Finding Motivation

For the past week or so, I have been really struggling to come up with new content for the blog. Not that I have no topics to write about, its actually the opposite cause I have a truckload of those. What I was really struggling with was that first sentence to start off a particular topic. I would find myself writing a topic and then when it comes to beefing it up, mental blackout.

I thought maybe it was because I was in a bad mental state so the creative juices were not flowing properly, but that was the thing, I was not in a bad mental state and I have not been in a bad mental state for quite a while now. So I decided to take a week’s break from writing so I could try to find my rhythm again. During that week I was reading The Supremacist by David Shapiro, quite a splendid read.

So The Supremacist is a first person novel about this guy who sets out with his friend to visit every single Supreme store in the world. There are six Supremes stores on the novel, two in New York, three in Japan and another in London and this guy actually visited every single one of them, what an adventure. So I figured, if David can go halfway across the world simply because he loves Supreme, surely I can also find the motivation to string up a couple of sentences and get this blog back on track because it is also what I love doing.

When I decided to start this blog ,I had gone through what was possibly the worst period of my life so one of the main reasons I started it, apart from the fact that I have always wanted to write, was that I wanted whoever came across the posts to always leave here feeling better than they did before reading them. Anxiety and depression are things that I would not wish on even my worst enemy and being able to contribute towards helping other people feel better about themselves was something I wanted to do and the blog afforded me that opportunity.

Getting messages from people about how some of the stuff I was writing was helping them to get through their own personal battles makes me feel like my life has a purpose. Knowing that you are a contributing factor in someone feeling much better about themselves is a really beautiful feeling, one that motivates me to keep writing even when I feel like the creative juices have seeped away.

Being a blogger, it is very easy to find oneself having doubts about whether you should keep going because you wonder if anyone is reading all that you are writing or you are just typing away words into oblivion. Most of the time you log on to find that your traffic is next to zero and you ask yourself if you should instead be investing your time and energy into something that is going to be more appreciated. When your work does not seem to garner any appreciation or recognition, you always come to the conclusion that’s it is all futile. Whenever you get those feelings, I find it very effective to ask myself this question, ”why did I start doing this?”. The answer to that question, I have found in my personal experience, will always be a source of motivation, provided the reason you started was sufficient enough.

Nowadays, in this busy and fast paced world, it is easy for one to lose track of their vision because there are distractions all over the place. There is always a new experience to try out that one sometimes find themselves bored of focusing on traveling only one path. You always feel like you are missing out on more satisfying and fulfilling experiences, so you are tempted to abandon your current route for more “greener pastures”. Although you may be indeed missing out on more rewarding experiences than what you are currently pursuing, you will never know. On my You Are Where You Need To Be post, I mentioned that where you at the moment, no matter how terrible it might seem to be, is exactly where you are meant to be because we can never fully grasp the ways of the universe. Hopping from one experience to another because you are seeking that one which will fulfil you the most will just make you a jack of all trades but master of none .Like Mark Manson said, depth of experience will always  prove to be much more rewarding than breadth of experience.

By placing all your focus on only one path, one gets to learn everything about that path and how to best travel it. One gets to know where the rocky parts of that path are and where the smooth paths are. But if you are always looking for a shorter and less draining path, you will find yourself spending more time traveling and still be nowhere close to your destination.

Life always has a funny way of working itself and even if it seems like it’s taking forever for things to work out for you, remember that timing has not been the universe’s best virtue. No matter how discouraged or close to giving up you are, please do not do it. Keep striving, keep fighting and keep persevering, for you will never know how and when the universe is going to provide a breakthrough.

I am not going to sit here and tell you that things are going to work out for you and you are going to live happily ever after because quite frankly, I do not know that, none of us do. But what I can tell you is that, if you are put in your effort into everything you do, even if things do not pan out well at the end, you will find solace in the fact that hey, at least I tried, like that Bart Simpson meme.

So if you are looking for motivation in whatever endeavor you are pursuing, remind yourself why you are pursuing it in the first place and if that fails, look in the mirror and you will find the best motivation of them all. Now go out there and make that guy you see on the mirror proud.