Episode 240: 3 reasons you're not feeling motivated
In today's episode, Fiona walks you through three reasons why you can't find motivation and three things that have helped not only herself but hundreds of clients that she has worked with by reframing this concept. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Motivation
Mel Robbins - 5-second rule
Misalignment of values
Have you outgrown things?
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Jumping from an employed role to owning your own business is a really big move because suddenly no one is telling you what you should be doing. No one is looking at your time. No one is micromanaging you. In some ways that's amazing. You have all this freedom, opportunity, choice, and decisions you alone can make. But on the flip side, you also have to make those decisions, choose and figure out which opportunities are going to be right for you.
Welcome to episode 240 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. I am Fiona Killackey the host of this podcast. I'm an award-winning author. My book won an award. It's very exciting. It won the best general business book in the 2021 Australian business book awards. I also run My Daily Business Coach. That business aims at helping creative small business owners understand, grow, and scale their business in a sustainable way that aligns with who they are as a person as well. If you are listening to this, if you've been listening to it for some time and you'd like to work with me, or maybe up skill on marketing brand, your money management, or How to Start a Podcast, you can find a whole bunch of things that we offer over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop.
Today it is a coaching episode and it's something that every single one of us deals with all the time. I think that's a reason why it's such a popular topic, but it's something that I, myself struggle with. I know that so many of my clients do and having worked with literally thousands of people since I started this business at the end of 2015, I've seen the same common reasons for one particular issue and challenge that comes up. I thought today, I'm gonna dive into those three things and I'll get into that in a second. But before I do, I just wanted to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the beautiful land on which I live and play and work and record this podcast. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get on to today's coaching episode.
One of the biggest things that I hear from small business owners, just from anyone, but I think particularly with small business owners is I know I need to do that or the should police comes out. I should do that. However, I don't know what's wrong with me. I just can't bring myself to do it. Or am I lazy? Or is it just not that important to me? Or I just can't find the motivation. Everything comes down to that last question or statement. I'm not motivated and I don't know how to get motivated, and this could be anything from finding somebody that they need in their business so they can outsource and delegate things. It could be updating something that they know is going to help such as a pitch deck or a page on the website, or some of the product detail page, or something that they know is going to help them with their bigger goals of say, getting their brand out there or converting people into sales or transacting with past customers.
They'll say, “I can't find the motivation.” We all say it. I've said it many times. I don’t know where my motivation's gone as if we can just go walk, look behind a tree. “There's my motivation. It's been hiding the whole time. I just had to find it.” There are parts in our life when we feel more motivated and there's this whole concept of the novelty factor and you see it whenever you start something new. Whether it's a new business, whether it's a new way of eating, whether it's a new sport or a new recreational doing a ceramics course or something, there is this element of excitement that comes because it's new and it's Noel and it's different. Sometimes even just signing up for a class makes us feel excited or buying a course makes us feel like, “We've done the work.”
We all know that we haven't, and it's something like 80 or 90% of people buy courses and never actually finished them. This idea of motivation, we just need to find it. There's been times in our lives and in our businesses where we could all point and go, “I had such high motivation at the time.” I didn't even need anyone to guide me, or I didn't need to push myself to do anything that just, I just had motivation in spades. Particularly if you are leaving something that didn't work again, whether it's a sport, Sumerian class, or a job, and now you didn't like it. Now you're starting a business, there's even more motivation because there's an incentive to get out of whatever situation that you've been in. At the moment, I've talked a lot about my back on this podcast, and thank God it's better.
But there's a huge motivation to do pilates and to do the things that you don't wanna go backward. Similarly, when you start a business or if you've started a business because you didn't like the job that you were in or the employment place that you were in, then there's a huge amount of motivation. But for many of us, once we do actually start something, whether it's a business, a fitness routine, or whatever it is, the motivation goes down. I did speak earlier in the year to Dr. Gina Cleo, who is one of the world's leading experts in habit and changing habits. She talked about the idea that motivation does need to be there at the start when you want to switch habits. However, the more normalized the action becomes, whatever the habit is that you're trying to change, then the less motivation you need overall, she talked about the concept that it takes about 66 days to change a habit or to start a new habit.
