We can all be cursed at times with demotivation and feelings of apathy, especially after a time of high energy expenditure, reaching a comfortable plateaux in life, or after emotional turmoil and stress.
Apathy is both a feeling and attitude. By definition apathy is a lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern. It can be described in terms of feeling numb, or muted. As an attitude it can be one of indifference, unconcern, unresponsiveness, detachment, or dispassion.
“Sometimes success breeds apathy. Sometimes when you’re doing quite well for yourself you’re not as tough as you need to be”, Eric Thomas
Either way apathy leaves you lacking energy in one, or all aspects of your life. You experience lethargy and lack the ability, or will to commit, or act.
It can feel a bit like hitting a wall and has all sorts of causes and ways of breaking out of the state to a higher functioning place.
Getting over the Inertia of Apathy
You won’t be able to break out of apathy unless you change your mindset. Regardless of what initially caused you to feel so unmotivated, it’s your current attitude that keeps you stuck.
Your immediate task therefore is to change your attitude. It’s likely you will need to force yourself to ditch your current mindset. The fact of the matter is you can’t possibly live life to the full being happy, fulfilled, content and successful if you don’t actively pursue your goals and desires.
1) Think yourself into succeeding
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”, Napoleon Hill
If you can see yourself succeeding (conceive) then you are laying down the blueprint in your mind to believe you can do what’s necessary to actually fulfil your dream in reality (achieve).
2) Break your regular routine
Your daily routine is likely very comforting. However, this safe place can also trap you via apathy and boredom. Inject novelty into your life and increase stimulus to break routine. Try new things, try things that used to make you feel alive, or copy others who live life to the full.
3) Re-label yourself
If you’ve come to label yourself as lazy or unmotivated and become immobilised by doubts and fears about failure, then it’s time to move past the negative messages you’ve processed about yourself.
4) Move from passivity to problem solving
Brainstorm what you can do right now to move beyond your mental, or emotional inertia. What’s the easiest, most do-able first step you can take to pull yourself out of being stuck?
5) Believe you can perform better than expected
Focus on daily activities that are the individual steps that get you moving onwards and upwards again.
Challenge yourself to do more than before. Play at thinking in ‘success' mode, rather than simply making do with a maintaining the safe status quo.
6) Get out of your own way
If you feel you have deeper issues holding you back from breaking out of the apathy trap, then find a good therapist to help you move those hurdles out of the way so the path is clear to get on in life.