When You’re Feeling Self-Doubt & a Lack of Motivation

This morning I didn’t feel like doing anything.
I couldn’t motivate myself to do anything important this. And I just felt bad in general.
Should I just forget about today? Should I just give up what I do, because I’m not as good at it as I thought I was?


That was definitely what I was considering. But I knew this mild depression was temporary, and so I thought about possible solutions. And then some of them actually worked — little tricks of the mind that can have a real effect on reality.


Here’s what I did that worked, in hopes that it might help you if these feelings ever come up..


1. I stopped being so self-centered.
I think we all have the tendency to put ourselves at the center of the universe, and see everything from the viewpoint of how it affects us.


 So instead of worrying so much about myself, I thought about other people I might help. Finding small ways to help others gets me out of my self-centered thinking, and then I’m not wallowing in self-pity anymore.


2. I loosened my identity.
We all have this picture of ourselves, this idea of what kind of person we are. When this idea gets threatened, we can react very defensively.
My solution was to realize that I’m not one thing. I’m not always productive — sometimes I am, but sometimes I’m lazy. I’m not always motivated — sometimes I am, but other times I don’t feel like working. I don’t always have good ideas. Then it doesn’t matter if someone thinks I didn’t do a good job — because I don’t always do a good job. I make mistakes, I am less than perfect. And that’s perfectly OK.


3. I remembered that this day counts.
I only have so many days left on earth. I don’t know how many that is, but I do know it’s a very limited number. I know that each one of those limited days is a gift, a blessing, a miracle.

Sometimes taking a break to nourish yourself is a worthwhile activity, because that allows you to do other worthwhile things, but just sitting around in self-pity isn’t helpful, I’ve found. So I got up and did something.


I know some of you feel the same way from time to time, maybe more often than you’d like to admit. That’s OK. We all do. We are not machines, We are human, which means we falter, we doubt, we feel pain.


And this too shall pass.

‘Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.’ ~Helen Keller