that this isn't that this isn't important to you. So
another example, So I really wanted to work on wearing
normal clothes to work every day this year. There's nothing
wrong with it, but I oftentimes would wear leggings and
(17:00):
a sweatshirt and tennis shoes to work, and that is
totally fine. But I started realizing, like, hey, I really
like getting dressed, and there's a lot of clothes in
my closet that I want to be wearing. But I
just have gotten in this habit of putting the easiest
thing on going out the door and not thinking anything
of it. I really want to put more effort into
getting ready for work in the mornings, and so I
(17:24):
am wearing jeans a lot more often than I used
to wear jeans. I would not be doing myself any
favors if I put all of my leggings in the
same drawer as all of my jeans right, because I'd
open the drawer and I'd say, hmm, those leggings sure
do look cozy, and ooh, I can just put that
sweatshirt on it, and I can get out the door
and I can be ready faster and xyz. That would
(17:46):
be making my goal harder for me. Why do I
need to do that? We do not need to impress
people by how much temptation we can resist. I don't
know anybody who sits around and talks about how much
willpower somebody has and really really cares that much and
it really makes that much impact on their life. Like
people generally don't care about how much willpower somebody else has,
(18:09):
So you don't need to really prove anything to anybody else.
So if it makes it easier for you to wear jeans,
to put your leggings underneath your bed in a box,
guess what, that's what I do. And if I need
to work out, I will get the box out and
I put the leggings on and I head out the door.
But I don't have to have that conversation. Do I
wear a leggingstory wear jeanes? Do I wear leggings? Wear
jeans as I'm getting ready in the morning. So again
(18:31):
number three, find rewards for yourself that build on your
work instead of against it. I'm just this just came
to my head, but I gave examples of what not
to do, but with the dishes, Like instead of saying, okay,
after a week you cannot clean the dishes for a week,
you can take a week off. Well, what if after
I did it for a week, you can go get
that fancy scrub or brush thing that you've been looking
(18:53):
at at target, Like, find something that makes that thing
better for you or more exciting in some way. And
then number four pay attention to losses and not just gains.
So I know this one sounds a little bit weird,
like why should we pay attention to these negative things,
But it's because loss of version is a thing, and
(19:15):
sometimes looking at what you lose works better than looking
at what you gain. And it makes sense. Think about
how I talk about the fear of the unknown a lot.
Even though we want something different than what we have now,
we sometimes say to ourselves, it's not worth the risk
of losing this thing that I have right now. It's
(19:36):
not ideal, but I know I can survive it. To
gain that thing that isn't really guaranteed. There was a
study done in twenty sixteen where scientists from the University
of Pennsylvania ask people to walk seven thousand steps a
day for six months, and some of the people that
participated in this were paid a dollar forty cents, which
(19:59):
is a random amount of money, each day that they
achieved their goal, and then other people that participated lost
a dollar forty if they failed to do the goal.
So if they didn't do it, they got a dollar
forty taken away, and then another group if they did
do it, they got a dollar forty. And the group
that had the dollar forty taken away hit their daily
(20:20):
target fifty percent more often, which is a large amount.
And it makes me think of how a couple weeks ago,
I was trying to motivate myself to cook dinner at
home and use the groceries that I kept buying at
the grocery store and save money and saving money like
this idea in my head of saving money, Oh, this
(20:40):
is better and it'll be fun. Like none of that
wasn't motivating to me because I don't really like to
cook dinner. And again it goes into my I don't
like to do the dishes. So I really struggled to
find motivation to stick with that goal. And so one
of the things I did is one talk to myself
off about whether this was really important to me, Like, really,
(21:02):
why am I setting this goal up? Does this matter?
Do I care if I'm if I'm saving money? Do
I care if I'm spending more time cooking my own food?
Do I really care? Why is it important to me?
And then I set up a challenge with one of
my friends where if I ate out that week, like
(21:23):
during the work week, like Monday through I did Monday
through Thursday, if I ate out after I bought groceries
to cook those meals for, I would have to paint
my friend's ceiling. Which painting the ceiling, I don't even
know how people do that. And she did it with
me too. I think hers was if she did it,
she would have to clean my bathroom, and I was like,
(21:43):
I'm not going to clean it until this challenge is over,
so be nice and dirty. And the thing is we
both did it because I did not want to paint
my friend's ceiling, she did not want to clean my bathroom,
and so I didn't just look at what I would
gain from cooking at home save money x y Z.
I looked at what it would cost me if I
(22:05):
didn't do that goal. And I think that's really helpful,
and I think it's something that can, like I said,
help build momentum after we have that initial motivation boost
when we identify something's important to us or not. So
those are my four ways to actually apply this knowledge
of what motivation really might be and what we really
(22:27):
need to feel motivated. So, like I said before, it's
really not about finding it. It's about shifting the way
we view it and then setting ourselves up for success.
Which sounds like I'm giving some kind of like business talk,
but I mean this in all aspects of our life.
You don't have to want to do something right. It
has to be important to you, and you have to
(22:47):
have some accountability, and you need ways to remove all
of the temptation that we so often want to put
right in front of our faces. So find ways to
identify that what it is that you want to be doing,
find ways to make it valuable, and to understand what
the value is that those things are going to give you.
I hope this was helpful and if you have any questions.
(23:09):
As always, you can email me Katherine at unitherapy podcast
dot com. You can follow me at kat van Buren
on Instagram and at You Need Therapy Podcast Until I
talk to you guys again on Wednesday for couch Talks.
I hope you have the day you need to have.
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