I don’t know about you but during this lockdown especially I’ve struggled a bit with motivating myself to do – anything – at times.
How frustrating is it to feel so demotivated and frustrated by all the things that you may have wanted to do for ages. Then find that even if you now have time on your hands doing them feels pointless, or maybe just because the time seems to be stretching endlessly before us; it’s just hard to feel any urgency about doing them and so they get put off for very different reasons than before.
When I was dwelling on this a bit this morning I was reminded of a Taylor Dane quote ‘I just try to get out of my own way, because if anyone is their own worst enemy, it’s usually you’; and I thought, yep, that’s me at the moment – ugh!
So – what to do about it? Well, I guess taking one thing at a time and dealing with it might at least get me moving in the right direction again, so I made a bit of a list of things that I am feeling a bit frustrated and demoralised about not being able to do or simply not being motivated to do and I separated them into those two categories for myself. Simply writing them down that way made me feel a bit less frustrated with myself and helped me to look at them more objectively instead of letting them merge into one big negative.
I set aside the things that I am unable to do due to lockdown restrictions and then spent a few minutes prioritising the things that I simply haven’t been bothered enough to do in the last couple of days or weeks. I considered which ones would give me a couple of easy wins to get me feeling a bit more positive about myself and then set myself an easy to reach goal of doing one of those each day until my list is clear. We’ll see how that goes.
It’s so important for us to keep our sense of worth especially if we are missing out on social interaction with others. Thinking about how we may compensate for that reminded me of something that psychiatrist Karl Jung said some time ago: ‘We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.’
Acceptance of the current situation can be a real challenge when life is so different for many of us and we are thwarted in our usual ways of distracting ourselves but it is possible with a bit of consideration on our part. Jung was right I think when he said that condemnation oppresses. I have often found that resenting something and using up my energy cursing something I have no control over changing simply makes me feel ten times worse. So I decided instead of letting lockdown get me down, I would get out of my own way and do one thing each day to give me a purpose.
If you’re feeling a bit purposeless and you’d like to talk to a chaplain you are very welcome to call or text me directly on my mobile: 07526 378529. Alternatively you can email info@mite.org.uk and request a call back.
We have a range of resources on our web-site including some that are more specific to the Covid-19 outbreak and some that help in dealing with stress: https://mite.org.uk/quietspace and you can find other resources on Mental Health Matters and in this TED talk How to be kinder to yourself amongst many other online offerings that will come up in any Google search.
If you prefer you can easily keep in touch with us on social media:
Facebook: @mitechaplaincy Twitter: @mitesthwarr
