Many of the articles I write here are because when I struggle with something I know there are others who are as well. I know that my problems aren’t unique to me.
By sharing what I’m struggling with and what I’m doing to improve, I know it’ll help others.
Right now I’m struggling with being in a funk. I’m not that motivated to do much except what I normally do to waste time (social media, internet, play video games, watch TV.) I don’t know what to focus on and when I am ready to focus, I check my phone every few minutes.
I spend most of my day feeling busy but I’m not getting much done.
As I write this now, I think back to what got me to this point and I think I know. I also know what I’m doing to get out of this funk.
A law of physics says that an object stays in motion until acted upon by an outside force. So when we’re in motion, it’s easy for us to keep going unless something stops us. We’re like a train going full speed. It’s going to take a huge force to stop our momentum.
Once we’re stopped, however, we stay stopped until acted upon an outside force that gets us back into motion. Getting back into motion can be difficult.
I was on a roll in December. It was a month focused on holiday sales for my Shopify store. Every day I knew exactly what I needed to do. I spent every day working in the business, optimizing Facebook ads, sending out email promos, and making sure orders were getting shipped out. It paid off and my online store did $105,000 in gross sales during December.
Then once January started the sales slowed down. People weren’t spending as much money. I turned off a lot of ads. It left me with extra time since I wasn’t spending it on the store.
So January began with myself wondering what project I wanted to focus on next. As I wrote about in my last article, I didn’t want to spend 2019 doing the same thing the whole year.
I was ready to start 2019 on a high note. I was highly motivated. I was ready to play big this year then I had an outside force stop all the momentum I had.
The first week of January I had a stomach virus that hit me hard. Then the virus left me weak and tired for about a week. I never had symptoms like that before.
Once I felt better, I didn’t have the motivation to do much. I was not in motion, so it was hard for me to get back into motion. Also we’re in the process of remodeling a new house and spending a lot of time going to the store to buy things, painting, and putting together furniture.
That left me little time for my dreams and goals for 2019. I certainly could have done it in the mornings, but I got lazy and that meant spending mornings wasting time instead.
I didn’t want to stay on that path. I had to push myself into motion. I could not wait to be motivated anymore. That’s when I decided that I’m going to start the year by going back and doing something I miss.
I miss writing here. I miss writing in general. It’s a creative outlet that I’ve neglected.
I needed to get back into motion and I decided that daily writing was going to be what I focused on for now.
The goal for now is just to write daily and publish one article every Monday. Even if it’s just a 300 word article I’m going to publish it.
What I’m focused on it being consistent. That’s it. It’s not growing my subscriber list right now. It’s not writing the perfect article. It’s just doing it and doing it consistently.
I know consistency is how I will improve as a writer and also build up that momentum in my life that stopped.
I was tired of waiting to be motivated and instead have to take matters into my own hands.
Writing gives me something to do almost every day. I’m doing something that I enjoy. It’s something that I want to get better at also.
January hasn’t gone as I planned. The stomach virus was unexpected and a lot of time driving and doing house work. But I didn’t want to waste it and not do anything that I wanted to do this month. I also did not want to put it off and start February 1.
So this is my plan to get back into motion and at least be doing something that’s productive and personal to me.
Choose one thing to start
If you have no idea what you want to do, just do something. It’s better to do something small than do nothing at all.
I encourage you to find something that you can do. It doesn’t have to be anything that takes a lot of time.
Here are some tips that might help you decide:
- It brings joy
- It relaxes you
- It improves you in some way
- You learn something
Don’t choose something that you will dread doing. That will only make you not do it and you go back to doing nothing.
This is not something you need to spend hours on each day. If it just takes 10 minutes then that’s fine. Remember that it’s better to do something small than to do nothing at all.
I know inside of you there is something you have been wanting to do. Maybe it’s learn a musical instrument. Maybe it’s join a local class. Last year I took a class on cake decorating for fun.
Maybe there’s something you haven’t done in a long time but you want to get back into it. That’s what I’m doing with writing.
Pick one thing and choose a time frame of how long you will commit to it. Doing it for a month is a good start. You’re not committing to this for the rest of the year. It’s not permanent so don’t spend days or weeks deciding. If you want to change it at any time then that is fine.
It’s also good because you might think you enjoy doing something, but once you actually do it you realize you don’t like it as much. That’s okay. It means you learned something about yourself and you move on to the next thing.
You’re just committing to it now so that you’re doing something. You’re putting yourself into motion. You’re not waiting for the right time. You’re not waiting to be motivated either.
So what will you choose? I would love to know so leave a comment below.
