When Motivation Stalls: Why You’re Stuck Between “Fine" and "Future" (Greatest Hits)

When motivation fades it's an opportunity to get curious. This episode unpacks why we often stall before what’s next, and how to reignite your drive by shifting your thoughts just slightly toward possibility. Learn how believable, neutral thoughts can rebuild momentum, confidence, and clarity.

In this episode:

• Why motivation fades when your future feels unclear
• How to use believable thoughts to shift your mindset and energy
• The simple mental reset that helps you take action again

Transcript

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Setting The Motivation Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome back to the Career Refresh. I'm Jill Griffin, your host. Today we're talking about motivation. And it's something that I'm hearing a lot of people talk about. My clients are asking about it, especially when things feel a little hard right now. So if you're looking for a job, job market, it feels hard. People are looking and needing to stay motivated because the process now is taking longer than it had previously. We're hearing that from start to finish the job search could take up to five months, but that's from starting your resume, getting your mindset ready and prepared, getting into market, getting interviews, et cetera. So that can be five months.

The Long Job Search Timeline

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Once you are in the market and having uh interviews and starting to gain traction, we're hearing that that is taking about 45 days from your initial interviews to actually finding out whether or not you're the candidate or not and getting the offer, right? So that is taking a little bit longer. And sometimes it's hard to stay motivated, even when you're in a job and things are fine, but the marketplace is changing and you're trying to figure out how to navigate and reach your goals before the end of the quarter or before whatever the time period is. So you might be sitting in this place where things aren't terrible, but they're not that great either. And you're not miserable,

The Gray Zone Of Functional Not Fulfilled

SPEAKER_00 1:17

but you're also not lit up. You're functional, you're not fulfilled, right? That's the place that I'm talking about. And this becomes this gray zone where motivation often fails. So I want to remind you, you're not lazy, you're not broken. This is what happens. This is welcome to being human, right? It's because sometimes we feel this way, because staying exactly where we are, as I always say, sometimes staying in your dirty diaper feels easier than the effort because you've tried a lot of things and you don't know how to get out of this, whatever the stuckness, the situation is to motivate you. So sometimes staying where you are feels easier than the effort it would be to figure it out, build, and then start to create what's next. So today I want to talk about what really causes these motivational slumps, why it often shows up right around a big transition, and also how to reignite your overall idea of possibility, especially when your energy feels really low or foggy, right? Your future might start to feel foggy. All right, let's dig in.

How Motivation Erodes Slowly

SPEAKER_00 2:24

So motivation does not slip or disappear overnight. It might feel that way, but it is slow. It's like that slow drip or the slow chipping away. It starts to dissolve. It might feel almost like it's dissolving quietly and you don't realize it. And then all of a sudden your energy is no longer connecting to the future that you're creating. And again, that future might be tomorrow, it might be next month, it might be in a year from now, it might be bigger than that, right? But this is what we're saying. It's like it is very slow and sometimes insidious. So your future vision feels too far away, or it feels unclear, or everything you've tried isn't working. And then your brain starts to say, well, it's a little bit hard to start generating enthusiasm, do the same thing. I've already applied to a hundred jobs and you know, that kind of thing. Like, where am I going from here? So it's really hard sometimes to see where you're going when you don't know where you're going. And again, it's just becomes a lack of vision, right? There's lack of clarity and therefore impacts your

Clarify Non Negotiables And Leadership

SPEAKER_00 3:31

vision. So first thing I'm gonna tell you to do is get clear on what you do know. This is your non-negotiables. This is things like how do you want to um show up through this process? How do you want to behave as a leader? We're leaders at all levels. So it's not just because you're in executive leadership. You can also be in a more entry-level or junior position and also be representing as a leader. So it's really thinking through how do I want to show up as a leader? What are the ways that I'm gonna show up? Also, you might want to think about things like your overall needs, like for health and wellness and family time and friends and socialize. All of that has to come in to what you're creating. And then our brains are wired

