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3 tricks to re-motivate yourself when you’ve been staring at the ceiling for too many minutes

Making Decisions & Finding Passion

On Friday morning I woke up and stared at the ceiling for an unreasonable number of minutes.

20.

I felt unmotivated, uninspired, and annoyed at myself for feeling unmotivated and uninspired. I got up and found a text from BGC:

“Don’t forget, you’re in Bali, enjoy every last minute in paradise. People would probably trade everything to be in your position right now.”

I smiled at how he mysteriously seems to know what I need to hear without us even communicating. Sometimes I think he has some magical Harry Potter extendible ears listening in on my brain.

And then I felt pissed at myself again for not being able to make myself feel more inspired by my currently very inspiring situation.

8 hours later I was heel clickingly filled with inspiration and drive.

A number of angels were playing the harp on my shoulder.

3 things happened to bring this about.

I decided to stop being a lazy bastard that scooters around eating and working at my computer all day (sit, sit, sit) and commit to doing 7 days of yoga for my last week in Bali. I even drew a calendar on an old receipt so I can tick it off.

I Skyped a coach friend and we did 20 minutes each of reciprocal coaching on our direction for the next few months.
I ate some raw avocado cacao chocolate mousse. It was actually kind of yuck in the way that most healthy raw vegan masquerading shenanigans are, but the cacao caffeine gave me a boot up the bum.

On Skype with my excellent coach friend, we discussed her business and where she’s at and what she’s struggling with and where she needs to head, and then we discussed mine. All I did was voice where I’m at and vaguely where I want to go, and by the end of it I’d come up with a semi-formed goal for the next 3 months that I’d already been mulling over but hadn’t taken any action on.

As soon as I got off Skype I could feel my meh day was done for.

I whipped out my calendar and started mapping out my next three months, then made a few business hiring decisions I’d been floundering on for weeks, and suddenly,

it was all on like Donkey Kong.

If I hadn’t done the coaching with my friend, or voiced the goal I had swimming around partially formed in my head, I would never have got the fire under me to get cracking.

It literally only took 20 minutes and an unbiased friend to listen, ask the right questions, and get me thinking about what I wanted to do next.

Sometimes that’s all it takes to get us unstuck.

Our heads are like dream land – all the thoughts in there are smushing round like a washing machine, and even though we sort of know what’s in there, it doesn’t really make sense and it never really amounts to anything until we translate it out of our mind and into words, verbally or on paper.

Then suddenly our wishy washy state turns into a semi formed plan that we can turn into action.

It feels bloody good.

I plan on having a few days off and not doing anything about it, but having a vague outline now makes me feel excited and motivated, and it’s totally shifted my overall mood and energy.

This is the power of coaching and accountability.

You can do it with a friend – find someone you know who’d be up for giving it a crack, then set a timer for 20 mins each. One of you talks and one of you just listens,

unbiasedly.

When you’re the listener, just listen, and when they stop, don’t jump in, take a breath or ten and I guarantee they’ll eventually start talking again until they find their own answers that they didn’t know were in there. No one likes a long silence, so if you don’t fill it, they will, and it will weasel it’s way out of their mind and into reality, which is the only place you can take action.

Every now and then as the listener, you can ask relevant open questions that will keep them on track for working out their short term goal in life or business.

There, that’s saved you needing a coaching certification.

Before your listening turn is up, make sure your partner sets something as a tangible goal for the next day, week or fortnight to move them towards their larger goal, e.g. tonight I’m going to make a rough plan of my next launch/ the next three months. Or this week I’m going to commit to doing 3 sessions at the gym.

Then switch roles and repeat 20 mins.

Then make sure you book a time to check in a week or two later to see how you’re both doing.

You might even find you achieve some stuff that your head keeps swafling around your mind aimlessly

like a feather duster-er.

 

Ps — To learn more about regulating your emotions like the kind of legend that doesn’t throw coke at me, head over here to check out Bloody Good Life, an unconventional mind-taming program for overthinkers.

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