 This week on The Anxious Truth, we're talking about motivation and anxiety recoveries, specifically the myth of motivation. You don't have to feel like doing a thing to do a thing. Hello everybody, welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is episode number 270 of the podcast recorded in August of 2023. I am Drew Linsolata, creator and host of The Anxious Truth, the podcast that covers all things anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anxiety recovery. If you are new to this podcast or this YouTube channel, welcome. I hope you find what we're doing here helpful and useful in some way. And of course, if you are a returning viewer or a listener, welcome back. Always glad that you're here. Today we're going to talk about the topic of recovery and motivation in recovery. When you are struggling to overcome an anxiety disorder, many people will come back to the topic of motivation. I know what I need to do, Drew. I'm just having a hard time getting motivated to do it. So I really want to look at the idea of motivation, what it means, and really what it doesn't mean. Because motivation, the way we tend to think of it is largely a myth, or if nothing else, we kind of have it backwards. So we're going to go through that today in what I hope will be a relatively short podcast episode, but I've promised that before and then gone off to rails. Anyway, before we get into today's topic, just a quick reminder as always, that The Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode or this video. There are a ton of other resources, most of which are free, some of which are not or at least delivered at a relatively low cost. You can find all of those resources on my website at TheAnxiousTruth.com. The books that I've written, the courses and workshops I'm developing, a ton of free social media content, 269 previous podcast episodes. I'll link over to the Disordered podcast that I do with Josh Fletcher. That's a free one, too. Go on over to TheAnxiousTruth.com. Check out all the resources and evaluate yourself of them. I would like to think that they are helpful. People tell me that they are. So go check it out. Let's get into the idea of motivation or feeling motivated to act in your recovery. This is a tough one, because I think traditionally most people, anxious or otherwise, seem to think that motivation precedes action. We tend to think that we have to get motivated and then we do things. We have to feel like doing things or have reasons to do things and then we do them. But while this is kind of complicated as usual, it's not just cut and dry, it's not black and white, motivation, a feeling of motivation does not have to precede action. In fact, in many instances, feeling motivated comes after acting. So the biggest thing that I can give you today, the most important thing I can give you today, if you are feeling that you understand what you need to do to recover, but you're having a hard time being motivated to do it, is that you do not have to feel like doing a thing to do a thing. Motivation tends to come after we do things, even when we do them before we feel like doing them, or before we want to do them. Now this sometimes is a real eye opener to people when they hear that, like, wait a minute, aren't I supposed to feel motivated to act? Yeah, I'm not really, I'm not motivated to do any work today. I just have no motivation. I don't even want to get out of bed. I just want to be lazy today. We can all relate to that on a personal level, because motivation is not just an anxiety concept. It's a life concept in general. So we all have days where we kind of don't feel like doing stuff. Maybe we're feeling a little lazy, we might be feeling avoidant, whether it's in an anxiety context or just a life context. Man, I just feel like binging Netflix today or whatever it is. We all get that we understand that state. But even on the days when we feel that way, we can do things. So sometimes it's not so much a question of motivation. As a state of being, I need to feel a certain way to act a certain way. It's I'm going to act a certain way, regardless of how I feel. Now some people might argue that's not a motivation issue. That's a discipline issue. Okay, maybe that's not a motivation issue. It's a values and goals issue. Okay, maybe and values of goals or values and goals are two different things. Keep that in mind always. But it certainly is a little bit easier to get into actually do things, especially difficult and challenging challenging things. If we are doing things that are important to us that move us toward our values that move us toward the goals that we set in life. That's true. It's easier to do things that are pleasurable. It's harder to do things that are not pleasurable. And the activities of recovery are not immediately pleasurable. We can all agree on that. So it can lead to a situation where you almost forget why you should do those things. You understand it, but that doesn't that kind of gets moved down the priority list. Yeah, I know what I'm supposed to do. Yeah, I know why I'm supposed to do it, but I cannot create a feeling of wanting to do it. So therefore I don't. Okay, so be careful that you don't wind up in a negative self judgment because you feel like you can't get motivated. I'm going to tell you right now that I don't know too many people that achieve a state of rah rah motivation about doing exposure work or facing the things that they are afraid of, especially in the beginning. This is a thing that we kind of had to drag ourselves kicking and screaming into, you know, to a certain extent. It is not easy to conjure up a state of feeling on demand called motivation, especially when you are facing something that is very challenging to do. If I told you that you have to get up tomorrow morning and go lay on a beach or eat your favorite foods or talk to your favorite people or spend time with the people that you love, you would probably not have a hard time feeling motivated to do that. Nobody would complain that I'm just not motivated to do that. Most of the time we