What Kills Your Motivation?

Written by - 18 Comments
Categories: self improvement

It changed my perspective entirely when I took the time to identify the motivation killers in my life.

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to write a teen fiction book. Besides my love for writing, the primary motivation behind my goal has always been to create an original story that sucks young people in and gets them excited to turn to the next page. A secondary motivation is to have a means of bringing truth and encouragement to teenagers in a day and age where they face such unique challenges. Yet another motivation behind this goal was a desire to create something lasting and tangible to leave behind me after I pass away.

As noble as these motivations are, years went by and I made little progress on the book. I recently had the startling revelation that I must be allowing certain things in my life to kill my motivation. So I made a list of the things that were holding me back from accomplishing my goals. This is what my list looked like.

My 4 Motivation Killers:

1.)   Social networking. For starters, I spent hours on Facebook and wasted valuable time I could be spending writing my book. But that’s not the real reason social networking is a motivation killer for me. By the time I finish reading all of my family and friends’ status updates, I am usually left processing other people’s thoughts, frustrations, goals and successes instead of focusing my energy on my own thoughts and motivation. All my creative energy starts channeling into solving and mulling over my friends’ mini-crises and I never end up channeling that creative energy into my book.

2.)   Fear of failure. The fear here is that it won’t matter if I finish the book because it will only be rejected by every literary agent and publishing house in the country.

3.)   Fear of my work being snubbed. The fear here is that even if I get the book published, no one will like it and I will get all this hate mail telling me what a lame book I wrote.

4.)   Lack of support. My closest friends are neither readers nor writers so it’s a big motivation killer when I share my goals of writing a book or try to get a friend to read a rough draft of a chapter and I am met with very little enthusiasm.

Once I had identified the things that were holding me back, I was finally able to do what I could to overcome these motivation killers and get back to my original goal. First, I cut back my social networking significantly (no easy task for the Facebook addict) and I began using the time I normally spent on Facebook to pour over online writers’ forums and connect with like-minded people who would help motivate me to finish what I started.

Secondly, I acknowledged that my fear of failure and fear of being snubbed were irrational. If I produced a quality manuscript that fit with what a literary agent is looking for, then it would get accepted and could later be enjoyed by the age group I care so much about. But you can’t create a quality piece of work if you reject yourself before anyone else has even gotten the chance to reject your work. Rejection from literary agents may be commonplace but it’s also commonplace for successful authors to have their work rejected repeatedly before finding a literary agent and publishing house that see the work for what it is—an excellent story. As for the critics I will face one day? Well, they’re simply not as important as the ones who will truly enjoy the book.

Ideas are flowing and the book is progressing again for the first time in years. And just think—all I had to do was find a way to kill my own motivation-killers.

This guest post is contributed by Kitty Holman, who writes on the topics of nursing schools.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: kitty.holman20@gmail.com.

Don’t Forget To Follow PickTheBrain On Twitter!

Related Articles:

How To Increase Self Discipline

How To Motivate Yourself

Want to feel great every single week? NOW YOU CAN!

Tags: , , , , , , ,

  • Pingback: Tweets that mention What Kills Your Motivation? | PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement -- Topsy.com

  • http://hanofharmony.com The Vizier

    Hi Kitty,

    This is an interesting and important look at the topic of motivation. Your story on motivation killers has caused me to re-evaluate my routine to see if there are any motivation killers which I have been blind to.

    The fear of failure is an all too common fear which can demotivate and disempower us. But in truth, failure is the path to success. Failure alerts you to something that you are doing ineffectively. This means you just have to adjust your actions until you get the desired results you want. If we accept that failure is part and parcel of success, then we will be more willing to face it and to learn from it. As long as you remember to focus on the solutions, you will reach your goals.

    There are many distractions that we face in life which could easily destroy our motivation. This is why we need to be aware of these distractions before we can deal with them.

    Thank you for sharing this post.

  • Pingback: Goodbye, Facebook | mcclanahoochie's blog

  • http://www.balancedworklife.com/blog Bryce Christiansen

    Kitty that was an awesome post. Thanks for sharing.

    I find it funny and completely relate to your first point on social media. Sometimes people tend to use it as a venting tool, which very reasonably can cause the readers to take on some of the pain themselves.

    Another fear of motivation for me comes from, lack of immediate success. In the work I do, results aren’t instantaneous. It’s sometimes hard to keep pushing yourself when you aren’t getting super star results right away.

    Thanks again.

  • http://www.planetnaveen.com Naveen Kulkarni @ Winning Ideas

    Good mention.
    For creating work such as Writing, you need constant motivation coming from within. All the 4 points mentioned by you are indeed correct ones.

    Keep posting such articles

    You may want to check out a popular post on my Blog
    Why you should go back to older version of Life

  • http://www.andrzejkowasz.com Andrzej

    Hi Kitty!
    You want to write a book? Great to see a person with such goal. Let me write a few words in answer to your list:

    Social networking: it was a big killer for me too, until I made myself a promise, that when I do blog entry, I disable all messengers, FB and so on until I hit send on filezilla. I encourage you to do the same. No FB or even no net access until you’ll think “ok, no more writing for today”. These status updates are 99% trivia anyway, right?

