Lack of #Motivation issues

You see with chronic illness we have a life of inches, I think. A slower paced life. It takes a lot more effort to achieve any goal. It takes more energy to achieve any goal. So we should be proud of our inches. Here is the thing though. We want to live this life of moderation. We want to do things to help our health. Have a social life. Yet with chronic pain and illness comes this decrease in motivation. Part of that is pure pain. High pain motivated someone to not move much during it.

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Lately I have been having troubles with motivation. Which is something that can be a common issue for the chronically ill. We all have obligations in this life. We all have particular health goals we want to achieve as well. But some of us have pain. Some of deal with fatigue. Sometimes it is more one that the other and sometimes it is both. Not to mention other symptoms, but pain and fatigue compromise our motivation to accomplish tasks. Both sap our energy and give us only a finite amount of energy to play with.

In fact according to a previous study I have already written about "So that sensation that you have no motivation to get through the day, to attain the goals you need to or even attain the goals that are seriously meaningful to you could have little to do with the pain aspect of the chronic pain... but is part of the persistence of the chronic pain itself. We no longer have the sense of their being a reward for our behavior. We no longer have a sense of pleasure from our accomplishments. It has been dulled." (Motivation? What motivation.) 

So there is study. Either way we have these motivational issues.

It seems to take immense motivation to achieve Any goal, let alone consistently maintain an activity we choose. Day in and day out.

I know there are factors we can do to improve the situation. Get some good sleep. (I vehemently wish this to be possible)  Exercise, since that helps with fatigue, both mentally and physically. I have been told this over and over but I have actually not yet experienced this elusive effect. I have experienced some metal clarity from some mild exercise, but as soon as I got to moderate exercise that disappears and physical fatigue, well, that remains the same.

The fact remains we can struggle with maintaining routines and this is fine. It is all right to have days when it is not possible to achieve our goals. We should never feel guilty for this fact. We just have to continue on the next day. That is exactly how I see exercise. I cannot maintain a routine. It is impossible, but I do get in the weekly requirement. Simply by doing it on the days that I can. There are days when I can only do a little. Days when I can do more. And days when I cannot do anything at all.

Another thing we should always remember is we will not improve at anything by leaps and bounds. Rather we must take our time to establish new routines. If we want to make any change at all to our lifestyle for any reason we should adjust it carefully, slowly and understand it takes about three months for any change to become habit. I like the rule of 1% for the chronically ill. Never go I need to improve 100% at anything. No, rather say, I need to improve 1%. I need to choose one thing and adjust it slowly. In this we can achieve our goals without hitting too much pain, too much fatigue and inevitable failure. I am going to use exercise as an example again because it is an easy one. When I began exercising using aerobic exercise I first established my limit. That fatigue and pain barrier. Not too far, but just hitting it. And that was ten minutes. From there it was just a matter of my little bit of improvement a week. So from ten minutes to eleven minutes. Slowly by inches working my way up. I had no set goal. The goal was improving on the previous time. If one day I was back down to ten, so be it. The next day was a new day. We can do 1% improvements on any sort of goal we want to choose for our health or well-being.
 

It is also important that we do not choose several goals at one time. It can be very difficult to achieve just One thing more onto the rest of what we have to deal with. Lets be honest about that. So do that One thing. When you have consistently achieved that goal then you can consider adding to it. Too many things and we will get frustrated, flustered and eventually just want to give up on all this changes. Studies have shown humans are not designed to be multi-taskers. And I think those of us with chronic illness should think of this more. We have focus issues to consider and fatigue concerns. Focus one thing at a time. Take on less not more.

Now that is for goals. But I have issues with motivation to get up on time. To do anything at all. So on bad days I have a rule with myself. I achieve one productive piece of housework. I write one piece of work on the computer or pages of work. And I cook supper. As long as I do those three things a day I consider it a success.

Keeping up motivation for all the other things I need to do? I write lists. So I don’t forget them to be honest. Then I knock off one thing at a time and feel like I am getting somewhere every time I do, even know the darn thing keeps growing on me.

Still there are days when the pain and fatigue win. And there will be days like that. We have to accept that and not feel guilty about it. We need our rest when we are like that.

Still other days where the depression wins, because there is no motivation on these days.