Dads! It's Movember - Take A Pause and Pivot To Save Your Mental Health
The next time something bad happens in life (and before you totally lose it) take a pause - this can be a positive thing.
By the end of 2022 , I couldn;t face by the prospect of going back to work…
Finding any motivation and being burnt out, just thinking about work gave me the daily scaries
...and being motivated that’s not something I normally struggle with.
HERE IS THE STORY...
By the end of 2022 I was seriously intimidated by the prospect of going back to work…😬
Finding any motivation after 4 months of family illnesses, and being burnt out trying to work through had been a real struggle.
...and being motivated that’s not something I normally struggle with.
OK, so COVID finally took down my family of 9 – just as I was about to launch a new online coaching program for high-achieving dads.
On the plus side I didn’t get very ill – just a little tired for a while during COVID, but pretty much everyone in my family of 9 got awful fevers and coughs that lingered for weeks on end.
Then our old friend “the flu virus” came to visit in December, barely two weeks after they stared to recover. Then a brochial virus struck down a couple more of the children after Christmas
Prior to fall of 2022, everyone on my household had been fit as a fiddle for years, barely a sniffle amongst any of us. So we were completely unprepared for what ensued for over 4 months.
By New Year, with one of my children still suffering from bronchitis…I was maxed out...
· Burnt out.
· Pessimistic
· De-motivated
· Defeated
……I had completely lost my working flow state, and was completely derailed from my project.
On one occasion over Christmas I even burst into tears in the street outside my house, I couldn’t even speak about how bad I was feeling.
My wife and four boys literally held me up and took me for a walk to talk it through.
Embarrassing much, crying in the street? Yes
Super grateful for the relationship of trust with my wife and boys? Totally.
So back to COVID and Flu: as I only had mild symptoms, my role in the family needed a rapid upgrade to “Super-dad-cook-cleaner-doctor, nursing as many as sick people day and night. I kept working through it all.
For weeks on end…
Maybe I had good reason to feel burnt-out, but as any dad knows we are supposed to keep going no matter what, and do the very best for our family first.
That’s something that as men we are to programmed to do. We are pretty bad at it. Why?
We were told by our fathers to
“man up”
“pick yourself off the floor”
“push past the pain”
It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now…
…even my 9-year-old boy knows that!
So how did I get my work mojo back…?
I have a large number of work objectives and life goals, getting my three eldest children through college, growing my online coaching course so I can reach 1000 dads this coming year, and having enough time to enjoying four youngest kids as they happily negotiate their teens.
I don’t feel overwhelmed lightly, but it can be a daunting prospect when you are pursuing long term goals and you’ve been derailed.
After all of what had occurred, achieving them just seemed so far away.
This can change your motivational state dramatically and you need to do the right things to get it back on course.
So I'm going to share how I’ve worked on raising my motivational levels 👇🏼
THE CAUSE? THE "WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME" TRAP…
Life can be hard and I fell into the “Why is this happening to me?” trap for a while.
Yes, I focused in on the bad things that are happening in my life.
I have been described as being a practical optimist
Meaning that if things go wrong, acknowledge it, and remember that most problems have a solution. It’s the ‘going about it the right way’ that is the hardest bit of the equation!
I allowed myself to be overrun with thoughts such as “I have so many problems in my life” and then ask themselves the wrong questions like “why is this happening to me?”
I had spent the last 12 months putting together all of my coaching programs into what I am proud to say is the culmination of everything that I have taught and believe in as a father andd businessman for the last 25 years into one program, and then getting ready to launch it..
.. and then, right when I had almost reached the project’s finishing line, BOOM!!!
So I stopped feeling sorry for myself and feeling that the world is out to get me!!!
Instead of asking yourself “why do these things happen to me? “I asked myself “what can I do to make my life better?” in each moment, everyday
For me (and the same will be true for you) that has meant enjoying each moment good or bad to the maximum in the knowledge that the potential for a bright future resets every minute of every day, and that most problems are solvable…
MOTIVATION IS A CHEMICAL...
Motivation is a chemical, not just a state of mind
Motivation increases and wanes because of a brain molecule called dopamine.
When you’re anticipating a reward (such as a SPECTACULAR course launch, in my case), your brain is flooded with dopamine. As a result, you feel highly motivated to work hard and get that reward.
