What to do if you lose your motivation

Have you recently taken on the challenge to re-design your business? If you’ve suddenly lost your motivation, you need to know just how normal you are!

You may have been running your business for a while, or it might be entirely new, either way, when you take on the challenge to transform what you are doing and integrate new ways of doing things, you’re going to hit hurdles.

These hurdles maybe external and they may take something to overcome. It goes with the territory. 

They may also be internal. In all honesty, the most challenging hurdle you’ll likely come across is with yourself and keeping momentum long after you feel like it. And this is perfectly normal. 

When you lose your motivation to transform your business you might start to think the new direction isn’t for you and isn’t how you should be approaching things. You might opt to walk away entirely or, like so many people do, go on a training course and come home with an entirely new direction. 

If you do though, you’ll be missing out on the glory of what is about to come. 

The truth is losing motivation to transform your business is perfectly normal. You’ve a lot of new ideas to integrate and things to shift. It takes energy, dedication and something within you to keep pushing up and over and through the new learning curves required to produce new results.  

And transformation isn’t simple. It takes time. And the road will always be fought with disappointments and step backs. 

When you face them it can be all too easy to return to your original business, the way things were and tell yourself you’re OK with the status quo. After all, what you have been doing has been bring you an income so why not just stay where it is comfortable? 

However, before you give up entirely though there is something you need to know. 

Sometimes the best thing you can do is sit back and do nothing. I am not talking about procrastination.

Going back to how things were can provide you the space and time to re-evaluate how you’ve been doing, to integrate new learning and master it, to prepare for your next step forward; a step forward that will now be more informed as you’ll have a better understanding of what is required. 

When you feel this way, be kind to yourself and have some grace. It’s OK to rest, it is OK to give yourself space to recalibrate. 

The secret is to not give up. 

If you do this, you stop your mind from finding solutions to the problems you experienced and moving forward.  Instead of recuperating in this time and coming back stronger, you’ll remain exhausted. As they say “resistance is futile”. Why? Because resisting how you feel is exhausting and will only hurt you. 

Taking time out from your transformation is important. As I always like to say “you can’t stand over a plant and shout grow”.

If you’re feeling exhausted and you’re losing your motivation, it probably means you need to stand back and allow the business to grow in its own time. You’ve planted the seeds, tended to the new growth, planted it in the garden, pruned it and now there is nothing left to do but step back and allow it to take shape. 

Businesses are no different to plants. It’s just that we can’t see the growth or the need to step back. We feel that we have to push forward, but we also feel exhausted and that we want to step away. The funny thing is that often these feelings are exactly right and we need to listen to them, despite what people may say or how we may feel about it.  

When you take time out, know that you are still remain committed to your goal in the long run. Remaining committed will mean your brain continues to filter information and learn according to the outcome and future vision. It will solve problems in the background on your behalf and reveal new opportunities to you. 

Then one day, not too far away, you’ll wake up refreshed and renewed ready to go at it again. This time wiser, energised and stronger.