Are you struggling with procrastination? Is there something on your to-do list that you keep putting off? Having trained as a life coach, I often meet with clients who are struggling with motivation: there’s something they need to do, but they just can’t manage to get motivated enough to do it.
My first question is always: Is it something you really want to do, or is it something that you feel you should do? Most of us live in a world where it can be challenging to separate what we really want to do from the things we think that we should do. We fill our to-do list with things that we ought to do, or need to do, often without asking ourselves whether we really want to do them or not.
Does this sound familiar?
And then we struggle to actually get these things done, because deep down inside, we really don’t want to do them at all. There are so many other things that we’d rather be doing: things that make us happy and that fill us with energy. And these “shoulds” just drag us down and suck the life out of us.
So how do you break free from living a life full of “shoulds”?
For many years, I lived my life for other people: I usually responded to everything that others wanted me to do or expected me to do. And after years of doing this, I was so out of touch with my own interests that I reached the point where I didn’t even know what it was that I wanted to do.
I knew that I was clearly unhappy with certain aspects of my life, but I had absolutely no idea what it was that I did want. My mind was all tangled up in this murky feeling of unhappiness and fear of making changes because I didn’t even know what changes to make. Because I didn’t know what I did want, I was terrified that I’d end up with something even worse than what I already had.
It started with one major life change, and that set the ball rolling for me to make other changes. This all eventually led to me making another major life change, and finally I managed to surround myself with people who gently nudged me into paying attention to what I actually wanted to do so I could take action on it.
What can you do to rid yourself of “shoulds”?
A lot of my writing and work that I do revolves around what I call The Three Happiness Questions. But, really, they could be the three motivation questions as well. These three questions help you get to know yourself and what you want in life so that you can plan your future according to what you want, rather than passively waiting for things to happen to you.
These three questions are: Who am I? Where am I? and Where am I going? Once you look deep inside yourself and get clear on who you are, where you are in life, and where you want to be headed, you’ll be motivated to wake up every and get started with your day. You’ll be motivated to work through your daily to-do list, because you’ll love everything that’s on it. And you’ll be motivated to plan your future, because you’ll be clear as to exactly what it is that you want to be doing.
I know: these are big questions. I truly believe they’re the most important questions we can ask ourselves in life, and I also believe that we need to be asking ourselves these questions. They’re the key to getting unstuck in life and to being motivated to get out of bed everyday so we can live the life of our dreams.
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Holly Worton helps people achieve authentic happiness by answering The Three Happiness Questions with her blog Ready to Bloom: www.Ready2Bloom.com
-what was your biggest takeaway lesson you learned from the ideas above?