Members of The Edge group have been discussing some issues with motivation.
Alison Jaskiewicz photo.
I wish to observe it is tough to bloom when you are buried.
Alison Jaskiewicz photo.
Not impossible, of course, but it looks different.
Thanks, Alison!
As it should.
The strange thing would be if we felt perfectly normal in these abnormal times.
So what do we do?
Morning in Montana has been a bit rough. Harper B for Breakfast Heave Ho has been throwing up and the internet keeps quitting on me when I work in my home office.
Both of these things are problematic and concerning, of course, but I observe my reactions are bigger than is warranted — under normal circumstances, that is.
But these are not normal times.
Bigger reactions is the New Normal — I understand that and it doesn’t concern me. I just know to talk myself down. Harper likely isn’t dying and my class at 8:00 a.m. WILL be okay — even if I have to use my iPhone to do it.
And so the first thing I suggest for flagging motivation is to just accept it as part of the New Normal. Do not make it worse by imagining there is something amiss.
There isn’t.
You continue to achieve by making it through each day. YAY YOU!
My second suggestion comes from #sparklespickups.
Sparkle is unconcerned by Covid-19 and appreciates that I am now home 24/7. This makes it so much easier to trade cookies for “stuff”!
I decided this morning to make Sparkle’s deliveries a prompt for a new habit (based on the Tiny Habits book).
Every time Sparkle delivers an item, I will ask her (and the dog[s] with her) to do one additional behavior before handing over a cookie.
Just one behavior — nothing crazy. Like “down,” cookie, release word.
I can do that.
And so I am accepting the lack of motivation as a temporary New Normal, and giving myself a micro-ized “solution” so that I do not feel as if all is lost.
That is Dialing Back. Doing and expecting and ACCEPTING less because we are doing so much more.
Harper and Daisy
Hang on, Friends.
We got this.