If you're interested in that, you can definitely check that out after this episode. We'll link to that in the show notes with Dr. Gina Cleo, but that was Episode 218. If you wanna dive into that, she goes into all sorts of things around habit tracking and motivation as part of that. But one of the things that she does say is that the motivation drops off. Hopefully, if you're keeping up a habit, then your body starts taking over and you're doing these things without even thinking about them. But for most of us outside of maybe tracking a particular habit, we start off with all this motivation and then it kind of dilutes. It gets less and less intense and less powerful. Sometimes we'll then find ourselves in all sorts of situations being like, “If only I could find my motivation again.”
Today, I wanted to walk you through three reasons why you may be feeling like this. And three things that have really helped not only myself but hundreds of clients that I've worked with by reframing this concept of, I need to find motivation into how can I get myself to do the things that I know are going to help me without running into the hustle, grind, and territory, I'm well against that. But three things that I think will really help shift the way that you're thinking about stuff. If you are finding yourself right now, really unmotivated to do absolutely anything in your business. The first thing comes from Mel Robbins. If anyone's listened to this podcast for a long time, especially at the start, Mel Robbins is an author and personality.
She is a really interesting character. I was first introduced to Mel Robbins through a good friend, Faustina Agolley who had been to one of her workshops, in the US. She got me onto her five-second rules. So the five-second rule is literally this idea that you count backward for five seconds and you almost trick the brain into doing things, not taking action on something super important. Like let's say getting married to somebody, but taking action on the things that maybe you're just being a little lazy or if I wanna go for a walk when I'm like, it's raining or it's cold, or I'm overthinking all the reasons because your brain will always step in to minimize risk. And the five-second rule is about going, you know what, I'm gonna do this 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and just get going.
I know that when Instagram stories first came out, I think it was 2017, that seems like a long time ago now. I had not done an Instagram story with my face to the camera and I got up one morning and I was going to do a workshop in Dalesford, which is a couple of hours drive away from me and I was dressed up, done my hair, washed my face, felt like I looked okay and I thought, “Okay, this is it. I'm going to do it.” And I thought “5, 4, 3, 2, 1 did it,” did the Instagram story, and literally switched my phone off for the entire drive. Actually, I had so many lovely comments and things like that. But I have used the five-second rule that Mel Robbins talks about in her book.
You can search for it on YouTube. The five-second rule has really helped in my business. So this first idea really comes from Mel Robbins and I follow her on Instagram. She's one of the very few emails that I subscribe to. I think she's really good at what she does and really real in a lot of ways. Mel Robbins talked about this concept many times in her books and in her talks, but it's this idea that like, no one's coming to parent you. I think sometimes we mistake motivation for guidance. We are thinking, “Well, no one's pushing me. I have to push myself.” That is what it's like with small businesses.
It's one of the biggest growth areas that I think comes from, especially if you've spent most of your time being employed, where other people are directing, essentially what you need to do. And other people are letting you know what your KPIs or your key performance indicators are, or other people are saying, this is where the brand or the business is going. And you go along with it because it's not your business. You are employed, you are being paid. Jumping from an employed role to owning your own business is a really big move because suddenly no one is telling you what you should be doing. No one is looking at your time. No one is micromanaging you. In some ways that's amazing. You have all this freedom, opportunity, choice, and decisions you alone can make. But on the flip side, you also have to make those decisions, choose and figure out which opportunities are going to be right for you.
It's a similar mindset depending on where you went to school. But I definitely felt from going from high school to university and the first year of university, I basically just partied with my good friend Vi and it was all about which nightclub we were gonna go to because no one was there to say, “Hey, you need to do your job.” You need to do this. You need to get this paper in on time. And essentially we learned, we learned that you needed to do those things you needed to show up. I mean, we definitely still showed up to university, but I do think it's great for sometimes people to have that year off between high school and university. But the point is you suddenly realize at university that, “Oh my gosh, I have to be in charge of my future now.”
I'm not gonna have teachers reminding me of a deadline and I'm not gonna have this or that. It's similar to when you move from working for somebody else to owning your own business because suddenly you're in charge of everything good and bad. What Mel Robbins talks about is that so often in our life, when we are waiting around for motivation, we are really waiting around for somebody else to make the decision, somebody else to guide us, somebody else to say, this is what you should do. Somebody else to put forward. This is the path that you're going to walk and we are adults. Most of us will not have a parent. Who's still that much involved in our lives? Definitely, probably not. Unless you're in a partnership that much involved in your business and telling you what you should or shouldn't be doing.
