Hi, how’s it going? Hope you are doing well.

I knew a girl once who wouldn’t allow herself to be motivated. Now, I say it like that for a reason. She would have others help her try to get motivated, but every single time she would find one excuse or another as to why it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough for this girl.

Until one day, she finally got fed up with herself! She came and talked to me about it, and she just couldn’t take not having motivation anymore. I talked to her about what I thought was the problem, and she agreed.

So she decided that she wasn’t going to wait around for motivation anymore, she was just going to do it! Now, that’s almost a silly thing to say, because that right there makes her the motivation she uses by itself. But it’s still a good perspective to have, because it eliminates the possibility for excuses.

Are you waiting around for motivation? Maybe you have bipolar disorder and, if you’re not careful, your whole life will be dictated by your moods. This can make motivation particularly hard, because what you are in the mood to do is not always what you need to be doing. Not to mention, what you aren’t in the mood to do is usually exactly what you need to be doing. I guess that’s just the way life works.

But how do you push past this? After all, you do have bipolar disorder. That makes it hard. Hard, yes. Impossible? No! This is a great way for you to look at life: Tell yourself you don’t need motivation anymore to do the things that need to be done! What you are really telling yourself is that you are not going to wait around for external motivations, but instead you are going to be your own motivation.

Maybe you are the supporter. Your motivational struggle will be entirely different than your loved one’s, but it might be there all the same. There are things that need to get done, and you need to be the one to do it.

But you don’t feel like it. Maybe you’ve had a long day with your loved one, dealing with the symptoms that they don’t even notice. Now it’s time to … pay bills?! Really?! Well… If it has to be done, then it has to be done.

Instead of thinking about all those things that you’d like to be doing instead (like napping), think about all the reasons you do have for needing to do this task. But don’t rely on those reasons for motivation!

If you are your own motivation, then you will always be motivated. If you rely on something else (no matter how good it is), then at some point it’s not going to be there, or isn’t going to be valid, or something.

Motivation is something that we all need … NOW. So why wait on it when you can create it? What are your thoughts on this?

Well, I have to go!

Your Friend,

Dave