F**k It

I said a little while ago I was working on putting motivational techniques into place and playing guinea pig to them to see if/which have any positive effects towards productivity. I had even written up the framework of the post that I would eventually share after a fair amount of time to give the techniques a chance to sink in.

There is one fundamentally huge obstacle in the way though. You need to be motivated to make motivational changes. They didn't think that one through properly eh? It's true that to make a change you have to really want to do it like with all the classics such as getting fit or giving up smoking. It is easy if you have the will power and enough Winston Churchill determination bubbling inside of yourself. However, as much as I want and need to make these fairly small alterations in life my enthusiasm peaked within a few hours of thinking the idea and it's slipped ever since.

So how do you motivate yourself to be motivated? Or encourage yourself to do something despite the anxiety, depression, fear, whatever it is that's mentally standing in your way?
One book that I read about a year ago by John C Parkin is  "Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way" Now don't be thrown off by the word spiritual if like me you don't have religious or spiritual beliefs because the book is actually pretty logical the whole way through. It's more life coaching than enlightenment. The underlying message is incredibly simple, just say fuck it.

The Way of F**k It by John C Parkin

The way it teaches you to be able to let go of your worries is to remove your attachments and the importance of things from whatever it is you're worried about and to realise in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter. It basically teaches you not to care. It sounds counter intuitive but it makes sense when you read the book, which I suggest you do, because when you take away the attachment to what it is you want to do and stop caring about the end result you actually have more confidence to do that thing! For example, in a job situation if you put too much pressure and meaning to success you often overthink everything that could go wrong and reasons why it might be better for you not to try at all and in the end caring so much about it stops you doing it. Whereas if you don't care, what could possibly go wrong!? You're more likely to give it a go. A popular theory in behavioural psychology is that we only have two innate fears, falling and loud noises, whilst everything else is picked up along the way.

For all intents and purposes those are two of the only things that should stop us moving forward and even those two things don't seem to be lifelong drawbacks when people enjoy skydiving or happily stand right next to the speakers at Glastonbury. I'm not simplifying phobias as that's a little off topic and incredibly difficult to overcome at times, if you chased me around with a massive spider in your hands I would scream and cry (yes it's irrational but then haven't we just determined that most phobias and fears are?)
How all this applies to the beginning point of motivating yourself out of a slump is that you have to say fuck it to whatever put you in that slump. Don't bother working out what's wrong or what the cause is because you'll be there for a long time just thinking yourself into a bigger rut. So the immediate solution I see and one that will probably be the best and longest lasting solution is to take the lesson from John C Parkin, Nike and any famous pre-battle/sports game movie speeches and feel inspired to take some action. Forget all of the problems your brain can think of to stop you doing it and imagine your mind as an annoying curious child constantly tugging on your top and asking "Why?" and "Are we there yet?". Eventually you'll realise it's so much easier to just blank it out.

Surely the desired result of inspiring someone is to motivate them to take action? Inspiration without action will always just be an idea.
Cue the posters: