Therapist explains how to get motivated so you can get your life together in high school

The biggest mistake I hear teenagers make is thinking they have to wait until they're out of high school to get their life together.

These 6 easy steps will help you find your motivation so you can get your life together NOW!

Learning how to get and stay motivated is actually really great self-care for teenagers. Once you know how to get motivated, you'll always know how to get back on track if you lose your way.

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If you prefer to read, here’s what you need to know about how to get motivated so you can get your life together in high school:

STEP 1: WHY BOTHER?

If you don't know why you're trying to get your life together, you're never gonna know where to go.

You have to start and orient yourself with where you are now and where you want to be.

One of the best ways that I can teach you how to do this is to imagine that if you went to sleep tonight and some miracle happened and all your problems and difficulties were no longer a factor. What would your life look like? You will use this as your anchor when you start feeling lost, when you start losing direction, or when you start questioning "why even bother?"

It's also really important in this step to reflect on what you might be giving up by getting your life together. We often try to over-focus on what we'll gain with these positive changes, but we forget that in order to gain that positive progress we may have to give up something else.

So for example, if your dream is to go to college abroad you will have to give up living in your current country at this moment, which could be giving up access to your favorite foods, easy access to your parents.

Realizing what you might be giving up helps you avoid self-sabotaging and assessing is this worth it? What's the return on investment here?

Maybe it is worth it because you know that you can still FaceTime or Skype with your family. You know that you can still return home after your study abroad. You know that this is a temporary situation in order to achieve your dream life.

STEP 2: MAYBE YOU’RE JUST LAZY… OR NOT

Can we just all agree that calling ourselves or other people lazy is just not helpful or useful? Can we just eliminate lazy from the dictionary?

When we call ourselves and others lazy, it just makes it sound like it's completely that person's fault. It's your doing, it's your choice- which may or may not be true but it definitely isn't motivating.

If you are calling yourself lazy, or other people are getting in your head and calling you lazy, it might be a good idea to pause and reflect on these 2 questions:

1. Is this true? Are you just not putting in the effort?

2. Do you need to rethink the story you're telling yourself here?

The truth is that we believe what we tell ourselves.

So if we're constantly telling ourselves that no matter the effort that we put in that we're just lazy then we're gonna keep believing that and we're gonna keep behaving that way and think, "I'm just lazy, why bother?"

Some ways that you can rewrite the story for yourself are to pause and reflecting on:

→ What other opportunities exist here?

→ What are you learning about yourself or others in these circumstances?

→ Are there other ways that you can adjust and adapt so that you can still take restorative rest breaks and put in the effort to keep going and working on your goals?

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STEP 3: CHANGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT

We forget that sometimes our environment has an impact on our choices and our effort. I've got a great story that demonstrates this point about how your environment can impact your habits.

So, as y'all know I love my Starbucks, Starbucks is my happy place. I love their drinks and coffee it's really yummy it makes me happy.

If you've never been to my actual office then you might not know that Starbucks is right around the corner. Which makes it really convenient to go and get a coffee on the way in or out, or just to make an excuse to run up the road and grab a coffee.

One morning I was driving into work and I remember thinking, "I'm really not that tired I don't really need a coffee so I'm not gonna stop at Starbucks." And I started my drive onto the office. Well, wouldn't you know that as I was driving suddenly I found myself in the drive-through line for Starbucks and was like, "how did I even get here?" It's because of the convenience and the environment and the route that I took that was just my habit at that point. And it made it easy for me to continue making that choice.

Now, of course, I was already in line so of course I did order Starbucks that morning but I made a conscious effort to take a different route to work the next morning that way I avoided going into the Starbucks line.

Here are 3 ways check on your environment:

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1. PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT: Are there any physical changes that need to be made? If you're struggling with keeping up on your homework, for example making sure that the spot that you do your work is clear of distraction that might be putting your phone into a separate room it might mean turning off some apps, it might mean clearing off your desk. It may even mean putting a sign on your door, saying, studying in progress.

2. RELATIONSHIPS: Do you need to change are your friendships and relationships? Your friends and the people who you spend the most time with have an impact on your choices and your personality the same way you do for them. So you wanna be intentional and conscientious about surrounding yourself with people who really want the best for you and try to encourage you to make healthy choices.

That doesn't mean drop all your friends who are struggling please, please don't do that. You wanna be looking for people who are willing to talk things out with you and mean, and do what they say. So it's not enough to just talk aspirationally about yourself. You actually have to make some moves. This is how you build trustworthiness and intimacy in relationships.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA: Unfollow accounts that don't make you feel good. Remove apps from your home screen that makes it easy to get distracted and now it's three hours later. Change the setting on your Netflix so it doesn't auto-play the next episode.

STEP 4: MAKE YOUR PLAN

You have to have a plan to know where you're going. I like to think about it like you are in a boat in the sea now that you know where you are in the sea you've got to make a plan to get to the shore location that you wanna go to. You don't wanna end up in Antarctica if you're trying to go to Hawaii.

So you need to know what direction you need to navigate and reorient to, and then make a plan to make it happen.

I would really recommend that if you're not sure where to start, start with just making a weekly check-in date with yourself and it could be 10 minutes, 15 minutes, half-hour whatever works for you, and make that your time to plan out what you need to do that week.

If you have a condition where your energy fluctuates you need to keep in mind that just because you intend to complete something on a certain day doesn't mean that your energy will match the effort needed.

→ Use a calendar and put at least one thing that if you only got that thing done for the day it would make everything else easier and better to manage.

→ Taking some time to work on something even if you don't totally complete or achieve it I would still count that as success. You still worked on it.

→ If you're not sure where to start I highly recommend prioritizing what is time-sensitive and what is urgent.

→ You can have another list that you can call the parking lot or the waiting room where there are other things that do need to get done but they're not the priority right now.

STEP 5: TAKE ACTION

Now that you have your plan in place you have to start taking action. Even if it's just a small action, it still requires action.

→  Without action, you can't get into a flow state and without flow state you can't stay motivated to accomplish your goals or your task.

You have to take action if you wanna see progress!

Even taking the simple act of opening up your laptop or making a list or creating your plan will help you get into that mindset and flow and habit of making the changes necessary to get your life together.

STEP 6: REASSESS

Ask is this working or is this not working?

→  Maybe clearing your desk wasn't enough maybe you need to also make sure that you have a glass of water nearby.

→  Maybe you need to set your timer a little bit differently.

→  Maybe you're learning that trying to do your homework in the middle of the night is not the best use of your time and energy. You might have to wake up a little bit earlier instead.

 

Do what works well for you and you will see the results that you want.

If you still are struggling with getting + staying motivated it's quite possible that you may also be struggling with depression. Check out this video where I'm sharing five therapist-approved coping skills for teenagers who struggle with depression: https://youtu.be/y6uyWgFsHdk

If you found this video useful and helpful, please share it. You never know who YOU could be helping.

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