As New Year's rolls around once again, many people are beginning to think of all the resolutions they want to make and how next year will be different. But the hardest thing about making New Year's resolutions is finding the motivation to actually complete these goals. It's easy to say, "I'm going to go to the gym more often" or "I'm not going to eat as many sweets this year." What is difficult is actually getting off the couch and working to achieve these goals.
I am notoriously lazy. I spend most of my time in my bed or on my couch. I mean, sometimes I just lie on the floor because the amount of effort it takes to climb onto my bed is just too much. I am terrible at motivation, so I am not going to sit here and preach to you about finding motivation. I'm just going to tell you to forget about it.
Whenever I try to psych myself up to go to the gym or eat a salad or even do my homework, I find myself moving farther and farther away from actually doing it. The time leading up to the event, where I try to convince myself to actually do what I say I'm going to do is worse than actually doing the thing. I put all this pressure on convincing myself to do something that it becomes more about motivating myself than actually about doing the action. So here it is, my big statement:
Just get up and do it.
Don't think about all of the effort it is going to take to get dressed and drive to the gym, or how long it is going to take for you to make a healthy meal when you could just microwave something easily. Stop thinking about it, get off your butt and go do it.
Exercise is possibly the worst thing in the world and eating a salad doesn't taste as good as eating a pizza but these are things we have to do to stay healthy and alive. I know you've heard it all before about how to be the best possible you.
Blah, blah, blah. Trust me, I know it is the worst.
But it's important to live a healthy life and a lot of the time the only thing holding us back is finding the motivation to just do it. So forget about motivation. Don't talk yourself into doing things, just do it. I promise the actual action itself is not that bad and you will be happy you did it when you have finished.
This New Year's my goal is to forget about motivation. To stop fighting so hard to convince myself to do something, to stop waiting to be motivated and to just actually do it. I know I'm not the only one who struggles with motivation so this is my letter to all of you in the same boat as me.
Who cares about motivation? Just do it.