The Brain’s Motivational Triad

SPEAKER_00 4:12

to conserve energy. I've talked about this before. There's the motivational triad, right? Our brains are here to seek pleasure, food, procreation, avoid pain, which used to be fire and animals. Now it could be emails from bosses or the loss of jobs or trying to figure out how to stay motivated when you've got that huge client meeting next week, and you also have one the following week, and you're like, how am I gonna get through this, right? Avoiding pain. And the last thing it does is, and it is, well, not the last thing, but the last thing in the motivational triad that it does is it needs to be efficient. And that's just to save energy. So it's it's why we repeat the same thoughts over and over. It's why sometimes you're in the car and you're driving, and all of a sudden you get to your destination. You don't know how you got there because your brain's kind of on all autopilot. Um, I used to experience this a lot on the subway where I would leave the office and all of a sudden be like putting my key into my door and be like, I don't even remember getting here, right? Because your brain is working on autopilot. It's saving energy. So there's no compelling reason if your brain is in a saving energy mode. There's no compelling me reason to push forward. And we might default to comfort or even comfort, even though it doesn't really feel that good. It's like, again, the dirty diver I know is better than the one that I don't know. So I want us to sort of borrow from research and looking at some insights that there are common reasons

Common Triggers: Overload To Misalignment

SPEAKER_00 5:34

why this may happen. And one of these may be what's happening for you. First is overload. You are spread way too thin, and that feels like everything you need to do feels heavy. So between personal commitments and professional commitments, and maybe also parts of your social life, everything feels like you are in overload. The next one is self-doubt. You might be unsure. You're not sure where to move. So, you know what? It's easier to stay where I am. Emotional fatigue is another real one where you've been in survival for so long, or you've been trying to do this for so long that you start to lose your drive and it basically has gone offline. There could be a misalignment, right? You're working hard and you're putting in a lot of work and you might be more in the busyness versus the creation of value. But even if you're in the creation of value, maybe, maybe it's not getting noticed or you're not noticing that you're making it, you're making strives to move forward, right? So you're starting to feel this misalignment, like I'm doing all this, but the rewards aren't coming. And then again, there might just be a complete lack of clarity where in this current market, I'm hearing a lot of businesses are starting to pivot goals, but we still need to uh hit the goals that are currently. So as we're sort of turning that ship and turning those tides, it's can sometimes be hard if you're if you're like navigating your way there and you don't necessarily know how you're doing and you don't have real data to see how you're doing, or it could be that you've simply outgrown the goals that you set for yourself previously and you haven't had a chance to define new ones or you haven't been intentional in defining new ones. So again, those are some of the reasons why we find that these are some real triggers that are sitting behind why you

From Stuck To Possible With Neutrality

SPEAKER_00 7:19

might be losing your motivation. And each one of these things can disconnect you from your why. And that's where the motivation lives, right? You have to get back into the why. So moving from feeling stuck into possible, this is where we might be seeing like there's a turning point, right? It's not again about pushing harder, it's about finding how to feel slightly better in little incremental steps, right? Because you can't go from I love to I hate or I hate to I love, right? It's that's a really hard switch for your brain where you're in the two opposing sides versus incrementally getting there. So you don't leap from I hate this to oh my God, I love this, right? It just doesn't happen. The brain doesn't, your brain is not gonna buy that. So what we start to do is we aim for neutrality. We want to neutralize the thought. An analogy I often make, if any of you have driven a standard car, right? Sorry, like an automatic car, um, stick shift, you can't go from first to fifth gear without passing through neutral. Well, you'll blow the clutch, right? This is what we want to do. We want to neutralize some of those thoughts so that we can start building other thoughts that are believable. So you want to do this really, really in slow, slow increments. When something starts to feel possible, it's gonna change how you feel. And when you start feeling differently, you have a better chance of taking action. And that action becomes more natural. So you might want to think things like, it's possible this will feel different. Because it is possible that it will feel different. And your brain can believe that. You may also want to ask yourself, okay, but what can I actually do today? Is there anything I can do today or this week

