Finding Motivation when you're Feeling Unmotivated for Authors

Feeling stuck and unmotivated? You're not alone. After battling sickness, I found myself deep in the unmotivated "blah" zone. Learn how this forced period of rest led to unexpected self-reflection and breakthroughs in my author business. By surrendering to rest, I uncovered valuable insights and renewed my sense of purpose. This episode is all about embracing those down times to fuel future growth.

Discover actionable tips to reignite your passion and motivation. We'll discuss setting clear goals, evaluating what truly aligns with your desires, and shaking off those uninspired feelings. These challenging moments can be transformative, helping you build a more fulfilling and successful author business. Tune in to hear my personal journey and get inspired to turn your own slumps into opportunities for growth.

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Transcript

Jenna Lee: 0:08

Welcome to the Daring Author Podcast, the show that takes you behind the scenes of building a successful author business, bringing you inspiring interviews and information on writing and marketing ideas for your book so that you can build an easeful, empowering and profitable author business. I'm your host, jenna Lee, owner of the Daring Press, a virtual marketing and support agency where we help indie authors who are ready to take their author business to the next level with more ease, growth and time. You can find the episode show notes and a bunch of marketing resources at thedaringpresscom. Let's become daring authors by diving into today's episode. Hello, and welcome back to another chapter of the Daring Author Podcast.

Jenna Lee: 0:58

It has been a hot minute since I've recorded anything and any new episodes and I have been sick and this episode is going to come off that sickness. So what I have found over the past two weeks and I really think this is always a time for me if I'm sick or I'm forced to rest, and you know when you're just forced to rest, when you want to do a heap of stuff but you just physically can, and in these moments I become very unmotivated and I just go in this spiral of yeah, I'm not motivated to do anything, everything is too hard and it's a really a time where I like shake everything up. I like question everything. I question you know business writing thing. I question you know business writing everyday life, like I just question everything and I in those moments I am so frustrated and I'm just like I just want to be me again. I just want to feel motivated and feel that energy and feel really good. But I can't force it and my body's, in this area where it wants to rest, it wants to recover, and I find in those moments when I actually surrender and when I actually let go of that, oh I want to be doing this, I should be doing this that's special, should word and really just surrender to that and just let everything happen and rest and recover. And then I will find my motivation again. And it has been a challenging two weeks mentally with my mindset and trying to get through that. But once I did commit to surrendering, that's when I could fully recover and then come back. And now I'm like re-looking at literally everything and I wanted to do this episode on.

Jenna Lee: 2:51

You know, if you are feeling really unmotivated you know this always happens you know you might be feeling unmotivated because sales aren't where they're meant to be, or you feel unmotivated because writing is just feeling it, it's just not working for you. Or you just might just be feeling unmotivated about everything and everything just feels blah. You know, when everything's just like, yeah, I'm over all this shit and this is the best time, like I'm always like oh, I hate when I feel like this, but it's actually when I have biggest breakthroughs in business is when I'm going through this blur stage, because it gives me that opportunity to shake things up, to evaluate everything and to look at everything and redesign everything. Like, if anything's feeling blur, like don't get stuck in the blur, blah, blah, blah, don't get stuck in that. Like. This is an opportunity for you to revise and look at everything that you're doing and re-evaluate it all and then come back and you'll be feeling more motivated because you're getting super clear on what you actually want. You know, these are the lessons where you might be going in a direction that just does not align with you, are the lessons where you might be going in a direction that just does not align with you, and I believe in the energy and what we put out and the universe working and coexisting with us. If we are feeling with everything, then we're not going to get what we desire because it's it's not what we actually desire, right? So I think to get unstuck when you're feeling unmotivated, you're feeling blah, you're feeling stuck. I want to give you some tips on what to do to feel motivated again, you know what, to reignite that motivation within you, and some of the things that we can look at is setting clear goals, like looking first up.

Jenna Lee: 4:42

Let's evaluate everything and put down okay, what am I doing? Am I writing business? You know what? What am I writing what? What's not feeling so great anymore? You know, if it's to do with your backlist in terms of sales, like what's not working, what have you tried?

Jenna Lee: 4:59

Like literally brain dump everything of like what's not working, what feels blur, what feels hard, what feels sticky, what's not working, what feels blur, what feels hard, what feels sticky, what's not. Converting all of these things. Let's write them all down and put it in your journal, type it in a Google Doc, whatever feels most pleasing to you, let's write it all out and then let's evaluate that, having, I guess, like two columns. So what's feeling blur, what's not working, what's just? Yeah, get it all out in one column and then, on the flip side, let's flip it and be like, okay, what does feel really good for me right now? What? What is? Those little light bulb moments, those things that keep coming up for you, those things that keep getting presented to you, you know, um, every day, like, what's, what are you seeing online that's feeling like, oh, that feels really good, or you're seeing something that feels really inspiring. Let's put all that down in another column and let's just get out what we feel really motivated, like what's inspiring us right now, and pop that in another column.

Jenna Lee: 6:09

And then what we're going to do is going to set some new clear goals. Let's reset. Let's set some new goals that are really specific, that are really achievable, like, let's just start little. You know, if you aren't writing right now and writing is feeling really blah and you're feeling really stuck I'm going to be using blah all the time in this episode but if it feels really hard, let's set some achievable goals. Let's just say, okay, I want to write 500 words today, and you might be thinking, oh, that's nothing Like. Or even 100 words, 200 words, that's nothing, but it's something. And you know what, when we do set these little achievable goals and we hit 200 words, we're like, oh, how good does that feel, we've reached our goal of 200. And then the next day we might hit that 200 and we might keep going a little bit further and we might hit 400. And then the day after we might keep.

