22| Sustaining Motivation

You know the story. You set out to achieve your goal for the year, month, week, or day. You're feeling super motivated.

But then something happens. There's a subtle internal shift, and you find yourself losing motivation. And then you question the goal you set for yourself, and doubts swirl around in your mind.

Do I really want to pursue this goal? Maybe I got in over my head. I'm not seeing the results I had hoped for. Perhaps I should just quit.

How do you stay motivated when the excitement of pursuing that goal starts to fade? How can you keep moving towards your destination when you don't see the results you had hoped for?

In this episode, we'll dive into solutions designed to help us overcome those dips in motivation.

Click HERE to head to the show notes. In the show notes, you'll find the journal prompts for this episode, as well as, references and resources.

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Transcript

Black Woman In Bloom
Ep.22 Sustaining Motivation 
Welcome to the Black Woman in Bloom Podcast, a semi-monthly podcast designed to uplift, encourage and empower Black Women by exploring wellness topics that promote self-care and mindfulness. I’m your host, TaReon Jael, a Certified Health Educator and Medical Lab Scientist. For more information, please visit blackwomaninbloom.com. While I hope you enjoy listening to and learning from the podcast, please remember that it is not a substitute for a relationship with a licensed healthcare provider. 
Hello and welcome to episode 22. 
You know the story. You set out to achieve your goal for the year, month, week, or day. You’re feeling super motivated. Motivation is the driving force behind human actions. It starts guides and maintains our goal-oriented behaviors. But then something happens. There’s a subtle internal shift or life happens, and you find yourself losing motivation. And then you question the goal you set for yourself, and doubts swirl around in your mind. “Did I want to achieve that goal in the first place? Maybe I got in over my head. I’m not seeing the results I had hoped for. Maybe I should just quit.”
So how do you stay motivated when the excitement of pursuing that goal starts to fade? How can you keep moving towards your destination when you don’t see the results you had hoped for?
Before we get into the topic, I would like to ask a favor. Please leave a review and rating for the show. I welcome and appreciate feedback. I try to provide valuable and useful information, and it would be helpful to hear if I’m meeting that goal. Also, if there are any topics you’d like me to cover, please email me at tareon@wellnessforblackgirls.com or DM me on Instagram @tareonjael or @blackwomaninbloom.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Okay, now that the announcement is out of the way, let’s get into this topic.
Let’s first talk about motivation in general so we can better understand the dips in motivation. There are three significant parts of motivation.
The first is activation, which is the decision to start a behavior. You know this step. This is where you’ve made up your mind and decided to take that first step. This is when you say to yourself, “Alright. I’m not sure where this will lead, and I’m a little nervous, but no matter what, I’m doing this.” When we start a project or whatever we hope to accomplish, we feel a surge of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation arises from outside the individual, often involving external rewards, such as money, social recognition, or praise. Intrinsic motivation is internal, and it stems from within the individual. An example of this could be the satisfaction we feel when solving a problem for someone or ourselves. Or the feeling we get when we hear how we’ve positively touched someone. 
The next element of motivation is intensity, which is the level of concentration or vigor that goes into pursuing a goal. And our level of intensity can vary depending on the goal. 
The last element of motivation is persistence, which is the continued effort we put forth toward our goals, even when obstacles come.
This is the part I want us to focus on in today’s episode. I want to start by saying that dips in motivation are entirely normal. Let’s talk about why those dips in motivation happen in the first place. As I mentioned earlier in the episode, when we first set out to achieve that goal, we have that surge of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. As we get to that halfway point, our journey no longer feels “new” and “fresh”; the finish line seems so far away. This is when we typically experience that dip in motivation. It’s like the “Wednesday” on our journey.
As a side note: Interestingly, we call Wednesday hump day, but I wonder if we should call it dip day or should we call dips in motivation, humps in motivation??? Family, this is how my mind works.
Anyway, that dip in motivation happens when that cocktail of intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors that initially lit a fire up under us isn’t enough to sustain that motivation over the long term.
That’s a quick review of motivation and those dips we all experience. Let’s get into some solutions. How do we overcome those dips in motivation? How do we tap into that persistence that I mentioned earlier?
First, take time to re-evaluate your goal. To start this process, first, identify what you want to accomplish. Be sure these are things you want to achieve, not what you think you should want to achieve. Or what others want you to achieve. This can be a tough one for black women. Many of us are highly ambitious; sometimes, we’re this way because we were raised to excel. We were told we needed to work twice as hard to go just as far. And often, we found, and continue to find, this to be true. But sometimes, we set lofty goals for ourselves based on the cultural expectation to be a “boss lady black woman.” To get clear about our goals, we need to let this go. We do not have to do all the things. We are human beings, not human “doings.”
This leads me to the next tip: set realistic goals and recommit.
We’ve all heard the strategy of setting SMART goals. This says that goals must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. With this tip, I want to take a moment to have a heart-to-heart with my fellow ambitious fam. Achievable this word right here. Yes, we know we can achieve a lot of things. We’ve done it many times, and this is no different. But we want to set ourselves up for success and not inflict unnecessary stress, anxiety, frustration, and general emotional duress on ourselves.  
When we set our goal, let’s remember this tip from actress Amanda Seales, “the reality is that as cliche as it sounds, you really can only do your best. Therefore, you gotta define what your best is and truly be good with that, or it’s a lifetime of misery, and we ain’t havin’ that!” 
