When I say drive or ‘inner drive’, I’m talking about a combination of energy and motivation…
Now, energy is both physical and mental – basically they are one, because they affect each other. Your energy is both physical and mental. You can be in great shape but have very low energy if you are depressed, for example.
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So, it’s a combination of physical and mental energy with self-motivation, which come from two main things.
- Clarity (of purpose) – clear goals, clear direction of where you’re going, what you want from life, what you want from yourself, what you want to achieve.
- Happiness – simply being a positive person, having positive attitude, being in peace with yourself, and having peace of mind.
So if you have low inner drive, you may feel powerless, often not feeling like doing anything. You kind of feel stuck. See, low inner drive is the number one cause of procrastination and under achievement, in my opinion.
At least that has been my experience for most of my life. I used to be a chronic procrastinator and a chronic ‘over sleeper’ – I used to sleep too much…
You see, bad habits and addictions (from Facebook addiction, poor eating habits, poor sleeping habits, and all the way to drug addiction) can come from feelings of “stuckness”, when you don’t know what you want and you find ways to escape from thinking about the future, it’s a way to procrastinate.
Why are you “low on drive”?✖️
Why do you have low energy level and lack of motivation? Well, I’ll give you 3 main causes. I’ve already mentioned direction and clear goals. One of the main causes of low inner drive is lack of direction and clear goals - when you don’t know what you want and you don’t find the time to get clear on your goals for one reason or another.
Another thing is stress and negative thinking. As I said, happiness is essential for having strong inner drive. So if you’re always stressed and worried and you have negative thinking patterns or maybe you’re even depressed, then obviously your inner drive will be very low.
If you don’t believe in yourself and in your abilities, if you’re really afraid of what other people might think of you – your self-esteem is so fragile that you’re really afraid of failure, and you don’t want to take any risks…
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Basically, it all comes down to low self-esteem. Low self-esteem can cause you to be really afraid of failure, of success, of criticism — anything that is a bit or a risk to your ego.
How to increase your inner drive✔️
First realize that your habits are not you and that change is possible and easy. You really can change. Self-esteem can be fixed. You can change your attitude, your mindset, you habits. Your habits are not YOU. They are just habits.
You have to believe in your ability to change. It’s really important that you believe that change is possible for you. Otherwise, you’ll stay stuck where you are.
The next thing is to overcome stress, negativity, and frustration. If you are always stressed and worried, it clearly limits your ability to be energetic and motivated. So you have to work on that.
Lastly, start setting goals. Set bite-sized goals. Let yourself succeed. Get yourself a chance to succeed by picking maybe just one thing. It could be one thing that you want to change in your life, maybe a small habit, something that you want to get that excites you and inspires you, but yet very possible and that you believe to a high degree that you can achieve…
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Set is as a goal and go get it. This way you start building your self-esteem, increasing your belief in yourself and start getting the ball rolling in the direction of your goals.