Jenna Lee: 7:05

And then it all evaluates and rolls into creating that routine and creating that, those little achievable goals that give you a bit of like a boost and give you that energy again that you know that you couldn't. You can achieve something. You know, when you're feeling like just oh, I can't do anything, everything's feeling hard. If we set little micro goals and then we tick them off, there is you get that boost and you get those endorphins that are like, oh yes, I've actually done something. So let's do really specific, achievable goals that really inspire you, you know, and break them into those smaller tasks and make them feel less overwhelming. Let's just start little and let's build up on that.

Jenna Lee: 7:51

And if you're looking at your list and looking at what's feeling really hard, what's inspiring you, let's then at what's feeling really hard, what's inspiring you. Let's then mush them together and create something that feels new. Let's try a new way to market your books. Let's try something from your. You know you're trying to promote this particular book or this particular series, but it's feeling really hard. Let's look at what's inspiring you and let's mush them together in a way that you know. Try a new marketing tactic, Try something new. That's going to feel refreshing, it's going to feel fun, it's going to be a new way to put the book out there and a new way of marketing that you haven't tried before, but you feel inspired by it and then you can create that and get out of that funk that you are in.

Jenna Lee: 8:37

And the next tip that I'm going to say is create a routine. So you know how. Before we were talking about let's just start with you know those micro goals of 200 words. Let's put that into your daily routine. Now, over the last two weeks I have not written, written, wrote anything in the morning, and that is totally not like me. Like I am a sucker for, like getting up at 5am 10 to 5 actually to make my coffee sit on the couch, get my laptop and I have an hour, an hour and a half to just write or edit or whatever phase I'm in with the writing process. Now, the last two weeks I haven't been able to do that.

Jenna Lee: 9:16

I tried a couple of days, like the first week when I was really sick, I did. I was just like we're not doing any writing and it was at a good time for me because I actually didn't have really big deadlines and it was okay and I just had to be. You know, I allow this buffer. I allow like four weeks in my time when it comes to like writing and stuff, just to give myself a buffer for when, when this stuff happens that is outside of our control. So I didn't do any writing on that first week. Then the second week I did try to get up, I think two mornings and I just sat there and it was still too hard, it just didn't feel right. So I allowed myself two weeks to just surrender. It's okay, I'm feeling sick, I need to just rest and recover and then getting back into it.

Jenna Lee: 10:02

Like this week, as I'm recording this episode, I'm setting little goals, as we're talking about. So I'm setting like, okay, I want to hit, I just want to hit 200 words and that's a really small for me, but that's okay. Like that's going to help me build up that routine again and build up that daily routine of getting up and, you know, and getting in my writing cave and doing the words. So, creating a new routine that has a bit of a structure to it and really can help you, like, stay focused on tasks and really help you to contribute to your goals. So one of your goals might be, yeah, hit the 200 words a day and then you put that into your routine and do it that way. If we're talking about, like what we're talking about before and we're looking at, you know, creating a new way of marketing, a backlist series and we want to try this new way, put that in your routine. Okay, I'm going to spend 10, 15 minutes creating these videos or whatever it might be. And then you're putting that into your routine and I'd say, create like just three tasks for the day, three easy, manageable, small, little achievable goals in your routine Three, so it might be write 200 words, it might be, create three to five videos in this particular way. And then the other one might be connect in my community. You know, do up a post that can connect with my community with updates, whatever it might be. And then your three achievable goals and you know that you can get them done in that time that you do have and set those goals and then you achieve them and you tick them off. So they're the three things that you really really want to do. They're achievable. They're not like massive goals that are like 5,000 words and you know, write a whole blur or whatever, like they're really achievable and then you can get in that routine again.

Jenna Lee: 11:56

The third tip would be find inspiration. You know, surround yourself with sources of inspiration. For me personally and I know a lot of people are like this writers are like this, where we find inspiration by being out in the world, by people watching, by just living and going out and, you know, being amongst stuff. And for me, I hadn't been out of the house for a couple of weeks and I was just like, oh my god, I'm so sick of being in this house. And yesterday and over the weekend we got out and we went exploring and we went to a market and just the sun was out and there was so much inspiration everywhere. And then, waking up today, I feel so alive, I feel re-inspired, I feel really good again and like and just getting out and not being. And I know when we work for ourselves and when we are self-employed and it's just us in a business and we're home by ourselves or you know, it's just you in the business. We can get in this rut of just being in the same room, the same house, and I think when we step outside of that and do something fun and be around people and find that inspiration again, that's really going to help us to get motivated again.

Jenna Lee: 13:11

Another tip that I will say is take breaks. You know, sometimes stepping away from work can give you a really fresh perspective and really renew energy. So schedule regular breaks throughout your writing so say we hit. We say, okay, I'm going to do a 30-minute sprint or even a 15-minute sprint and then I'm going to have five minutes off, so to walk around the house, to take the dog for a walk, whatever it might be, let's just take those little breaks. So 15 minutes on, five minutes off, then you might up it. You might be like, okay, now 30 minutes on and I'm to take a 10 minute break. Now I'm going to do an hour on and I'm going to take a 20 minute break. Whatever works for you. Let's just set those little breaks in between and that's going to really help us to really just prevent burnout, to prevent just working on the same thing, we allow ourselves breaks and little rewards as well. So that's my tips for today.

Jenna Lee: 14:06

I hope you have enjoyed this episode. This is what's really helped me over the last few weeks and I really wanted to share that with you. So I hope you really enjoyed it and let me know if you've got any takeaways or any more tips. When you felt really unmotivated, what's really helped you. I would love to hear your stories as well. All right, I will catch you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the Daring Author Podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review, and if you are ready to grow your author business with the support of the Daring Press book in your free discovery call today before places fill up. We'll see you in the next Daring episode.