    Fear of failure: the chance that first publishing house that you’ll send it will say “It’s great we take it!” are small. When the book will be ready and you’ll be ready to stop correcting it over and over again, you’ll be ready to get along with first few “no thanks, but it looks like one day you’ll be great, let’s keep in touch”. just keep resending it. It will come in print sooner or later :)

    Fear of my work being snubbed: It’s hardly possible to get all bad mails. Some people will approve and like your writing, after all if your book would be so bad, would anyone risk to print it? So when the book is printed it means that your publisher thinks it can be a success. And so should you. I’m glad to read that you understand that.

    Lack of support: common thing in every artist life. Our friends often don’t want to make us down so they praise our work or on the contrary they have a “better plan” for us and want us to do something else. It’s good to get a true answer from them but then we have to check if they’re right. After all – they’re human too ;)

    Keep your head up and keep writing. Your subconscious mind will in time start to help you with it and then it will all go much smoother.

    Keeping my fingers crossed
    Andrzej

  • http://www.theemotionmachine.com Steven

    Thanks for sharing Kitty. It is crazy how big of a role fear can play in our motivation. They are so intimately related, especially when we are trying to motivate ourselves to do something unfamiliar.

  • http://actroncp9190.com/ actron cp9190

    hello kitty.
    great post! gotta share this with my friends on twitter..
    thanks for sharing..

  • http://richlionhearted.blogspot.com Rich Proctor

    Great post Kitty.

    I think now may be a good time to take a good close look at the motivation killers which may be quietly holding me back.

    I can totally identify with the lack of support stumbling block. I have a deep passion for all things personal development – books, magazines, blogs, audio programs – you name it, I love it. My friends and family, on the other-hand, have almost no interest in the subject. Quite often my attempts to talk about the subject are met with some level of indifference. Talk about a motivation killer. If I am not vigilant with my own thoughts when this happens it can really take the wind out of my sails.

    Definitely food for thought. Thank you.

  • http://myselfimprovementjourney.com Kevin

    Hello Kitty,

    I find myself struggling with motivation issues all the time. All of the things you mentioned are definitely factors. However, recently I have discovered that my best cure for lack of motivation is through my own spirituality. I found that when I don’t spend time developing myself spiritually I really lose motivation and focus.

    I have been tracking my progress on mySelfImprovementJourney.com.

    Thanks and best wishes,
    -Kevin

  • http://www.transformationalmotivation.com/ M. A. Tohami

    connecting with like-minded people is a surefire tactic to maintain your motivation.

  • Pingback: Thrive Thursday |

  • http://www.zeepspace.com Bill

    WoW! This was great. I have been having issues with motivation and have tried to see what keeps me from achieving my goals. It seems like sometimes the task at hand (losing 80lbs). looks to daunting,to high of a mountain to climb. Thanks for this Kitty. Cheers and continued success!

  • http://internetmarketing.ricklapoint.com Rick LaPoint

    I was sent here by a friend, and before coming here was pretty motivated myself.

    But now I find myself worrying about you. And I’m not so sure about my own book anymore, too. It seemed like such a sure thing just a few minutes ago…

    I hardy spend any time on facebook, so I can’t cut that out. And I don’t have any friends, so the lack of support is kind of a lifestyle thing.

    I guess I’m just going to have to piggy-back on your motivators, Kitty. Hope you don’t mind the extra weight :-)

    Nice post.

    Rick

  • Pingback: Linkswitch #42: Photography, Bad Bosses, & Non-Profits

  • Pingback: Linkswitch #42: Photography, Bad Bosses, & Non-Profits | Web Design Northamptonshire

  • http://www.arinanikitina.com/ arina nikitina

    Hi, Kitty! Just wanted to drop my words of appreciation for the ideas to always stay motivated. And yea, to point out (yet again!) how social networking could obliterate the drive to do something meaningful. I’ve always pointed this out in many articles I’ve done because of the urgency and importance.

    Many people from across the globe, from all walks of life and all ages are so “hooked” on social networking. Yes, there are benefits, particularly to staying in touch and increasing one’s market (for the business side). But it is such a waste of time to indulge people in your list or get bothering thoughts in mind because of what you learn from these sites. In the end, motivation gets waned, time is wasted and nothing productive comes out from hours and hours spent on these sites.

    So there. We must all learn how to use social networking favorably; or else it would turn against us, starting with decimating our motivation until none is left. :(

    Thanks for this space, Kitty. I look forward to more wisdom from you. It’s always a great read, it’s always a helpful piece. Do keep it up!

    ~Arina~

  • Jarod Billingslea

    WOW YOU KNOW WHAT? I’m gonna try this technique, I never thought of this. I feel so relieved by this idea that I’m actually confident in my future right now lol. Thanks!