The Truth About Motivation

Resources and links mentioned:

Register for my free mini-masterclass, 3 Steps to Beautifully Banish Burnout here: https://www.wholeassistant.com/3-steps-to-beautifully-banish-burnout-registration

 Connect with me on LinkedIn here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annie-croner

Join our FB Community, Assistants Who Self-Care, here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WholeAssistant

Check out the video transcript:

Do you ever get frustrated with yourself for feeling unmotivated? If so, stay tuned. I'm going to share with you why motivation is completely overrated. Assistants, if you would like more self-care and productivity strategies geared towards you, please subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when my weekly videos go live. I'm Annie Croner of wholeassistant.com. On this season of a Whole Assistant show, we're breaking down simple mindset shifts that can help us overcome limitations.

In today's episode, I'm going to share with you why waiting to feel motivated is a losing strategy, and what to do instead. Getting things accomplished, getting them done, and off of our plate is more about mind management than it is about motivation. So there are two parts of our brain. There's our primal brain, which loves instant gratification. So things like donuts and the instant gratification of watching Netflix or whatnot. And then there's the prefrontal cortex, which loves setting and accomplishing goals.

We need to manage our brain such that the prefrontal cortex is running the show. Please leave a comment below sharing what excuse your primitive brain gives you for not accomplishing your tasks and goals. The question then becomes, how do we overcome our primitive brain in order to take action and accomplish something? We overcome our primitive brain by creating a predetermined plan of action. So writing things in your calendar is the best way to do this. I like to schedule my time so that I know what's coming next and my brain can prepare itself for the task ahead.

Now, your primitive brain will probably go nuts when you first start this process and the whole of the primitive brain will never fully go away. But once you start accomplishing things, then your prefrontal cortex will get really excited about that. And then you're going to want to accomplish more and more. And it's a snowball effect, once you start accomplishing things, then you accomplish more and more. You get the dopamine hits, everything just intends to fall in line and you're on a roll.

So, that's how we move past our primitive brain. That's how we move past the idea that we need motivation in order to get started and in order to accomplish something. And this is how we actually generate the emotion of feeling motivated is by actually accomplishing something. And then that leads to more accomplishment. And then that leads to more motivation, which leads to another accomplishment, to more motivation. Now, keeping in mind that you do not need that motivation to actually get things done and accomplished and off your plate.

Now, you know the truth about motivation that it's just an emotion. And then if we wait to take action, we may be waiting a very long time. Now I want to hear from you guys, what is one goal you intend to take action on regardless of whether or not you're feeling the emotion of motivation? If you're interested in avoiding burnout and developing better self-care strategies, please check out my free mini masterclass, three steps to beautifully manage burnout. The link is below.

To continue the discussion and receive support from your fellow assistants, head on over to facebook.com/groups/wholeassistant and join our assistants only community. If you liked this episode, please let me know by hitting the like button below. Also, be sure to subscribe and share this video with your fellow assistants and administrative professionals. And last but not least, if this video has helped you in some way, I want to hear about it. So please leave a comment below sharing how.

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