UniqueNewYork

I've been unemployed for a year. Recently got some good news that a relative would back a business I want to start. I would need to work for a year to save my part of the start up money. I am having trouble getting motivated even in light of this awesome news. Its hard to explain its like I'm wearing concrete shoes the way I feel.

I know I need to get up early, have a list made for each day, check off the list as I do the things I need to be doing (most importantly looking for work), but my day rarely goes like that. I just feel blah. A close friend of mine is going through the same thing in AA. He is a gym rat, and the last two weeks he has complained several times to me that all he does is work and go to the gym and sit on his couch and he feels unfulfilled.

Have you guys found a way to light the fire under your butt and get excited about life? I am even open to tough love at this point.

soberjulie

For years, I tried to "think my way into right living".....funny, the opposite has proven to be more effective and has actual results. I had to "live my way into right thinking".

I often am motivated by my feelings.....I will do whatever I feel like doing, and not do what I dont feel like doing.
Now dont get me wrong, feelings are not unimportant. However, they are not the thing that motivates my decisions these days.
I get out of bed every morning because thats what responsible people do.
I pay the bills and buy groceries because thats what my kids expect and deserve of a mother. I go to work because I kinda like having a roof over my head, heat in my home and a car to drive.
Many days I dont feel like getting out of bed....I'd rather spend the grocery money on some cool new clothes for myself, and I dont wannnnnaaaa (insert whiny voice here) go to work.
The more I do the things I often dont feel like doing, the less of problem the actual motivation becomes.
I used to think responsibility was a dirty word.
Now I love being responsible.

DayTrader

UNY, I was going to respond but I'm not sure how to. Where are you in your sobriety? Are you sober? Are you staying so on your own or are you working one of the recovery programs..... etc etc.

I don't want to dumb my comments down or talk over your understanding.

UniqueNewYork

I had 4 months of sobriety.. was very happy. For the last 4 months I have been doing controlled drinking.. I feel I am a timebomb waiting to go off again. I am only drinking about 1 day a week now but when I do I am the guy ordering 2 beers at a time and mixed drinks. Not going to meetings.

DayTrader

gottcha.....

is that working?

I mean, I found that until I was willing to completely toss everything up into the air and see where it landed.....my desire to keep drinking, my desire to run my own life, my desire to control things, etc etc etc....... alllll of it......... nothing really changed all that much.

Don't get me wrong, some things did change........mostly for the better.......but so long as I held onto reservations, so long as I believed I could still pretty-much to things "my way," a lot of the crap in my life stuck around - ESPECIALLY motivation at work.

I don't know where the work motivation thing came from either. For over 15 yrs I was a pretty hard worker.... then, towards the last couple yrs of my drinking career...work started to suffer. Fast forward a couple years into sobriety and I was still the same horrible employee sober that I was loaded - only I didn't have the alcohol excuse anymore.

The long and short of it.....i continued trying to manage my work career....unsuccessfully....until I finally (fingers crossed) hit bottom in that area too. I recognized my powerlessness when it comes to managing my motivation, recognized my inability to will myself into becoming a good worker again, and surrendered. I tossed that one up into the air......asked God for help, and decided I'd do whatever I felt He wanted me to do. Here I sit, 3+ yrs sober today and I'm STILL not sure I'm going in the right direction but 99% of the fear and anxiety is gone and......progressively.....I'm noticing that motivation coming back - but not necessarily as the result of anything I'm doing.......remember.....I surrendered my presumed control and power in that area.

I know it sounds backwards to conventional logic but that's what I'm doing now and have been practicing for the past many months and it's starting to seem to be paying off.

Dee74

I couldn't be motivated...until I stepped completely off the hamster wheel.

From this perspective I can see I'm an alcoholic - any amount of alcohol or drugs is bad for me - they rob my drive, sap my self esteem and my energy, and they keep me in a rut.

Maybe you're same UNY?