Let’s also remember to make sure our goals are time bound to avoid the “planning fallacy.” The planning fallacy states that most people underestimate how long a task will take. So let’s say you want to write a book. You probably wouldn’t set the goal of writing the book in a day. That wouldn’t be a realistic deadline to give yourself. I suppose someone could write a book in a day, but let’s say you want to write a book of the best quality possible. Then that’s probably going to take a minimum of a few to several months to write.
When setting a realistic goal, avoid certain mindsets that will cause you to find yourself stuck in the motivation dip all over again. I’m talking to my fellow recovering perfectionists with this one. Avoid “all-or-nothing thinking” You know the sort of thinking I’m talking about. It’s that belief that “I either achieve this goal exactly the way I planned within the exact time frame I set with the exact outcome I want, or else it’s nothing.” You already know how this will play out. As soon as it looks like things are not going the way you planned, you’ll experience that dip in motivation. 
The next tip is to avoid falling into the comparison trap. Just because someone followed specific steps or a particular plan to achieve a goal does not mean those exact steps and that exact plan will work the same for you. Yes, we can learn from the wisdom of others and follow in their footsteps, but we must keep in mind that each of our journeys is different. What may take someone a year to complete may take a different amount of time for you, even if you’re following the same steps. But you never know; you may achieve that goal in half the time. 
B. Make a Plan 
Once you’ve recommitted to the goal, map out a plan to help you see it through. If the task feels overwhelming, then break it up into smaller, more manageable steps. Sometimes we can lose motivation because the goal we’ve set for ourselves is so big that we get overwhelmed by all the steps. If that’s the case, it may help to set small sub-goals along the way. Let’s say your goal is to complete your graduate degree within the next two years. Maybe a sub-goal will be to complete the current semester. Once the semester is completed, celebrate that progress toward your larger goal.
B. Celebrate Small Wins
This leads me to the next tip. Celebrate those small wins. This doesn’t have to be a huge celebration. It could be something simple. For example, I know some people love having a bouquet of fresh flowers in the house, so maybe that small gift to yourself could be buying yourself fresh flowers. It could be non-monetary, like treating yourself to an at-home spa treatment. Whatever you love, celebrate the small wins on your journey towards achieving your goal by committing to allow yourself a little self-indulgence.
This also actually serves another purpose. You give your brain a little dopamine hit by allowing yourself a moment of self-indulgence after reaching a certain sub-goal or benchmark. This makes your brain want to do that “thing” again.
C. Find An Accountability Partner 
The next tip is finding an accountability partner or online community. Honestly, this part is something I’m working on. It’s not uncommon for some of us to feel like we have to work towards our goal all by ourselves. But we can benefit from a supportive community of like-minded folks to cheer us on, give some advice, and hold us accountable. Sometimes we need someone to say, “Hey, you made this goal. Why aren’t you honoring your commitment to your dream? Let’s unpack what’s going on. How can I help you? How can I support you?”
D. Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself 
I want to emphasize this next tip. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Recognize that there may be a deeper reason you’re experiencing a dip in motivation. A persistent lack of motivation can be a sign of depression, so if you feel apathy and a general low mood for longer than two weeks. Please contact your healthcare provider, therapist, or counselor to discuss your feelings. Please don’t continue going through life feeling that emotional numbness. You deserve to live a joyful, peaceful, and thriving life. 
And recognize that there may be something else going on in your life that’s draining your motivation for your long-term goal, so it may be helpful to continue working toward that long-term goal but doing so in a way that’s scaled back. I recently heard this idea called “Minimum show-up level.” The idea is to take the smallest steps possible toward your long-term goal instead of “falling off” completely or, to say it another way, taking no steps at all. This can be a helpful strategy to keep progressing on your goal while you work through the dip in motivation. This is an idea that I recently heard on the Inspired Blueprint podcast by Tatiana Muse. In this episode, she shares how she experienced a dip in motivation as an entrepreneur. She was working through making some big decisions for her business, so she took time off to clear her head. Before her vacation, she set a minimum show-up level for herself, which was to continue making YouTube videos on schedule. But she decided not to launch any new products or take on any more projects until she took time to figure things out. By dialing things back, she was able to step away from her business to a certain extent, and in that time, she was able to reconnect with her why and make the career pivot that she was considering. So that’s an idea that I thought was worth sharing.
We must be gentle with ourselves and remember that reaching specific goals takes time and commitment. And those long-term goals require sustained effort, so we have to care for ourselves and set a pace for ourselves that we can maintain long-term. I encourage you not to give up on your goal, whatever it may be. I know it feels frustrating and discouraging, but God put that goal, that vision, on your heart for a reason. You are the person who is supposed to bring that vision to life. So I’m asking you not to give up.
Thank you for listening to the episode.
If you’d like to receive the journal prompts for this episode straight to your inbox, join the email list by heading to blackwomaninbloom.com/episodes/22.  The link to the journal prompts and links to the references and resources I mentioned in the episode will be there.
If you’re not already, follow the podcast @blackwomaninbloom and me @tareonjael.


Motivation: Theories, Examples, Types, and How to Find It
Research Reveals Keys To Sustaining Long-Term Motivation | UVA Today
https://megaphone.link/MERE6984599779
40 Quotes From Incredible Black Women That Will Inspire You To Keep Going
Small Doses Potent Truths for Everyday Use by Amanda Seales
https://tatianamuse.com/2022/11/23/ep-8-how-to-stay-motivated-when-things-are-falling-apart/