If you are ever in an undermotivated mood, find something you fear and do it—and watch what happens.

I’ve been trapped inside my own brain for a few days now thinking about habits and motivation. It’s a bit of an exhausting internal dialogue all the while being completely invigorating. Making changes to your lifestyle and your habits is what I would consider to be essentially invigorating. Something has caused you to have a change of heart and has motivated you to make a change. What’s more life stirring than that?

The habits I’m looking to change right now are being beaten down (just as quickly as I decide on starting them) with a lack of motivation to actually execute the new plan. Which is why it’s been mentally exhausting for me.

It’s funny to me that there are good and bad habits. Or rather, that we (speaking for the human race here) have made good and bad habits. Why is it that the “bad” habits seem to occur so easily? It’s not like I had to work at biting my nails on a regular basis in order for it to become a habit. It just happened, subconsciously and here we are with pathetically crooked, brittle nails and dry cuticles. Breaking this habit has been twelve years in the making. Sixth grade. That’s when I started trying to stop. It hasn’t been even remotely productive until the last year and even still I have the hardest time keeping up my routine to take care of them. Twelve years. I wish I could fall into good habits as easily as I fall into bad ones. Why can’t washing my face diligently every morning and every evening just happen?

I have to have a plan in place in order to break/create habits. Who am I kidding? I have to have a plan in place for everything (including the order in which my evening was to occur last night, half of which did not get done). I made a list though of the things I wanted to stop/start. But that’s not the kind of list I need in order to actually successfully do things. I need a child’s chore chart for days/weeks/months. I’m kidding…sort of.

Maybe I’m not kidding at all.

I’ve started making changes just recently to lots of areas of my/our life. Health, activity, spiritual, etc. I haven’t been motivated though. I’ve done it all because I wrote it down and that was it. I wasn’t interested in going for a walk or taking my vitamins or preparing for Monday morning the night before. I told myself before I feel asleep last night (with the help of a Benadryl since I had taken a 2-1/2 hour nap) that I needed some serious motivation if any of this was going to work. So I prayed a quick prayer.

This morning when I got to work I got my monthly email update from Books 24x7. It’s a website that my company has access to, giving all of the employees access to thousands of e-books. 99.9% of them are self-help/technical support. With titles like, “Killer Presentations: Power the Imagination to Visualize your Point: with PowerPoint” (gag me), “PCI DSS: A Practical Guide to Implementation” (I don’t even have a clue what any of that means), and “Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life” (authored by, you guessed it, Donald J. Trump), I’ve never even bothered to go to the website. But today, I clicked on the link and the first book that popped up was, “100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change your Life Forever.” Ignoring the cheesy subtitle, I held my breath thinking, “Really God? A motivational self help book? This is how you are giving me motivation?” and clicked on the book. I mean how bad could it really be?

The chapters are blurbs. I flew through 25 of them in a matter of 30 minutes and although they were good, I was a little saturated with “go get ‘em-ness” that I had to take a break for fear of quitting my job and opening a fresh cut flower shop on the spot if I finished the rest of the chapters in the book.

I have to say, I’m a little bit motivated. No one said that self-help books didn’t work, just that they were awful. A lot of what I read talked about being creative in finding solutions to things you didn’t want to do in order to make them quicker, easier and more enjoyable. Check out this blurb, “Make a commitment to yourself to find the natural highs you need to stay motivated. Start by finding out what it does to your mood and energy to laugh, to sing, to dance, to walk, to run, to hug someone, or to get something done. Then support your experiments by telling yourself that you’re not interested in doing anything that isn’t fun. If you can’t immediately see the fun in something, find a way to create it. Once you have made a task fun, you have solved the problem of self-motivation.” Mary Poppins much?

Other favorite blurbs were, “When you focus on being a happy and motivated person, that is who you will be” and “Most people are reluctant to see themselves as being creative because they associate creativity with complexity. But creativity is simplicity….It’s hard to stay motivated when you’re confused. When you simplify your life, it gathers focus. The more you can focus your life, the more motivated it gets.”

I can feel the cheesiness seeping out of my pores. I’m sorry. I can’t help it.

I’ve decided that everyday I’m going to try and do two things that I don’t want to do, just for the reason that I don’t want to do them, in order to keep my willpower in check. I’ve always had willpower; I’ve just chosen not to use it until now.