You might be feeling emotionally or physically down like there’s no motivation to do anything like sleeping late, spending more time now with social media or watching movies at night, losing that drive to exercise and using food to temporarily make you feel good. However, reverting to unhealthy habits will just worsen the situation. No matter what the causes are and how overwhelming your feelings may be, you should tell yourself that you can always surpass this challenge and move on with your life. Soon enough, everything will be okay again.
Focus on the things that you have control over. Do your best to stay physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally healthy so you can positively influence and give more to others while being a good role model. It’s hard to give if you are emotionally and physically drained. It all starts from within.
But how can you really motivate yourself to keep going?
Manage your time and be productive
Spending too much time internalizing negativity around you won’t do any good for your mental and physical health because it can seriously affect your sleep, drive to move and exercise. If you can devote two hours of your time to combined social media and watching a TV series, you can definitely spare two hours of your time for more productive activities that can make you feel better. Fill your unproductive hours with activities that can motivate you to make your goals and dreams happen.
- Learn something new every day. You can spend 30 to 60 minutes of your day reading, listening and/or watching something that stimulates your passion. I always look forward to cooking our dinner because I also use the time (between 30 to 45 minutes) to listen to audiobooks about motivation and personal growth, or recorded health and wellness conference sessions. You can also do your daily learning sessions while doing sustained cardio exercises like brisk walking, running or cycling.
- Spend 15 to 30 minutes to review your day and write down your accomplishments. Your productivity can empower you to keep on going despite the challenges.
- Write down your dreams and baby projects. Enumerate the steps on how you can achieve this, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. Daily progress can motivate you and uplift your spirits. Start small, then progress and achieve your dreams.
- Productivity is also about keeping the balance between work and home. So stay in touch with your loved ones. Hug your kids daily. Have a 10 to 15-minute video call with your parents. Spend weekend date nights with your spouse. Schedule a family weekend trip once a month. They will always inspire you to be a productive person and their existence will remind you of your ultimate purpose in life.
Recognize and resolve emotional eating
Be aware of how you are reacting to unfavorable issues – how your problems are affecting you physically and emotionally. Feeling stressed and discouraged about unexpected circumstances that just happened to you can trigger emotional eating, which can lead to health issues. This is when you resort to calorie-rich foods (cookies, cakes, pizza, chips, pastries) for comfort so you can temporarily suppress negative emotions such as anger, sadness, fear, boredom, and stress. Do not let your negative feelings pull you down. There are effective ways how to deal with this.
- Take some time to breathe and acknowledge your negative emotions at the moment then write down your thoughts or just be with strong and positive people who can lift your spirits up
- Set new goals for yourself. You can also start a short-term countdown before a much-awaited life event like your birthday, a mid-year celebration, or an anniversary. Regularly revisit your calendar and check your progress.
- Think of the consequences that will happen if you always give in to emotional eating – feeling worse after the eating episode and putting more time and work just to burn the extra calories
- Start doing something good for yourself like a getting massage, regular meditation, and a visit to the salon.
- Restart your eating lifestyle. Go out and shop for healthy food and consider practicing a plant-based way of eating most of the time.
- Stay away from social media if it just makes you feel bad. Look for the success stories of inspiring people who can inspire you to move forward.
- Try workouts that can uplift your spirits such as online or live classes that incorporate motivational words and stories during the session.
- Watch inspiring videos and listen to audiobooks that can make you love life.
Battle laziness
Laziness can increase your sluggishness. Exercise can give you that positive energy you’ve always wanted to have because of the desired positive feelings from the endorphins and knowing that you are doing something good for yourself. But how do you start moving if you are feeling really down right now? Just to move and you will feel definitely better after. Here are some ways on how to make it happen.
- Think good things that can happen if you exercise- you will burn extra calories (avoid weight gain), you will produce good hormones, you will improve your body composition and you can extend your lifespan.
- Think of the unfavorable things that can happen if you don’t exercise – you will delay your weight and health goals and you will experience a decline in your energy and fitness level.
- Be with energetic and positive people that can influence you to enjoy movement and love life.
- Ask help and support of someone who can guide you with your fitness journey. Try to talk to a fitness or wellness coach.
- Don’t wait for next week or tomorrow because it will be harder to restart. What excuses do you have right now?
-No time and busy? If you can make time to lie down and watch, you can also spend 30 minutes moving.
– Tired today? You will always get tired if you don’t start moving now. You can spend 30 minutes walking, make it fun by being with someone, or calling a friend while you walk.
-Feeling bad? You’ll feel worse if you don’t start doing something good for your health today
Experience your blessings
You have the greatest opportunity to do something great right now because you are in control of your life. Recognize your strengths and contemplate them. A failure or a negative feeling is just a small part of the bigger positive picture. It is time to count and fully experience your blessings.
- Your loved ones- kiss and hug them and tell them things that can uplift their moods.
- Your health- you are free from diseases, you can freely move. Don’t be lazy, just go out and run or join a class and sweat it out.
- Your money- spend on good foods that will nourish your body. You are what you eat. Don’t wait for the time to come only to know that your blood tests will require you to take more medicines and your physical exam will require you to undergo more medical tests.
- Your house – take advantage of the situation to get a good sleep. Recovery is so important so you can function well every day.
- Technology- Use social media to inspire people. Write something that will touch the lives of people around you. Post stories that can motivate others to move on and not make others feel bad. Sharing something good about yourself, your stories, or about others can also make you feel good. Your positive influence contributes to others’ positive feelings, and realizations are more powerful as compared to giving others material things or money.
Email the author at mitchfelipe@gmail.com or follow her on Instagram @mitchfelipemendoza