The payoff of "being" unmotivated

A framework for understanding your lack of motivation and what you can do to reverse it

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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to “be unmotivated”. The major bone that I have to pick is with the first part of the phrase — the state of being.

I know that what I am is pure consciousness, and that this consciousness is simply living in this body at this point in time (whatever time is, anyway) , so how can I be anything else, let alone something like “unmotivated”? I scrunch up my nose at the thought. It feels gross and icky and like it doesn’t belong. Not the unmotivated part (we’ll get to that later), just the being part. For me personally, it’s almost like it’s tantamount to negative self-talk because I know who I am and what I am at my core, and “unmotivation” I am not.

But lack of motivation is familiar to everyone. We’ve all experienced it at one point or another, sometimes more frequently and intensely than we’d like to admit. It is certainly a Real Thing that is part of the human condition, so we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist, dismiss it entirely, or emotionally posture AKA deny that we feel shitty when we experience a lack of motivation.

The good news is that this lack of motivation is usually temporary. It’s fleeting, like feelings can be. So perhaps a better way of describing this temporary state is that we experience a “state of unmotivation” — and yes, I made up that word! 🙃 It’s important to clarify that while this state comes addled with feelings (anger, contempt, guilt, embarrassment, hopelessness), I do not equate it to a feeling itself, though sometimes we say we “feel unmotivated”. Describing unmotivation as a temporary state seems to be a more appropriate description which takes into account both the negative feelings associated with it as well as its fleeting nature. The language we use to talk to ourselves impacts our self-perception, so I found that reframing unmotivation to a “state we experience” vs. a “state of being” was an important first step before I dove into the payoff of unmotivation.

If we can experience and opt into states of awe consistently, why can’t we experience and opt into motivation more consistently? Why can’t we just opt out of unmotivation? Well, I believe that we can, and I need you to suspend disbelief for a moment while I take you through one reason why we opt into it. This is me, Aladdin, asking you to trust me on this one:

At the end of the unmotivation rainbow, your payoff isn’t a pot of gold, but safety.

You’re probably wondering how the hell unmotivation is linked to you feeling safe, and why that even matters. But let’s pretend that you’re experiencing unmotivation at the moment, or go back to a time when you did feel it. Here’s what happens:

1. You sense the state of unmotivation coming on. It’s unmistakable. No matter whether it creeps in slowly or suddenly hits you like a ton of bricks — it’s arriving, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it (not yet at least).

2. The direct outcome or result of unmotivation is you not doing The Thing: launching the blog, taking the new opportunity, kicking off some research, whatever. It doesn’t really matter what The Thing is — what’s important is that it’s just not going to get done.

3. Not doing The Thing comes with a negative emotional payload — anger, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, guilt, hate, sadness. Your conscious mind is acutely aware of how heavy the payload feels. As if not executing was bad enough, now you have all this other cognitive and emotional overhead to deal with. Great.

4. In the meantime, your subconscious mind sees the light at the end of the tunnel: there’s a payoff within sight. Not doing The Thing means you avoid a TON of really “unpleasant” stuff, like responsibility, accountability, and importantly, judgment. When we are judged through a negative lens, we feel frustration, anger, hate, hurt, insecurity, or despair.

5. Judgment can be perceived as a direct threat to our value, or how we perceive ourselves. The thinking goes like this: “I already feel worthless. I can’t open up myself (by my own hand no less) to even more validation of this from the outside world, so I’m just not going to do The Thing”.

6. And so the threat is eliminated. We accept this momentary or fleeting state of unmotivation because its negative emotional payload is far easier to deal with than that of the direct threat to our value, our meaning for existing.

Everything is linked to patterns, and the pattern of believing that you’re worthless or not valuable runs deep within so many people, which is why unmotivation is so ubiquitous and an inexorable part of the human condition. So what can we do to opt out of it?

The first step is reflecting on what the payoff of unmotivation is for you. Is it tied to a pattern of worthlessness? You can stress-test the pattern if you meditate and reflect on situations or experiences that bring up feelings of intense anger, frustration, or sadness. Follow the feeling and keep asking yourself why you felt that way. Usually the pattern has something to do with fear of something, for example:

I fear judgment because being judged negatively means I’m worthless/incompetent/useless.

If you think you’ve uncovered the pattern, say the sentence above out loud but replace the bold parts with the relevant key words. Now that you’ve done the analytical/technical part, focus on what you feel in your heart space. How does repeating this false belief out loud make you feel? What specific emotions come up and where do you feel them?

This method of speaking the false belief out loud has worked to incredible effect. I once suspected that my friend held a false belief about herself that was similar to the one above, and when I stated it out loud, she was moved to tears. If that’s the case for you as well (as it is for all of us in one way or another), then it becomes an area of focus for your inner work.

So the next time you experience unmotivation, you’ll be less concerned with all the external “stuff” and The Thing that supposedly doesn’t want to Get Done, and you’ll focus your attention inward. You’ll say, “Ah, there’s that pattern again,” you’ll feel into the moment, surrender to all the negative feelings and emotions, release them, and free yourself to opt into motivation.