D

LaFemme

Hey UNY....I was unable to feel motivated about anything in my life when I was drinking (I never tried Co trolled drinking)....no matter how awesome the opportunity.

I have found being sober has opened my whole world. I am working on my art career again...I am happy and fulfilled...I work out and I take care of myself. I would suggest getting fully sober and seeing if you can get your mojo back:-)

artsoul

Hi UNY - I had a terrible time with feeling unmotivated and tired all the time until about 4-5 months sober. Since then, my energy level has been slowly getting better and better. I don't feel 100% yet, but it's a whole lot better than when I was drinking.

Good to see you posting! I agree with Dee that if your drinking even once a week (I assume from your post that it's not just one or two), it's going to be hard to recover fully.

Forwards

An interesting thread - thank you. I've also lost all natural motivation to work / succeed at anything over the last few years. I'm an alcoholic currently in a phase of on/off drinking.

My day begins with writing a long list of tasks to do. I'll then work through them reluctantly, sometimes sober, sometimes drinking. The list is never completed and I end the day dissatisfied, knowing the next day will be the same.

I'm now considering resigning from my job, having messed up a significant project this week. In my younger days an all-night work session with a bottle of Scotch would get me through last minute deadlines very effectively. Nowadays it appears this no longer works.

I'm not clear in my own mind which responsibilities I should drop in order to focus on my recovery. 'Not drinking' takes a huge effort for me in the early days and I'll sometimes not achieve anything else in a day - not productive in work terms at all. On the other hand, too much freedom creates temptations to drink.

Still, where there's life there's hope. Grateful for SR today (though I really should be working this morning, not posting here...).

Untoxicated

You too huh?

BTW, what's wrong with gym rats???

There is good advice in this thread so I'll just echo what soberjulie mentioned about emotion and action. I'll caution you in advance, I tend to have diarrhea of the brain so proceed at your own risk.

It's counterintuitive for those of us that are inclined to obey our emotions and disobey our logic. Catastrophically, the choice to do or not to do isn't based on what should or should not be done but rather what, quite simply, is felt.

It sounds like your cycle is going (as mine was also going) Thinking (logic) ---> Emotion (feeling) ---> Action/No Action. The buffer is the emotion and the emotion has replaced and overridden your logic and creates the outcome you may or may not want (depending on your perspective of course).

What has worked for me is working backwards in the flow, turning it on its head. Action (go to the gym)/No Action (don't drink) ---> Emotion (how do I feel about it?*) ---> Thinking (understand, embrace, then ignore the emotion [it lies anyway in comparison to my logic])

* regarding the emotive step here, at the beginning of trying to change the habit I recognize the emotion, I feel it, and then allow logic to inform me that this is just an emotion (I don't feel like doing another set of incline press but I will do so anyway) and I override emotion with sound logic.

Eventually, I found that I had a bit of a paradigm shift (change of habit if you will) in this way...

Action/No Action ---> Thinking (what is the next positive action/non action?) ---> Emotion (I feel great about what I've accomplished [positive reinforcement])

Anywho, that's how I changed my habits. Oh and Yoda basically summarized the whole damn thing years ago with this...

"Do or do not...there is no try."

yeahgr8

I know a guy in AA that did the gym rat and meetings thing for 4 years...4 years!!!!!!!! That is really scary...anyways he eventually drank and then after 6 months out there he came back and worked the steps and recovered...lets just say his life is very different now...

Thinking about it he was soooo lucky,he works for Government in small country and they kicked him to the kerb when he went out again, people got sick of giving second chances which i guess are even harder to give after seeing someone 4 years dry then drunk again, but said when you sober up you can come back...in this case it was his good fortune that everyone knew he was an alcoholic!!!

It's a horrible place to be dry on will power alone...i spent many attempts there, i actually feel sorry for the guy i was thinking the only way to get sober was alone and by pulling my bootstraps up which is whateveryone told me when i asked...or maybe i just wasn't ready to listen...hmmm probably the latter in hindsight!!

Good luck and hope you find your way:-)