Q: How does one stay motivated when they are dealing with health issues that make it hard to focus and have energy?
A: When we have physical health issues that are robbing us of motivation, we may need to exercise the same mental muscles we use to create happiness. When we’ve got physical symptoms, it’s nearly impossible to focus on anything else but the pain. That focus can potentially enhance the pain, which creates a cycle that’s hard to break out of. Distractions can help us take our focus away from the pain, but it’s difficult to have a consistent distraction that lasts as long as our desire to be pain-free. But as with trying to change our mindsets from negative to positive, it’s a process that takes diligence and perseverance.
Here are some things to do to try to get your motivation back even with ongoing health issues:
1.) Meditation is proven effective for chronic pain. If this is hard for you, get some tapes and teach yourself how to do it. Don’t just do it once, but fit it into your daily routine and keep at it. Find classes to learn mindfulness, which can greatly help pain management. Mental tenacity is key. Don’t let pain remove you from the path to where you want to be.
2.) Discover your passion and integrate it into your life daily. When you’re doing what you love, you tend to stay in a positive and optimistic mode, which does wonders for the body. Focusing on achieving a dream can be helpful in the attempt to distract the mind from physical pain. And getting a few steps closer to our dreams in the process is a bonus.
3.) Take responsibility for your own health. Get a doctor you trust, who wants to get at the root cause of your ailment. Be open to trying new things and be wary of drugs that can be causing other symptoms.
4.) Get inspired. However this happens for you, get in that healing state of inspiration. Hopefully from that, you will stumble on belief. Belief can carry you beyond your perceived limitation.
5.) Move your body. Pain can become worse if you don’t move your body. Find something you enjoy that keeps your body moving. Swimming, yoga, walking, pilates, cycling, hiking…
6.) Journal. Keep track of your thoughts. Turn it into a gratitude journal and write down what you’re grateful for every day. After awhile, you’ll begin to be more appreciative for what you have rather than being so focused only on what you don’t have or what hurts.
7.) Volunteer. Helping others who aren’t as fortunate as you takes away the focus on your own struggles.
8.) Visualize. Every day recall what you felt like when you were at your healthiest and happiest. Focus on the belief that you are moving toward health every day. Be diligent with these visualizations.
9.) Stay positive. Training our brains to see the good in bad, the positive in the negative, and the potential for greater health actually does change our results.
…and for fun, listen to this episode of Radiolab, Limits of the Body. It’s an interesting thought that some people push through the pain and get to the other side, while others don’t. The first story is about a marathoner and her push to finish. The second is about a physiologist who believes that we have a central governor circuit in our brain, which signals pain that encourages us to stop and rest. The theory is that this happens way before we really need it in order to conserve energy, and when we push through it we have access to a huge reservoir of extra energy.