Micro Goals And Measurable Wins

SPEAKER_00 9:02

to take a step forward? It might be something as simple as, you know what, I'm gonna get to the gym today, or I'm gonna prep my meals, or I'm gonna spend three hours in job search on that particular day, and then that's it. I'm gonna take that one action. And then really keeping it in a small, measurable steps that you could actually measure and say, yeah, well, I did that. And if I have a lot of those smaller wins, it's going to add up to a larger win. And then the next is making sure that you're continuing to take those small steps to reignite your momentum. If you're in this like, meh, this like middle space where you're like, ugh, first, I want you to name it. We're not going to gaslight ourselves and actually say, okay, this is the way I feel today. I'm stuck. Setting those micro goals, as I just mentioned, 1% better. What is one thing that I can do 1% better today or this week or this month? Why you're doing that is you're starting to real rebuild trust with yourself. You're starting to honor your own word again and that you have that follow through.

Visualize Future Feelings To Act

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Next, I want you to visualize the future. This is the version, the next chapter. I want you to think about how you will feel the day after this possibility that you're aiming for becomes a reality when it's done. I want you to be in sort of that, okay, what does it feel like? Will I feel relieved? I feel calm, maybe I feel inspired, I might feel incredibly proud. Those are the things that I want you to be feeling because when you start thinking about that, then you're creating your next action from different feelings versus stuck, you're creating an action from possibility or the calmness or the relief that, you know what, I knew this was gonna, I was gonna do this. I knew that I was gonna be here, right? That's where you want to be thinking through. And you probably just heard my alarm, but you know, whatever, life. Okay. Next is you um, you want to practice self-compassion, right? And this is this idea of I feel this way today. Can I allow this? And just allowing yourself to feel what you feel without trying to deny it, push it away, right? That's that

Practice Self Compassion To Think Clearly

SPEAKER_00 11:03

beach ball analogy of pushing it underwater. The more you push it underwater, it's gonna be harder the further down it goes. And if on some point it's gonna pop back up. It's hard to sequester any of those feelings that you're feeling, right? It's escapism. I want you just to, again, assuming it feels safe, you're not in a car, you're not in a conference room, you're not on a call with a client or your team. Just to allow yourself, like, this is the way I feel right now, and can I allow that? And just giving yourself the break. Why we do that is because what it's evolutionary biology, our the amygdala, right? The per the the fear part of our brain can't be in the negative sensation of something and also think strategically, the prefrontal cortex that one has to stop in order for the other one to start. So making sure that we're allowing ourselves to do that can then give us an opportunity for our strategic thinking to come back. All right, motivation. This isn't about being in a constant state. It's making sure that you're having this relationship with your future self and going into that future, imagining how it feels when it's completed, when it's done, when you got the thing, and being in whatever that is for you. For me, it's often reveal relief. It might be pride, it

Fuel Today With Future Relief And Pride

SPEAKER_00 12:12

might be like, I knew I could do it. It was hard, but I knew I would get there. And really sort of celebrating and honorating yourself because then you want to bring that back in today. And then those are the feelings that you're using as fuel. That is what is going to help diminish the distance to your goal and start to drive yourself forward.

One Small Step And Closing CTA

SPEAKER_00 12:32

So before you push yourself harder, I want you to pause and act what version of my future would feel worth the effort again? Because that's where you want to move forward, not from force, from this place of possibility. All right, friends, if this has resonated, I want you to take a few minutes today and amount to one small thing that you can do for your future. We're not looking for perfection. We're just looking for one thing that you can do to start moving forward that you are gonna feel proud of. And if you are doing it, I want to hear from you. So email me at hello at shulgerfincoaching.com. I get back to everyone who emails me and I just want to hear what's working for you, what's not working for you. All right, friends, stay in possibility and always, always, always be kind. And I'll see you next week. I'm Jill Griffin, your host of the Career Refresh Podcast. My mission is to make workplaces more successful for everyone. So if you have ideas for topics or future guests, please email us at hello at JillGriffincoaching.com. Until next time, embrace possibility, be generous, intentional, and kind.