would understand, oh, if I'm doing something that I love or I'm going to be with people that I love or I'm doing something that's easy or fun or pleasurable. I don't worry about motivation because I want to do that. It's when we have to do things that we don't want to do that we can somehow fall into the trap of thinking, oh, I have to get into the right mindset and I have to create a feeling of motivation so that I do these things and that's just not true. Now, while this might seem like revelatory to you, like, what is this guy talking about, really feeling motivated comes after the action? Yeah, it kind of does. And this is all over the literature and the social sciences and it's made its way into popular culture. I mean, if you want to bring it into our community, David Burns, who wrote Feeling Good, a little bit dated, but nonetheless, still a highly respected book, especially when dealing with depression, he talks in detail about this. Feeling of motivation comes after you do a thing. James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, he has a lot about motivation in that book. Oliver Berkman wrote The Antidote. These are very popular sort of personal development in self-help books. They talk a lot about the idea that we confuse feeling like doing a thing with the ability to do a thing. And unfortunately in recovery, we do things that we don't feel like doing all the time. So if you can't feel motivated, that's actually perfectly OK. In fact, it's kind of expected and normal. Now, after you pile up a few wins, people do start to feel that excitement a little bit or the challenge motivates them a little bit. And there is a different state of being or feeling in that situation like, wow, I did so great yesterday. I can't wait to practice again tomorrow. That can happen. But if you are in a situation where you're in the beginning stages, maybe you haven't piled up those wins yet, or you haven't experienced a breakthrough yet, or that that new way of doing it, you're still feeling a lot of trepidation. You're not sure really don't have to do it this way. You're not going to feel motivated, and that's OK. Don't beat yourself up and don't sit passively and hope that you can somehow engineer a state of feeling that you call motivation so that you can start to act. Understand that you can act even when you don't feel like acting. That's really a critical part of this. Now, let's get a little bit more subtle and a little bit more nuanced, because if you leave it there, it sounds like just do it, right? A lot of people always hear, oh, he's just saying, you just do it. OK, well, yeah, you can maybe boil it down to that, but we need to be a little bit more, a little bit more detailed and a little bit more nuanced than that. So there's also study into different parts of social sciences and psychology that look at this. And one of the more interesting concepts or constructs that you find in terms of personality theory would be people who are state oriented or action oriented. And that sort of explains the difference between a person who says, well, I have to do a thing and I'm going to go do it, because if I do it, I know I can make a change if I do it. That's an action oriented person. They may say that they don't worry so much about motivation or they wouldn't necessarily need this podcast episode. But other people are state oriented. And in that construct, it's well, when I'm I'm just trying to get to not too geeky here because I can totally nerd out on this stuff. But somebody who is a little bit more concerned with their affective state affect how they feel and isn't terribly good at self regulating themselves to change how they feel through action may get stuck and feel like I cannot unlock a sense of motivation. I cannot unlock action because I'm in a negative state of feeling right now. That is incredibly important to me. I'm state oriented. And I freeze my action potential gets locked, if you will, or my motivation gets locked, my self motivation gets locked. Well, in that situation, and if you're listening to this podcast episode, you are probably likely if you're going to subscribe to that construct in psychology and personality theory, you might be more likely to be a state oriented person. Now, it's true that personality traits like neuroticism or extroversion can play into that and predict a little bit more whether you're going to be action oriented, and maybe a little bit more prone to get up and go even when you don't feel like it, or if you're going to be state oriented, like you're your effective state starts to lock you in place because you're not feeling right and therefore you can't make you can't do a thing to change the way you feel. If you are more state oriented, and this sounds like you, which is probably more likely, but again, the audience has varied. One of the ways that you can address that is to lower the demands. So a lot of the research that's been done along the lines of that particular personality construct says, well, one of the ways we can start to unlock that self motivation or that action potential is to lower the demands. Now, for a person who's a little bit more action oriented, they need higher demand sometimes to unlock that or they're just like, Yeah, I know I could do this, but I ain't gonna. I mean, that's a gross over simplification. For the person who feels like when they're in a negative effective state, when they are feeling badly or not feeling motivated, they need lower demands generally to be able to get moving, which means that you don't have to say, Well, I know what I have to do. I have to go from my sofa to, you know, driving by myself on the highway, 75 miles from home. Well, okay, probably ultimately, but not today. So if you're finding it hard to get air quotes motivated to start doing your recovery stuff, shrink it. It's totally okay to do that. We talk about this all the time. And this is where those concepts start to dovetail. It is perfectly okay to find the smallest little thing that triggers you or is challenging to you and start with that. Lower the