It has been almost 100 days since our wonderful state was first placed under a “stay at home” order. Not much has changed in the 97 days that have led up to this article. Things are almost exactly the same.
My routine is pretty simple. I’ll wake up, usually sometime in the late morning. I’ll see my clients via teletherapy, go for a run in the wonderful New Orleans summer heat, shower, eat, and waste time until I go to bed to do the exact same thing the next day. Every once in a while I will check the garden that I planted at the start of the pandemic to see if the tomatoes are growing. They aren’t! Sometimes I will even check my emails, and by check I mean delete most without paying attention to them. There is very little excitement or energy with most things right now.
Motivation is one of those things that we wait to fall into our laps. There are things that we want to do or things that we believe we should do, but we lack the motivation to bring them to fruition. We sit and we wait and before we know it, the moment has passed. COVID-19 has been a big player when it comes to lack of motivation, but how many of us look for motivation instead of creating it.
Sometimes, being motivated is a choice. We have to make the decision to get up and do rather than to sit back and wait. I have been guilty, like many people, of calling this time, “the new normal”. When we use that phrase, we have the tendency to settle into a sort of complacency that we have deemed is the way that life should be right now. I want to challenge that way of thinking. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t want this to be the “new normal”. This is simply the “new right now”.
Although we may not have much power over the things that are happening around us, we still have power over ourselves. We have the ability to decide the way that certain things in our lives are going to go.
When this all started, I made the statement that I would come out of this a better counselor than I was when I went in. COVID has given me nothing but time to make that happen but nothing will happen if I simply wait for that motivation to fall out of the sky. I have to create the opportunities.
I challenge you all to do the same. Make opportunities happen for you! Create your motivation! Start something and make yourself finish it. Years from now when I tell people about these times, I don’t want the story to be riddled with laziness and an excessive amount of tacos (they have become my best friends), but rather stories about how much I have changed for the better. Want the same for yourself. Be the motivation you’ve been looking for!
