Misery Doesn’t Motivate Anyone. Cut Yourself a Break.
This week in a post on Instagram, I wrote:
"Accept the valleys as you do the peaks.
Accept the ebbs as you do the flows.
Your January self, accept her fully. She is a part of the whole of nature. She slows down, as does everything else. The temperature drops. She burrows and insulates. She covers her face so it doesn’t get dry. Without her, you’d never love July."
I wrote this because I was miserable, getting ready to go out for my morning run in "feels like 3" temperatures.
Something I know through years and years of putting in daily work, is that January is a slow, miserable time. We're the furthest away from the sun, we're cold, things are slow. We're slow not only at a social level, but at a molecular level.
We want to burrow and remain safe. We want extra layering around us. There isn't a day that I go outside in January that I don't miss having extra body fat. Not a single day.
Also, running in January isn't a beautiful bath of Vitamin D like I enjoy, but rather, I'm covered in layers, pissed off, snot rocketing every five minutes. I'm not soaking in the sun’s rays. I'm just tasting the ROAD SALT on my lips as it flies through the air. Baby, January is a bitch.
I know January is a bitch, but January helps me love July.
"New Year, New Me" people know January is a bitch, but they're new, so they don't have the glory of July in their memories to get them through the bitchiest times.
I get out there and think "I fucking hate this, but it's short-lived."
They get out there and go "this is hell. Why would anyone do this" and give up.
Because there's no reference point for the newcomers. They don't realize that they picked the worst possible time to go gung-ho, even if the change they desire isn't physical.
Then, they don't succeed in whatever-the-hell after a string of days and chalk it up to failure, something Western society told them was a complete no-no and must be AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS. (Please see my blog "Life Isn't Pass/Fail.")
January is an awful time to begin anything, and MISERABLE doesn't motivate anyone. (I once thought it did, and I talk about that in my podcast.)
The only thing that motivates a person is deep, deep love for themselves.
"Do it for my wife," "do it for my kids," or any other of that variety can get a ball rolling, but you'll likely give up. The only thing that helps is touching that part of you that is pure, limitless power and potential.
In my podcast today I talk about three things:
Giving yourself grace during this month when you didn't make change (and honestly how illogical whatever you picked to do probably was)
How limiting beliefs run the show, even when you think it's your conscious mind.
What people usually need to get the ball rolling.
Give it a listen. Drop me a line. Let me know what you think.
I put a podcast out each week to serve my listeners, but mostly, putting a podcast out each week is an example of me putting in the reps.
This isn't my greatest episode. It's a bag of hot air. But I show up every week and put a bag of hot air into the void. And someday, someone's algorithm will deliver my bag of hot air to them exactly when they need it. And that bag of hot air will serve them in profound ways.
And that's why I do it. Not for the immediate payoff, but because I know somewhere, the ripple will matter.
Whatever you're doing right now, don't listen to your brain when it tries to tell you that today's work doesn't matter. It matters.
What you do matters, and not just because you started it on January 1.
PS: If you have anything you want to talk about, or you're looking for some clarity and good energy during the shit vortex that is January, here's a link to schedule time on my calendar.
