When You Are Tired and Have No Motivation

Being Successful Through Habits and Rituals

Every parent knows the feeling of being bone-tired and exhausted. You probably know it even more so when you are a single parent.

We get up early in the morning, get the kids ready, who cooperate to 60% on a good day and not at all on many days.

Finally, you have them out of bed, two different socks on, lucky they are wearing shoes to school and stuffing their face with food that they earlier declined to eat because it was too much of this or too little of that.

This almost sounds like the beginning of a comedy. For many parents, this or versions of this are a reality.

Then you get ready to go to work. If you happen to be in a pandemic like we are right now you might even enjoy the questionable pleasure of home-schooling, managing your kid’s schedules, and at the same time pretend to be productive at work.

Evening rolls around eventually, thank God. You cook, if you can call shoving chicken nuggets in the oven cooking, and then proceed to feed the monsters who disgustedly look at the food and proceed to tell you that this is the 4th day in a row of chicken nuggets, and regardless of their various shapes, are still chicken nuggets.

After threatening the kids with eating this or going hungry, they consume the food and start screaming for dessert. Exhausted, you give in, waving them off and telling them to get something, not even bothering to check what they are eating. You are done, spent, and exhausted.

You let the digital babysitter also known as iPad take over and watch a show on Netflix.

Ironically you chose one that is a docu-drama on being healthy, fit, and all that jazz.

You look down at your belly and thighs…yeah…it has been a while since your last regular routine and you resemble the Pillsbury Dough Boy more than a fit mom or dad. You start wondering if you even squeak when someone pokes your belly.

You don’t remember the last time you felt sexy or good about your body….

Determined, you decide after finishing the motivational docu-drama that tomorrow you will make a change. You will get up 30 minutes earlier and do your workout.

You end up going to bed and before you know it your alarm clock rings. You look at it in confusion. Why was it going off 30 minutes early? Then you remember…the workout routine.

Yeah, not happening. You feel like a semi rolled over you and proceeded to go back and forth a couple of times for good measure. Maybe tomorrow will be the day.

Maybe the story above is slightly exaggerated but chances are that you have experienced some of those things, depending on where you are in parenthood, work, etc.

It can be really tough to get going, to get anything done when you seem to not have any time to begin with.

You know deep inside that if you were just motivated enough you would do it.

Truth is: motivation does not get you very far.

Motivation is more like kindling in the fire. It does not last but it provides enough of a spark that a great fire can ensue if you treat it right and fuel it correctly.

What needs to happen for you to truly change something in your life?

Two primary conditions need to be filled for a permanent change to happen. The first one is pain and the second one is a vision or future.

No worries, I am not telling you that you need to put needles in your eyeballs and hope that the following pain will give you visions.

What I mean with that is simple:

We are driven by pain, fear, etc. If you fear for your life because a lion is after your rather round, juicy butt then you will run, and faster than you should be able to.

After getting chased several times by a lion and only narrowly avoiding becoming a chew toy, you envision having a house to stay safely inside so you can flip the lion off from the inside and tell him to go fuck himself, while you are chilling on the couch eating delicious food.

How does this compare to you in your current situation?

What is your Pain

Make a list of your pain points, which could go like this:

I am constantly tired and exhausted
I have to take medication to control my appetite
I am afraid that my partner no longer finds me attractive
I will not go out and date because I am afraid to be turned down
I am not doing so well sexually…not interested in it, or my equipment not working as described in the manual
I have no energy to play with my kids or don’t feel like it (the needles and eye thing sound better than playing)
I have been increasingly taking medication and it is negatively impacting me (sometimes literally)
My back, knees,hips, etc. constantly hurt and it is harder to keep up with my kids
I don’t really love my partner anymore
I am in an abusive relationship
I am the abuser in my relationship
I am no longer in control of my drinking/eating, etc.

Now, I know it is not fun to dive into this shit. Hell, I am the same way. I don’t want to dwell on what is not right with my life but growth rarely comes by sticking our head in the sand, you just have sand in your teeth and we all have been toddlers and tried that at some point…well I have 🙂 and it’s not pleasant.

If you want to change, you have to face the music, plain and simple. No more procrastination, no more pretending everything is okay.

Luckily, there is a silver lining because now we dive into the stuff you want, desire, and are passionate about

When was the last time you dreamed?

The last time you considered what you want for yourself, your kids, your family instead of just going through the daily grind and routine?

I am an excellent grinder and a shitty dreamer. I am just being honest here. Head down, going into grind mode and when my head pops back up I realize I ended up in a thousand miles away from my goals. Certainly not where I wanted to go. Why? Because I did not check in with what I really wanted and create the game plan for it.