Mel Robbins talks about this concept of like, “No one is coming” and it sounds really awful and harsh, but she talks about no one's coming to save you. No one's coming to get you out of bed so that you can go to the gym. No one's coming to make sure that you've done your tax. You have to do it. It's all about growing up and being an adult. Sometimes when we are lacking motivation, it is that concept of like, “I wish somebody else would do this for me.” How do you go from sitting around thinking, I can't be bothered, or even unconsciously thinking, “I wish somebody else would take this off my plate to I'm feeling spurred on. I can do this.” Now, there are a few things you could take the five-second rule if, especially if it's like a small action such as sending off an invoice, sending off an email, or updating something on the website where you're thinking, that could pretty much be done.
It's just like stop overthinking it and just do it, which is 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Let's go. If you're interested in that, you can definitely check out the five-second rule, the book, or we will link to the YouTube video of Mel's talk on that exact topic, which is where the whole thing started in our show notes. The second thing that you could do when it comes to feeling like I wish I had somebody else to help me, to parent me, and to push me is to look for help. It could be a business coach like myself. It could be a group coaching program. It could be an accountability group. It could be a membership, or it might just be a very informal get-together with a business friend. Somebody else that you have to be accountable. I have talked about this many times, I've worked with one of my good friends, Natasha.
We have met for four years about our businesses. We both were consultants. My very first client was also a client of Natasha's. We both consulted with the same business and we ended up having to be in the same office once a week. We got to know each other and that was seven years ago now. We have caught up about our businesses consistently, ever since, or maybe, probably no, not ever since. It was probably a couple of years after that. For at least four or five years, every quarter, we do a quarterly strategy session together. Neither of us is paying the other person. It is a free, equal obligation or equal opportunity. We catch up and we go through our numbers. We go through our goals.
We go through where we're going to be. We work out our strategies and it's a really great way to stay accountable. It's also a great thing to have somebody else saying like a parent, you were gonna do this. How come you haven't done it? We used to meet every single week. We are getting back into that. We've had to take a little bit of a hiatus. She's finishing her MBA. Congratulations. I had back issues and some other stuff going on, but that is another opportunity that you can have if you are feeling like I wish somebody could help me, maybe reach out to a business friend and say, “Hey, would you like to get together once a month or once a week or once a night or whatever the frequency is, that's going to work for both of you.
Remember, you don't have to like go out for coffee, go out for lunch. Natasha and I, majority of the time have done this online. She lives about an hour away from me and we've done it online. Or we do meet in person every quarter. We either go to like a hotel or each other's house or a co-working space. We just rent out the boardroom for the day. That's really important. This whole concept of needing a parent, this Mel Robbins idea of no one is coming, so you've got the five-second rule that you can do for short things where it's like, just do it. Then the second one is to find somebody to keep you accountable, whether that's a paid thing, like a business coach or a group coaching or a mastermind program, or if it is an informal, unpaid thing, like an accountability group with some friends that are in business, or just one friend that is in business, keeping yourself accountable and making sure that you show up is really important for this concept of motivation.
In a similar vein, the kind of third thing there would be to announce it, to announce it to the world. And that can be really scary. That can be like, “Oh gosh, I'm feeling unmotivated to do this.” I'm now gonna tell the world that I'm going to do it. Because again, it works like accountability with somebody else. We've put it out there. Then sometimes even just the momentum that we need to actually get started and believe me, I know how scary that is. And I also know that we can put things out there and then not do them. I put out that I was gonna get this podcast happening in 2016. Maybe I put it out in like 2017 or 2018, but I bought the audio track and I got all this stuff done for the podcast in 2016.
I was like, “yeah, I'm gonna do it.” It took me another three and a half or four years to get it out because it just wasn't a priority. However, I, one wish that I'd done that, but also I have no qualms. I have no regrets about telling the world, the few people that were following on Instagram, what I was doing. I do think that sometimes when we share our stories, when we share our goals, when we share what we're trying to do with others, then it's out there and all sorts of things come forward to try and help you. I know this is a concept that was brought up also by my wonderful guest, the Bianca Lambert of Capra Designs, talking about sharing her ideas and sharing them even with competitors or so-called competitors.