demands. You don't go from completely homebound to a world cruise in three days. No one will be motivated to do that. And even if you were, we really wouldn't work out so well. So if you are struggling with the idea of motivation, if I don't feel right, I can't seem to find it in myself to act. Even though I know that if I do the thing, I might feel more motivated later. And the action changes the way I feel. Critical concept in our in our community. You don't change your thoughts and your feelings. You change your behavior and the thoughts and feelings trail behind. Even if you know that and you're having a hard time getting moving, one way that you might be able to address that would be to just drop the demand a little bit. Don't expect so much from yourself. Start small. And I'm not kidding. Small can be today I moved from my bedroom to the kitchen and I sat at the kitchen table for 10 minutes. That counts. Today I got up and I dressed myself. I took a shower. I fed myself. I washed my hair for people who were in extreme situations. Believe me, that counts. It's okay to start there. Today I decided to eat a food that I've been afraid to eat because I think it's going to trigger my anxiety and I had a little nibble of it. That counts. Today I got up, got dressed, put my shoes on, sat by the front door in a panic because I'm afraid to go to the front door because it feels like I have to go out of the house. That counts. Today I took a shower with the door closed for the first time in six months. That counts. So if you're having a hard time finding your way to be motivated to act in recovery, one way you can address that is, number one, connect to the principles that I'm telling you here. You don't have to feel away to act away. We actually act first and feel after and then drop the demands if need be. Lower your demands and be nice to yourself. That's another part of that whole state oriented personality trait or personality construct, if you will, be nice to yourself. Do not beat yourself up consistently because I can't get motivated. What's wrong with me? I can't do this. I can't change how I feel, but I also feel like I won't act to change how I feel and then you get stuck on the treadmill but you're just beating yourself over the head all the time for no good reason. That's not okay. So those are some ways that you might be able to at least get yourself moving and even if you can get yourself moving in a small way and accomplish some very small things that you did not accomplish yesterday, you are winning and that is part of what starts to build that sense of oh I'm feeling more motivated now. So that's kind of the myth of motivation. The myth of motivation is that if I don't feel away, then I can't act away and it's actually the other way. If I want to feel away, then I have to act the way I want to feel which is a gross oversimplification and sometimes feels a little bit invalidating but that is in fact one of the principles that we're working on here. You can call it fake it till you make it, you can call it acting as if you can call it whatever you want, but there is validity there and it proves itself out again and again and again. So don't worry about trying to conjure up a state of feeling called motivation. That might not even exist. Act first, drop the demands and lower your action threshold if you will to something very small if need be. But first we take a few steps and then we start to build that feeling of motivation whatever that is in your personal context. That's it, that's the myth of motivation. We get it backwards. Often people who are in the mindset business or the personal development business or the warrior business or the level up business will hammer at you that you should be able to create a mindset for recovery. It's about having a mindset. Not necessarily this feeds into the myth of motivation. It's about doing things that create that mindset that you want to get. If you want to feel motivated, go do the things you have to do and the motivation feeling comes later. That's the myth of motivation and start small if you need to and be nice to yourself. If you told me that you did the tiniest little thing that you were afraid of, I took a sip of orange juice even though I've been terrified to drink orange juice because I read somewhere that it causes some sort of anxiety problem. If you took a sip of orange juice today, you are winning and I would give you a huge high five on that. So there you go. Hopefully this helps sort of clarify the whole motivation thing. Of course if you have questions or comments about this, I kind of always do want to hear them. It seems that the best way these days would be to go to my YouTube channel and comment there because there's really no way to comment on a podcast. But if you want to ask questions or comments, do it on my Instagram, do it on my YouTube, whatever. Totally fine. I'd love to answer them for you and see if we get into a conversation about it. That would be great. And as we end the episode, I'm going to ask you a couple of favors as I usually do. If this has been helpful to you and you like this podcast and you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcast or some platform that lets you rate and review, give me a five star rating and maybe write a review because it helps other people find the podcast. Then more people get help and that's kind of why I do this to begin with. Of course, if you're on YouTube right now, like the video, leave a comment or a question, subscribe to my channel, do all the things you know what to do on YouTube. I don't have to tell you. I appreciate it. It really helps me out. And that is it. Episode 270 of The Anxious Truth, The Myth of Motivation and Recovery in the Books. I will be back next week with another episode of this podcast. I have no idea what I'm going to talk about, but I will be here and remember, no matter how small your step is today in the direction of recovery, it counts. They all add up. And when you put them end to end over time, they will get you there. Hang in there. See you next week.