Many questions for coaching are about how to keep motivation. At least 6 months commitment is asked which means we all try to keep our work going, doing the hour of power, the stops or accelerator through the day, going out of the house and doing the little things that bring joy. It is easy to make a perfect picture in our heads how ‘retraining’ looks like and even more, how we should do all this in a structured, well organized, committed way, every day, all day. But is it possible that these perfect pictures in our head cause us sometimes to lose motivation?
Retraining all day, every day, in a perfect way, is simply impossible…Some maybe can!! And that is great. But for me, among many, couldn’t be this perfect retrainer. When the reality is different from the perfect picture it is easy to start thinking you are failing, doing something wrong, or you should have done it better because than you would be healthy by now. The expectations we put on ourselves let to self-judgment, achiever patterns and of course it leads to the loss of motivation.
My suggestion to you is to embrace reality. Every day we are different, we feel different, our cells are different, we have different experiences which means we have to be flexible with ourselves. What works one day might not work the next. There are days that doing the retraining is easy and days that it isn’t easy at all. That is all OK! It doesn’t mean you are doing something wrong, or that you are failing, it only means that you have to adjust to your reality. You have your own pace in doing the programme and it is important that you start trusting that. Trust that whatever you do is good. Yes, you can always do more, but that is not most important. It is more important that you start to say ‘yes’ to whatever you do right now, it is the inner trust that is really calming the amygdala.
What if there is no perfect way to retrain? We are with so many different people, there is no 1 way. Get your trust in yourself back and experiment with what works for you. A tip would be, what do you need to make the process more fun? The 7-steps more enjoyable? Go find what you need, you, in your specific situation. There is no reason to be negative about yourself, let yourself off the hook and start thinking about what you need instead of what others do and you should do, then motivation comes naturally.
