How does Anxiety Derail Motivation?

Anxious thoughts divert your mind from focusing on doing the thing and fixate on outcomes instead. For example, let’s say you walk up the stairs and feel winded, so you decide to start going to the gym. Your mind’s focus is on “going to the gym”. But then, let’s say you worry about people judging your lack of knowledge or how you look at the gym.

Now, your mind is no longer focused on “go to the gym,” it’s focused on worrying about what others think. All that changed is your mind’s focus shifted away from the action of going, resulting in not going to the gym. Anxiety creates a wavering mind or focus that interrupts holding the action in your head long enough to act on it.

People who succeed at prolonged action, do so by being focused on the action instead of the outcome or goal or what people think. Doubting the importance of action in the present or being anxious about outcomes tends to cause stagnation. The more resolve you can cultivate, the more disciplined actions can be.

Note: Because resolve is an emotion, it can not be cultivated if someone is numbing their emotions with technology and social media. So taking a break from technology might be necessary for some.

Reflection Questions:

• How aware of you are of your emotions like doubt and anxiety?
• What are your doubts and how can you resolve them?
• Do you numb emotions with tech?

Practice activity for cultivating internal awareness:

• Pick something easy that you can do right now. Notice when you feel resolved and how it impacts your willpower. Notice when that resolve is derailed- what derailed it?
• Jot down these observations or create voice memo’s to keep track of the patterns and play it back or read it back later. What patterns do you see?

“[Helplessness] happens when your radius of awareness is wider than your sphere of influence”

• Eliza Day Light (Actor and Writer)

When the amygdala is activated by anxiety or stress, it sends the urge to scan for danger and become a night watchman. Like how there used to be a night watch person for tribes scanning for any danger at night. This can be used to understand why people doom scroll on social media when stressed. We are looking for confirmation to validate feeling anxious. This can lead to increased anxiety and hyper-vigilance if you do not regulate your social media consumption because our brains were not built to take in as much info, stimulation, and content that technology can give. The level of input is different than what our brains evolved for. It presents us with too much information outside of our sphere of influence.

Reflection Questions:

• Are you taking on the mental burdens of learning about crisis outside of your area of influence? How is that making you feel and it’s impact on your functioning and mindset?

Practice activity for awareness of resolve:

• Ask yourself, can I break this information down into any small action I can do?
• If not, stop engaging with that particular type of news. Clean up your exposure by altering or resetting algorithms or who you follow and listen to online.
• Anything exposing you to things outside of your sphere of influence without giving you a realistic action you can take is not doing your mental health any favors. It’s not helping you be better prepared. It’s just going to paralyze you due to anxiety. Stop engaging with it.