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What motivates you the most?

For the past few years I’ve been mastering the art of self motivation successfully which has been challenging considering I was diagnosed with clinical depression among other things that I’ve been fighting against nearly my whole life.

I always say my biggest motivator is human connection. I care about those I know or even those I’ve known in my past so that encourages me to get up and be productive in order to be my best self for them. If I can’t or it’s too hard which did happen more often than I’d like. I have very mean voice in my head that makes things very simple.

It tells me I’m not allowed to say I care for others if I’m not willing to put in the work for them. Talk is cheap. You either get up and move to action and prove how much they matter, or you sit there and waste away proving how much they actually don’t. The choice is yours and it will tell everyone who you actually are. Not these ideas you come up with.

I will lock away my ability to say anything else matters behind this decision. You either care about those you love or you don’t. The only way to know for sure is through action. That’s it. Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t have excuses. That isn’t love. To act or not is the choice. No more. No less.

When I reduce the entirely of my existence and everything that matters to me, when I boil it all down to a simple choice of prove it through action or don’t. It just becomes easier to act. I don’t know if that’s healthy or not, but it works for me.
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If that approach works for you, great. For me it does not.

My love and care for my family and friends does not get negated because I can’t defeat my clinical depression, which I’ve been battling for over 40 years, and oftentimes leaves me barely able to take care of basic hygiene and get out of the house. For me, loving others unfortunately doesn’t change that fact nor does it miraculously produce motivation. But it certainly doesn’t take away from my feelings for them, doesn’t mean they don’t matter.

So I would very much resist feeling like my inability to act, to prove my love to them means that I don’t care. That I’m making a choice not to act. For me, that’s just another entry from the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” school of psychology. Which only makes me blame myself and drive myself further into despair. Exactly the kind of thinking that makes it even more difficult to extricate myself from the clutches of depression.

But again, there’s no one size fits all answer. Gotta just find what works for you.
Reject · 26-30, M
@OlderSometimesWiser Yeah. There is no easy answer to this complicated problem or this just wouldn’t happen to people. I have to make it simple in my head or I do end up with your conclusion of “I can’t”. If I think about it at all, I can easily say I can’t but that doesn’t mean I don’t care. However if I do that, I simply won’t move. I have to threaten myself which is why I question how healthy it is, but nothing else works. I think you’re right in that just because you’re unable doesn’t mean you don’t care, but I refuse to belief that for myself or I’ll get sucked right back into the worst of my depression. I can be entirely wrong to say the things I do to myself. I acknowledge that, but being wrong makes me move.