Losing Focus on Your Goals Makes You More Motivated

Quick Takes:

• Motivation is the building block of success
• Daily motivation is important, but it's hard to maintain
• Sometimes we are so motivated that we end up burning ourselves out
• Be intentional about motivation, but also be intentional about relaxing and recharging your motivational batteries

Being motivated all the time is tiring. I can imagine how sales people feel by “always having to be on,” i.e, always selling. The point of motivation is to give you energy and strength, but it also does a great job of draining you. What an oxymoron.

For a lot of us professionals and business owners, we have goals that are both lofty and long-term. And we wake up with the daily motivation to achieve those goals. We live with intention and purpose  so that everyday we inch one step closer to achieving our long-term ambitions. Daily incremental progress, right?

But, as we all know, waking up with that daily motivation is hard. Sometimes really hard. And sometimes its the fact that we’ve had so much past motivation that it actually lowers our current motivation. It’s almost as if we have a motivational bank account, and we can become so motivated to achieve our goals that we actually overdraw that account, causing us to lose drive.

You’ll recognize an overdrawn motivational account when your passions start to become a task or chore, and not an opportunity. When previously good business ideas or life decisions seem tedious or too much work. When you don’t want to go that extra mile, wanting to sleep in or watch the new drama on Fox (you know, the one with vampires or cops, or probably both), rather than working on that business plan, book, or blog article.

We’ve all been there. We might even be there currently. If so, how can we push through and overcome the resistance?

It may sound crazy, but give up on your goals, at least momentarily. When you’ve overdrawn your actual bank account, you can’t replenish it by over drafting again. You’ll just be hit with more fees, and in this case, those fees are emotional.

So, take a week off from being hyper-motivated. Take a sabbatical from your goals. Don’t stress about where your life is headed and how you’re going to get there. At least for a moment of two. Make sure your motivational bank account is replenished before it’s overdrawn.

If you think about it, taking a week off every quarter from being goal-oriented means that you’ll still be hyper-motivated 48 weeks out of the year, or 92% of the time.

And in actuality you’ll be even more motivated than if you tried to be “always on” 24/7. By attempting to be constantly motivated, you hit a wall where you just don’t care anymore, and that apathy can last for weeks at a time. Being intentional about losing momentary focus on you goals maximizes your motivation during the times you need to be focused.

You become intentional about your apathy. You use it as a chance to recharge your motivational batteries so you can be intentional about achieving your goals. In essence, you become fully intentional about your life, from apathy to achievement.