How I Overcome Demotivation

Hello everyone!

This is your host Sayar Henry and thank you for tuning in to my podcast and paying attention to the first episode of Season 3. The time I’m recording this episode is in the third week of November and it hasn’t been easy for many of us in Myanmar.

During this week, many young people – and some leading personnel – who have been fighting for democracy on the frontline were abducted by the military junta in Yangon.

Even though we knew that such kind of unfortunate events are bound to happen since the revolution had transformed into armed resistance months ago, experiencing it in real life not only led to tears and sadness, but also made a lot of us demotivated.

So, although my plan before this event was to start Season 3 with a topic related to the advancements of human experience throughout history, I decided to talk about how to cope with demotivation instead. 

But first, I have to clear up one thing. When I said a lot of us, I only meant that there are many people who would feel discouraged from doing whatever they are doing because of the bad news. It doesn’t mean that it’s happening to most of us. Many simply doesn’t mean most. There are truly strong people out there who are paving the way for this revolution no matter what happens. This episode is not for such amazing people. This episode is for ordinary people who are willing to contribute in any way they can but finding it hard to achieve more than just following the path led by others. For such people and personnel, learning that important leaders on the ground have been detained can be really disturbing. And consequently, when anxiety and negative emotions take over our mind and body, we naturally tend to feel demotivated.   

Now, before going any further, I should explain a bit about the difference between feeling unmotivated and demotivated. These two words are very similar in meaning and usage but not identical. Here’s the difference.

Being unmotivated usually happens without an apparent cause. The problem is usually from within, like your mind is just not excited enough about something, or you just don’t see a sense of purpose and reward about doing that thing, or you are simply feeling lazy to do it.

On the other hand, being demotivated happens when you already had some motivation but lost it due to some apparent cause. For example, let’s say, you are a very bright and motivated student who is getting ready for an exam. But then you heard an official announcement that says all the exams are cancelled. Now, how would you feel and what would you do? Under such circumstances, although you may have been a motivated student up to that point, you suddenly don’t have a reason to study for an exam anymore. You just stop doing what you have been doing while at the same time not knowing anything else to work on, and you stay like that for more than 6 months. In another word, you used to be genuinely excited and motivated about something in the past but now you have lost it and you’re feeling blank. And that, my friend, is the state of being demotivated.       

So, in this episode, I’m going to share with you a simple process that I’ve been using in the past few years whenever I must deal with demotivation. Though I cannot guarantee it will work every single time for every single situation there is, I can tell you it has served me very well many a time. And the beauty of this process is it has only one part. All you need to do is ask yourself three questions.

Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

Now, listen carefully to the following three questions.

What do I want?

Where should I be going?

What is the smallest step that I can take in the right direction?

Okay, let’s break down these questions to see how it works.

The purpose of the first two questions – “What do I want?” and “Where should I be going?” – is to remind us of the big picture and the direction we have been heading for before experiencing the setback. It’s a good practice to ask these questions because we tend to forget what we are working for whenever we are disturbed by external factors. It’s in our human nature to behave that way. So, asking these two little questions is a quick way to get our mind back on track and put us in the driver’s seat again.

And then there is the third question which is even more critical than the first two questions.

“What is the smallest step that I can take in the right direction?”

The purpose of this question is to help our mind break down big tasks into smallest possible chunks so that things become easier to execute. Based on my experiences, asking this question is truly powerful in that it not only makes you see things easier, but it also strengthens your decision to carry on. I think it’s because asking this question forces our brain to process why we are going in a particular direction, where we are in that journey, why we are stuck at the moment, and what actions we can take to get back on track.

Now, allow me to use my creation of this episode as an example to highlight how asking these questions has helped me to achieve my goal.

Earlier, I’ve told you that my initial plan for this episode was not about demotivation. I mean … I had been working on a different script. And the bad news hit us. Then I noticed, based on the social media feeds, that many of us were in distress. A new train of thought rushed into my mind, telling me that bad news won’t be going away anytime soon and that knowing how to deal with such waves of bad news would be beneficial to the listeners of my podcast. And more importantly, learning something and putting it into action is most effective when the timing is right. If I talk about or teach this a few weeks later, my listeners won’t find it very useful as we might already be in a different context by then. It appeared to me that changing the topic of my new episode was the right thing to do. And I decided to go for it.

But if you think about it, having to change the topic in the middle of the production process can be quite a disaster. I mean there is simply not enough time for me to create and publish this episode on schedule. The production process for an episode of my podcast’s caliber usually takes 2 to 3 days. Changing the topic means changing everything – a new script, a new voice recording session, a new background music, a new audio editing and mixing session, a new proof-listening session, a new episode art, and a new social media post. Just thinking of this whole new chain of actions was quite overwhelming. And as a result, I was demotivated, and I felt like giving up. I even thought of stopping the production process entirely and pushing it back a week.

Then I started to reflect on myself and figure out why I was feeling that way. I started to ask myself the two questions – “What do I want?” and “Where should I be going?”

My response to the first question was that I want to give my listeners the right knowledge at the right time while also providing a good listening experience. Then I realized I wouldn’t be able to achieve it if I forced myself to stick to the usual schedule. It soon became clear to me that I shouldn’t have to trade a timely episode for a strict schedule. That also gave me the answer to the second question of where I should be going. I should not be struggling to publish the episode on time. Instead, I should be going for the right episode that can better benefit my listeners at the moment.

With that big picture in mind, I asked the third and final question.

“What is the smallest step that I can take now in the right direction?”

Well, the answer was to start writing a new script, of course. But it was not small enough. So, I broke it down into a series of much smaller tasks such as creating a new document file on my laptop, writing down possible versions of episode title, and deciding how I want to present my thoughts. When I got stuck, I repeated the same process and wrote down some sentences that I wanted to include somewhere in this episode.

And even now, as I’m still writing this script, I’m not thinking about the whole topic anymore. I’m just taking one small step after another in the right direction by working on just one sentence at a time. And because I clearly know what I want, where I’m going, and what I can do right now, I am back in the driver’s seat again, taking control of my own journey. In another word, I’m back in a motivated state.

And that, my friend, was how I was able to create this episode.

I think by now you are starting to see why training yourself to ask these three questions can help you overcome demotivation and negative emotions. So, whenever you feel stuck and blank, try to use this process so that you don’t waste your precious days in a demotivated state, okay?

Now, before concluding this episode, I want to ask you this set of questions, and you have to give me answers as you are listening. If you need time to answer, feel free to pause the audio after each question. Ready? Here it comes.

“What do you want for your country?”

“Where should you be heading for to reach this goal?

“What is the smallest action that you can take right now?”

Well done! These are great answers and I’m proud of you.

And if you think this process really helps you achieve meaningful goals, please share it with people you care about or with those who might need this advice more than you do. It would mean the world to me. Anyway, this is the beginning of a new season of my podcast, and I believe you are as excited as I am. Thank you so much for listening, and I’m looking forward to hanging out with you for hours again. Have a good week ahead!