Clutter Clearing Myth-Buster – Motivation
YOU HAVE TO FEEL MOTIVATED TO ‘DO THE DOING’
If that was true, I would never have successfully cleared my clutter.
Here are five reasons why it’s a myth that you have to feel motivated to ‘Do the Doing’.
1. Your Motivational Wave
On your Journey you will learn about and experience the motivational wave. It has seven key stages:
- Shock / overwhelm
- Denial
- Frustration / resistance
- Low mood / lack of energy / focusing on the negatives
- Willing to try Clutter Clearing differently
- Feeling more motivated and positive
- Highly motivated, focusing on positives
You can’t skip stages. Every time you try again you go back at number one, and most people get stuck in a cycle of giving up at stage four. Clearly, if you’re waiting to feel motivated, you’re going be waiting a long time.
2. Action triggers Motivation
As Stephen King said:
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration,
the rest of us just get up and go to work’
Motivation is the result of action, not the cause. Action triggers the feeling. Therefore, if you wait to feel motivated, you are unlikely to ‘do the doing’ unless there is an imminent, negative consequence to not ‘Doing the Doing’ that triggers fear. That rarely happens when you’re dealing with your clutter, and even if it does, it sends you into the panic zone where you’re not able to go at a safe pace, do the learning, or make balanced, realistic decisions. As a result, you blitz, which never works because it’s driven by fear not motivation.
What’s more likely is that your clutter triggers overwhelm, despair, guilt, depression, shame, and embarrassment, none of which have imminent, negative consequences, and therefore they just fuel your procrastination.
3. Dopamine
If you are ‘Doing the Doing’ towards a goal that you want to achieve, it will trigger the feel-good hormone dopamine – the ‘reward’ hormone. Your brain connects this feel-good hormone with the action, which makes it easier (not necessarily easy) to do it next time because your brain expects to get more dopamine like the previous time, and maybe it will get more when it ‘Does the Doing’ for longer. When you ‘feel’ motivated it’s the dopamine you’re ‘feeling’, and that’s only triggered when you ‘Do the Doing’.
4. Intrinsic versus Extrinsic
Not all motivation is equal. Intrinsic motivation comes from within and is triggered by the dopamine that results from ‘Doing the Doing’.
Extrinsic motivation comes from outside in the form of reward and acknowledgement that triggers the dopamine. Again, it’s a feeling triggered by ‘Doing the Doing’, not a feeling that triggers ‘Doing the Doing’.
To succeed, people on their Journey need extrinsic motivation and accountability to make the time to ‘Do the Doing’, and once they are in a routine of ‘Doing the Doing’, being a steady turtle and getting that dopamine hit regularly, they become intrinsically motivated and are more likely to be able to continue on their own, although they usually need to continue having the accountability and support to continue their routine of ‘Doing the Doing’ until it becomes a new, automatic habit.
People on the DIY Journey option, without any extrinsic support and acknowledgement (Social Gatherings, Weekly Wednesdays, 1-2-1’s) to get through the bad days and tough weeks we all have, usually get stuck on the climb of Step 1. Not because they don’t want to do it, they just struggle to get into a routine of ‘Doing the Doing’ that triggers the dopamine that leads to the intrinsic motivation.
5. Routine is More Important
Motivation is like the honeymoon period – it doesn’t last. People will often start their Journey feeling intrinsically motivated. They may begin enthusiastically, watching their Journey videos when they can, learning things that make so much sense and relate to their experiences, and then they start to feel the discomfort that we know to expect in the learning and change zone. They are being a Successful Snail, Steady Turtle or maybe even a Powerful Elephant.
After the first few weeks, or the first Clutter Clearing Term, the discomfort of what they’re learning and realising starts to cancel out the dopamine hit they’re getting from simply ‘Doing the Doing’. Resistance starts to appear, and before they know it, their intrinsic motivation has disappeared.
What’s more important is to ‘Do the Doing’ regularly so you can trigger the dopamine regularly and ensure there’s always enough that the resistance can never overpower it. What will enable you to do this? Routine.
Do your Journey videos on the same days at the same time. Make it part of your morning, afternoon or evening routine. Never leave more than 72 hours between each Journey video session. Just as we don’t necessarily want to do exercise or brush our teeth, we do it because it’s part of our routine, and we do them without the expectation that we will feel motivated.
As Aristotle said:
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Summary
- There are five stages of the motivational wave that you have to go through before you feel motivated.
- Motivation is triggered by dopamine.
- Dopamine is triggered by ‘Doing the Doing’.
- If you wait to feel motivated;
- you will never get into a routine of making and protecting the time to ‘Do the Doing’
- you will never trigger the dopamine to feel good about your Journey or stay motivated
- you will never develop intrinsic motivation
you will continue to procrastinate and justify why you haven’t ‘Done the Doing’ you need to do to succeed.
You can clear your clutter fast, or you can clear your clutter forever, but you can’t clear your clutter forever, fast.
To find out how Clare can help you clear your clutter Forever, without the need for an expensive home visit, click here now: https://www.clutterclearing.net/clares-help-centre/