If you haven't listened to that interview, it's a really good one. You can go back and listen to that. It's Episode 208, if you wish to after this. Those three things really work in that first instance, I need somebody to push me, to motivate me because I can't find the motivation myself. The first one was the five-second rule, the second one was accountability, and the third one was putting it out to the world the second. That's the first big reason why you are not feeling motivated because you're waiting for somebody else to gently prod you or maybe massively push you along, push you out of that zone. The second thing is you're feeling unmotivated because there is a lack of alignment between your values and beliefs and what you're actually doing. Now, in my business for years since I started my business, I have always worked with people on two major things, whether they work with me on one session or whether they're in group coaching for a whole year, we will always work on what are you trying to achieve financially?
What are your goals? What are your values and beliefs? Because you can have the most purpose-led business and feel really like passionate. But if it's not making any money, the majority of people I'd say 99% of people I work with do not have a huge trust fund to fall back on. People need to make money from their businesses. We work out what is the money that you actually need to make, not what the industry makes or what your best friend makes in a similar role. What do you need to make? In alignment with that, what are your values and beliefs and how do they show up in the business? One of the biggest reasons I think that people don't feel motivated is that you're working towards something that doesn't align with your values.
This can be something that we don't really notice is happening. It's kind of like that concept of, the frog that boils because the water slowly gets hot around him or her or them. You can be like, I started my business and I was totally aligned with my values. And then as we grew, whereas we expanded or as we brought more people on or as we were more successful or we opened more, the value alignment may be shifted. It's like the train got off the track a little bit and then suddenly you wake up and you're like, we might be successful in terms of finance, growth, or in terms of their outward external ideas of success. But our values are very much off the track.
I have done this in my own business. Especially through COVID, we have been doing a lot of changing and adapting to everyone's schedules that they needed. We started seeing people on a day that traditionally I've never seen any client on that day. So I will do other work in the business, but not client calls. I started seeing what are we doing. Because these days are starting to get filled with client calls. I love what I do. I love being a business coach, but I definitely need time, not on client calls to get other work done. I need time to work on the business. I really realized that one of my biggest values, which is freedom was being impacted by this because I didn't feel free.
I didn't feel like I had space. I didn't feel like I had this kind of spaciousness around me as well. And you need that to be able to think, to be creative, to be the best person that you can be in your business. That value of freedom, which I'd very much was the huge part of why I'd started my business because previously I'd worked in the head of marketing roles or CMO roles and anyone that's worked in those roles, especially for a big corporate, there's very little freedom you are expected to be on at all times. I wanted that freedom. I craved it. It was such a huge instigator in starting my business and it is still a huge part of why I run my business. That values alignment was off.
You're not motivated and you come to resent things because that reason why you started and these values that are so important to your business, and usually also to the person behind the business have shifted and you haven't kind of come back to them. And you want to think about is my motivation or lack of right now is caused by a values misalignment. And if it is, or if you consider that it might be, or maybe you haven't looked at your values, maybe you did like a big brand strategy when you first started and you never really looked at them again. And thinking about, what are my values? What are the values of the business? What is the core of the business? What are our beliefs? And then come back to those and really think about how we showing up internally.
How do our staff feel about those values? Are they actually aligned in the business or are we just externally showing them? We are doing some great stuff on social media and we are saying this in our emails and in store, we do this. But internally, maybe between the partners who founded the business or maybe with the staff or maybe just yourself as a solar operator, you're not showing up to them. For instance, with me and freedom I was helping other people create space in their life and create clarity, confidence, direction, and systems. But that was being impinged on my own life. That freedom element was not aligned. First thing is to figure out what are my brand values and are they still your brand values. You can start by brands are not concrete entities.
They are always shifting and adapting and it's alive. It's a living thing. If you go back and think “Are my values still the same as when I started?” If not, let's change them up. If you need some help with this, we have a values freebie checklist on our website. You can go to mydailybusinesscoach.com/freestuff to get that. And if you are like, “No, these are my values.” Then the second part is to really think about how am I showing up for these? How are they aligned internally, at least four or five ways for each value and then externally as well, because once you come back to them, you can feel more motivated. I know that when I have more space and freedom, I feel way more motivated to do the things that I need to do in my business.
