Motivation - help! I’m blocked
You know what you want to do, but just can’t get started?
Do you know how many weeks it took me to get started writing this article? I have had the idea and desire to write about motivation for some time. I have felt inspired by things I had learned and experienced and I wanted to share these things in the hope that it might help someone else, yet somehow I could never quite manage to put my fingers to the keyboard until right now… how ironic!
I love it when poetry expresses something I’m trying to say and I think T.S Eliot does it well in The Hollow Men (which is maybe a darker piece overall than the tone I hope to convey, but it serves a purpose…)
“Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow”
The Shadow! That simple word that depicts something inaccessible to me, something that somehow swallows all my motivation - and that the harder I look for it in the depths of that shadow, the more difficult it seems to be to find. And the more defeated I end up feeling. According to eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung, our personal Shadow contains aspects of ourselves we cannot or don’t want to see. We can feel like a mystery unto ourselves and it can take many years to start shedding light on those hidden parts of ourselves.
Of course, through my own personal counselling, I have dug around and come up with many ‘explanations’ for my glorious career in procrastination. I’ve uncovered beliefs about myself such as ‘I’m lazy’ and scripts that I have been operating by like ‘I will start writing the article, but I won’t finish it because I don’t finish things’, or that I can’t write it because ‘it won’t be good enough/perfect’…
I’m not saying there is no value to understanding these internalised beliefs we have about ourselves - there absolutely is. Understanding that each of us operates within a system of messages and deeply held beliefs about ourselves that we have inherited from our family and society, and bringing these into conscious awareness can definitely lead to behavioural change. But sometimes, this alone isn’t enough to help us step over that crack in the pavement that threatens to swallow us completely.
What I learned, thanks to a wise Cognitive Behavioural Therapist friend (who had actually been trying to tell me this for a long time, but I guess I didn’t have ‘ears to hear’), is that motivation is rarely completely spontaneous. It is the idea that ACTION has to come before motivation. I know, it sounds crazy - I mean, how do you do the action if you are not motivated? I guess really it comes down to ‘believe me, it can work’…!
(It’s worth an aside to say that now I’m actually writing this article, I have to say, I’m quite enjoying myself!)
This is the theory of Behavioural Activation in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and the claim is that we need to take action first and the motivation will follow. Now it is worth saying that this action should ideally be meaningful or rewarding to you, and the action might be only a small step towards what you are aiming to achieve. Each small step towards your goal generates a small sense of accomplishment or achievement and can spur you on to the next step or to stick with the task or activity.
I know this to be true from personal experience. Knowing the garden needs weeding, and just making myself do half an hour’s worth, I often find myself out there 2 hours later having weeded the whole garden, and feeling very pleased with myself (if not aching like crazy for having overdone it!). I’m surprised every time, but you know what? I’m really starting to ‘get it’!
Look, I know if you are in the depths of depression that ‘just getting started’ can feel out of reach or even impossible, but I want you to know that a recent meta-analysis (study of studies) by Cuijpers et al. (2026) has found that Behavioural Activation itself has a strong evidence base as a treatment for depression. This meta-analysis of 105 trials involving nearly 14,000 participants found it effective for adults, with benefits still evident at 12 months.
I’m not saying Behavioural Activation is a cure-all, (and to be fair the meta-analysis did also state that other therapies are equally effective) but I am saying it is definitely worth a try. This might work for you. It can help break the cycle of self-deprecation, which can start to increase our levels of motivation and empowerment and begin a positive feedback loop. I hope at the very least, this might be useful food for thought.
In my next article, I want to talk about another factor that can also profoundly affect our motivation, and that is the concept of ‘play’ - an no, it isn’t just for kids! I will be sharing some ideas and resources that might inspire you to step out of that Shadow.
Sources:
Eliot, T.S. (1974) ‘The Hollow Men’, in Collected Poems 1909–1962. London: Faber & Faber, pp. 89-92.
Cuijpers, P., Ciharova, M., Tong, L., Liu, Y., Sprenger, A.A., Miguel, C., Karyotaki, E. and Harrer, M. (2026) ‘Behavioral activation for depression: A comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis’, Clinical Psychology Review, 128, article 102783. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2026.102783.
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