But I didn’t hit my goal and get my anticipated reward (happy clients, and a spike in my income…). My dopamine levels dropped back to normal, (go figure…) and motivation waned.
Dopamine is known as the molecule of anticipation — the higher the anticipation, the more motivated you become!
There is a silver lining to all this though.
Because of what is known as an “Intermittent Reward Schedule”, the process by which you don’t succeed every time you put in the effort. This uncertainty of reward differs from the type of work many people where they receive consistent rewards whenever they perform an effort.
Studies have shown that mice that pull a lever and always receive food have lower dopamine levels than mice that pull a lever and randomly receive food or not.
Us humans are the same. Humans are not different. We work harder and stay motivated longer when the reward comes in randomly).
If you run a business or are trying to climb the executive ladder you’ll probably find that if you fail to launch a successful project (ouch -sensitive subject there), or fail to get the promotion with the salary bump, you’ll probably find that this challenge motivates you to work even harder until they hit a win.
So what has been the key for a stressed out dad like me to recover my motivation here?
THE MOTIVATION RECOVERY SOLUTION?
ENJOY THE UNCERTAINTY!
Change your goals!
If your goals are unrealistic then it is going to be very difficult to achieve them.
Create more realistic goals that you feel confident you can achieve. Your motivation will stay higher in this situation. Remember, dopamine just loves anticipation of success
So don’t try and go for near impossible goals. It will really test your motivation and the likelihood is that it will fail.
The extended family illness had some bad effects, sure:
It hit my earnings during that time.
It held me back from finishing the culmination of my 12 month’s project
It meant that I was not going to get my planned Christmas break.😑
Damn!
So I shifted and I found a new short term, quick reward goal
I have a favorite mantra, which is “I treat my current circumstances as opportunities to grow”
The illness had some beneficial effects too:
I spent most of fall and December 2022 looking variously after my wife and children night and day.
I enjoyed the extra nurturing and nursing that was needed – it made me feel that I didn’t have to feel guilty about being away from my desk, that this was my most important job.
I turned hanging with the fam, even with this horrible illness circling us into a sabbatical, and had quality time…something special and unique, a reminder that my true calling is to be a dad and husband, first and foremost.
A lot of people will think to themselves “there is no point in me setting goals because I will never achieve them”. The problem with this is that without a goal your motivation (dopamine) levels likely to remain pretty low.
So change them. It works.
In December I made it my sole goal to get everyone in my household back to peak health, fast, first and foremost. Everything else was unimportant. Money, career, Christmas presents…all of that good stuff.
Without good health you have nothing that really matters.
At the end of the day, you can’t use motivation to overcome adversity.
Adversity requires a better version of you.
Motivation alone won’t get you to expand your capacity.To expand your capacity for growth, you need to let go of who you are today.
And think about who you really are, what you want to be, and how to draw energy from your current circumstances……to move forward in your life outside your career and find your YOU.
To find what makes you happy as a man, father /husband/partner.
Just taking the time out to think about setting new goals is very likely to give your motivation a boost.
SO HOW’S THAT WORKING FOR YOUR WORK MOTIVATION NOW, JIM? I'm working on projects that have some randomness, uncertainty and greater anticpation in them.
Oh yeah, that’s me, baby! A past, present and no doubt master of uncertainty!
Because when you try hard and fail, your anticipation for the next trial and tribulation goes up, motivating you to work harder.
As the quote goes “Why try simple when you can do complicated.”
So, in short, I’ve turned the switch – I previously was looking to enroll just 20 dads into my group coaching program to change their health and wellness lifestyle in 90 days....
Now I want 100.
So, I'm scaling what I do...
I’ve decided to livestream on social media regularly in 2024…
Believe me, the very thought of it is making my dopamine cup overflow!
At heart, I’m scared of looking like an idiot!
The worst? I can fall flat on my face and mess up the live presentations, but
Fail, fail, fail, win, win, fail, win, fail, fail, fail, fail, win.
…is bigger motivation for me than:
Win, win, win,
The anticipation is already firing me up –uncertainty makes life exciting!
Sometimes a good challenge to reach achievable goals is all you need to find clarity.