What is your Vision?

Now it is about who you want to become. This is the exciting part! I believe that you should have one hero and one hero only. That hero should be you in five or ten years. No, I don’t need you to be a narcissist but I need you to believe in yourself and what you can accomplish and love yourself. You will be authentic and amazing versus a knock off of some celebrity you follow.

Here is the next step in your life. You can look at other people and find examples if you struggle with seeing yourself there, but I want you to be your own hero in the end.

To start creating your vision, make a list of the things you want to be like and want to have. Here are some examples:

I am a partner in a loving, honest, and passionate relationship
I have a deep connection with my kids and spend quality time with them
I am lean and healthy, and free of medication
I have the energy to do the things I want in my life
I wake up feeling good
My sex drive/life is alive and well
I am kind, compassionate, and forgiving without neglecting my own personal needs

This is some powerful stuff right here. Now, what do you see up there? If you guessed a roadmap to success then boom you got it!

Here is how:

You can now formulate actions, rituals, and habits off the bullet points above to create your roadmap to success.

If you want to be a partner in a loving, honest, and passionate relationship, you will want to act like one.

Initially, it might feel weird, but let’s say you start listening to your partner, really listening and hearing what she or he has to say without getting butthurt every time something comes up that goes against your ego and insecurities. Instead, you just take note, think about it for 10-20 seconds, really take the time to think about it, and then answer.

You hire a babysitter and escape for an evening with dinner and passionate sex at a hotel, make the walls rattle with your passion, just you and him/her. The list goes on.

If you want to be lean and healthy, free of medication you have to act like a person who is that already. What habits do they have? Do they have pizza 2 days a week, 6 beers on the weekend followed by an average of 4 hours of Netflix a day? Most likely they see the pizza as an occasional treat, they work out 3-5 days a week, and make a point of maintaining an active lifestyle such as cycling, hiking, etc. They eat vegetables…you don’t like veggies? Well, get the fuck over it. You sound like my two-year old did. You are an adult, behave like one. Find solutions instead of problems by trying new recipes; make a point of having veggies again and again. It is sometimes an acquired taste, especially if your parents did not make an effort and you never learned to eat your veggies. Don’t expect it to change in a week, or a month, but over the course of many weeks, months and years.

Rituals Succeed Where Motivation Fails

You might ask yourself how people are constantly motivated to do and change things. Out of experience, I can tell you that they are not. I am certainly not and my field is fitness. If you think that I want to get my ass up between 4:30 and 5 am every morning to work out before starting a 13 hour day, you are mistaken.

So what lets me succeed where other people fail? Simple rituals and habits do the trick. We all have them. Good and bad ones!

I know I get up in the morning, I work out and start my day. I have plenty of bad habits too, like procrastinating social media postings for my company, doing books, gaming later than I should at night, etc.

I continuously work on my habits and rituals and I FAIL OFTEN to implement new ones. It is not a matter of failing but a matter of restarting, doing it again. The shorter the time between you failing and you getting up is, the more likely you are going to succeed.

Habits and rituals take time to establish. Think of them as paths in a grassy field. Initially, the grass is untouched, no one has walked through it. If you walk through it once you will see the faint outlines of a path for a couple of hours, maybe a day, and the grass will stand tall again.

When you walk the same path thousands of times you have a well-worn ground, devoid of grass. It becomes easier to navigate and takes less time to maneuver.

It is the same with your habits and rituals. It takes time to form those and while you form them you will wander off the path many times but eventually, you will get it.

How to form successful rituals

If you want to form a successful ritual you want to start with something easy and build a string of successes.

If your goal is to do something physical every day during the week you might start with going to bed 15-20 min earlier and getting up 15-20 min earlier (you did not think you would get away with just adding shit to your already busy calendar, did you?). You do some squats, some push-ups, a couple of planks, and throw in some rows with dumbbells, bands, or whatever you have. After that, you walk up and down the road while your kids are asleep. If you do that 4-5 days a week you have exercised that week for 75-100 minutes. Mind-blowingly easy!

I can already hear the objections.

I don’t have dumbbells
I don’t have bands
I don’t have a street I can walk on
My kids won’t let me walk, what if they wake up

This was an example. Your situation is different. Stop the excuses and start with the solutions. Just start. Set the threshold low to reduce your failure rate and when you fall off the wagon, because you will, everyone does, get over it! Forget the guilt trip, it is entirely useless and does nothing to change anything. Remember, it already happened, time to move on. Restart.

Time for your action plan! Write below or just for yourself in your journal what are your pains, your visions and what habits do you need to have to make it happen!