Get up in the morning, lose weight, play sports … Are you lacking motivation for everything? Here’s how to remedy it.
As a human being, it is normal to go through moments of dissatisfaction. However, when the loss of motivation becomes too massive, too disabling, a more enlightened analysis of what is happening in itself and around you is essential. “Motivation is a feeling that has a biological base in connection with the award circuit. This neural circuit is stimulated and maintained by successes. The failures, for their part, tend to inhibit this circuit. Thus, when you no longer have any motivation for nothing, it is important to ask several questions about its way of managing your ambitions and failures”explains Daniela Silva Moura, doctor of clinical psychology and psychopathology. Doing things, from the most banal to the most elaborate can be a source of satisfaction or pleasure and contribute to maintaining the network of the reward, and therefore, the motivation, or, in contrast, to be a source of repetitive frustration or difficulty and inhibit your motivation to continue your efforts.
“It is not normal to have nothing, continues our interlocutor. This feeling reveals a state of suffering which can be explained by the presence of severe depression, but more often than not, it is linked to our tendency to focus on very (even too much) ambitious objectives, the realization of which requires significant efforts “. For example, some people lose their motivation for healthy habits that require perseverance, such as sport or regimes, because they are focused on the purpose of this effort and not on the preliminary stages which represent as many victories without which the purpose could not be reached.
To stay motivated, you have to learn to love these preliminary steps and to enhance your small victories. Set up a ritual with progressive challenges: for example, do 10 squats per day upon waking up and increasing 5 repetitions every 3 days until 150. Each additional squat is a victory. At the same time, you have to style, dress and make up to have the most pleasant self -image as possible, regardless of your mood. And seek daily to achieve what is pleasant and simple to relaunch the dopamine circuit. “This can be done through small gestures such as making a list of pleasant events that occurred during the day: a beautiful landscape, pleasant music, something that we found funny, a word heard, a life scene …”suggests the specialist.
To maintain your motivation, it is important to have several investment areas that guarantee us as much the experience of pleasure (getting a manicure, being massaged, reading a good book …) that the feeling of competence and satisfaction (successfully store all your lingerie drawer (and not all the drawers of your closet), sort the condiments (and not all the kitchen utensils), post the four letters weeks (and not to settle all administrative things at once).
Thanks to Daniela Silva Moura, Doctor of Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology, Book author “The better I know, better I take care” (ed. Le Courrier du Livre, 2024)