That's kind of the second concept, which is the misalignment of values. And then the third thing, and this can be one of the hardest in all parts of my life and especially in a business as well, is that you have outgrown things that your season for whatever it was you're doing is no longer. That could be a really hard thing to get your head around. It can be the reason why people stay in relationships for way too long. It's a similar thing to your business. People can stay in a business relationship for way too long. I'm thinking of my friend Vi, the one that we kind of like cut a lot of classes in first-year uni together. She is a very wise woman. She's one of my best friends. She said to me once, that people might only be in your life for a season.
I think it was in relation to this guy that I liked and things hadn't worked out, but I always come back to that moment when she said that I know exactly where we were sitting, I know exactly how she said it. I have thought of that many countless times in all sorts of situations. And sometimes in business, what worked for us three years ago may not work for us. Now, maybe we've grown, maybe we've developed, maybe we've shifted. Maybe our ideas around the world have shifted. Maybe we started out, I don't know, making a product that we thought was the best thing ever and we're so excited. As we've grown, maybe we've realized that that product its sustainability factor is not where we want it to be. Maybe it's got to the point where we might, might want to sell our business, or we might wanna let go of that, or we might want to re-craft it.
There can be a whole lot of things that come up, like, “How am I gonna do that?” And what does that mean for me? And what does that mean for this business that I've built up and what does it mean for my audience? And what does it mean for the identity that a lot of us will carry around? Unfortunately, sometimes with our business, because we are people we're people outside of our businesses, but this motivation or lack of can really come from feeling stuck, feeling like we have outgrown where we are. That can be a really hard conversation to sit down and have with yourself. Or if you are lucky enough to have a business partner or staff to consider, like, where do we wanna go? Like, where are we trying to go? And again, if you have listened to Episode 232, which is about the Five-year Vision that might have come as a result of doing the activities that I mentioned in that coaching episode.
Thinking have I outgrown things? Sometimes we don't know if we've outgrown it or not. We might take a break from doing something. We might slow it down. We might just look at the different options. So say in that instance, you've got a product and you're really excited. And then 10 years in, you've decided that it actually doesn't align with the values that you have now, or the way that you wanna live, or the legacy that you wanna have on the planet. And you just might just go into, let's have a think of the different scenarios, I could sell it. I could drop that product and do something else. Or I could revitalize that product in a new way with say, recycled materials or another way of manufacturing it. Just looking at those options sometimes can help us figure out, do I really wanna do it?
Maybe when you think about selling it to someone else, you're like, “Oh no, I'd feel heartbroken.” And you're like, “No, I haven't actually outgrown this yet.” I just need to tweak things around. I just need to shift and adapt. It's like any relationship, you gotta keep this spark alive for things to keep going, even if you change and adapt. That last part of not feeling motivated is really have I outgrown this? Have I outgrown it is my season over? And it can be a really scary thing to step into a new season, but it can also be an uplifting thing. And the thing that actually gets you motivated again. Those are sort of three areas that I think a lot of people fall into when they are feeling this lack of motivation or I can't find my motivation.
It is one you are, you're looking for somebody to come and help you. And that whole idea of Mel Robbins, “No one is coming to help.” She sounds awful. If you haven't listened to her, you're like, she sounds so negative. She's not at all. She's just hilarious actually. So there's that concept. No one is coming to help you. And figuring out how can I have somebody to come and help me. The second is a complete misalignment of values or maybe your values have just gone off the track a little bit. And then the third is maybe the season is over for that part in your business. Maybe you've outgrown things. And maybe it's time to look at what does the future look like? I really hope that has helped you. I feel like if you started this episode and you didn't feel motivated about something, I really hope that by the end of it, now you are feeling a little bit more motivated or at least understanding where that lack of motivation is coming from.
As I said, we'll link to everything in the show notes, which you'll find over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/240, as this is episode 240. If you found this useful, I would love it so much. If you could share it with a friend, especially one in small business, it'll just really help us reach other people that may need to hear this message again today. If you feel like it, we would also love it. If you could leave a review, it just really helps other small business owners across the globe. And it literally is across the globe. Like I love looking at our analytics and seeing all the different places around the world where people are listening to this. It's absolutely incredible. There may just be somebody out there who needs to find this episode. If you leave a review, it really helps us get found. You can do that on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening. I will see you next time if you hit subscribe. If you want to check out the show notes is mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/240. Thanks so much for listening. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you wanna get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
