The Motivation Squishers

T ION SQU
I VA IS The most common motivation squishers are: lack of
confidence, stress and negative self-talk.

H
MO

ER
A. Lack of confidence
Lack of confidence squishes your motivation because
it switches Dopamine off.
When your subconscious brain hears you saying stuff like
“My work isn’t good enough” it takes the sentence very
literally. Believing that your work really is bad, your
subconscious switches Dopamine off so that you don’t waste
REC
IPES any more of your precious time pursuing this futile project.
B. Stress
Stress squishes your motivation because it paralyzes you.

3.4 YOUR MOTIVATION
SQUISHERS
While on the one hand there are plenty of ways to
increase our motivation, there are, on the other, a couple
of significant motivation squishers too.
You’ve probably already come up against them. For many
of us they are always lurking in the shadows. But that’s OK.
They CAN be defeated, You just need to recognise
them when they turn up, and, jump on them quickly!
The main type of stress that stops motivation is uncertainty.
When you feel uncertain about the outcome of something (and
it can be anything that’s going on in your life, it absolutely
doesn’t need to be goal related) your brain freezes and you
feel unable to get on with anything.
C. Negative motivation self-talk
Negative motivation self-talk becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When you tell yourself you’re not feeling motivated your brain
interprets that as you don’t want to feel motivated, so it stops
the production of Dopamine.
How to beat the Motivation Squishers
When you feel your motivation slipping away, try these:

1 2
THE BUSINESS BAKERY THE BUSINESS BAKERY
 ION SQU
AT IS
IV

H
MO

ER
1. I’M NOT CAPABLE
OF DOING THIS
REC
IPES Smartie!

This is a good one for when you don’t feel talented

enough to achieve your goal.
A. Lack of Confidence 1 There’s a funny psychological phenomenon which is
good to remember when you’re feeling a bit incapable.

2 It’s called the Dunning Kruger effect and it makes us very

poor judges of our own level of talent!
1 I’m not capable of doing this
3 Essentially it means that smart people doubt themselves
2 This Microaction is too hard while low ability people rate themselves very highly.
for me
4 So if you are doubting yourself, remember that’s OK! It
means you are actually smart and capable.
3 Process Visualisation

WHY IT WORKS
Worrying that you’re not capable is a huge Motivation Squisher
so knowing you’re just suffering from the Dunning Kruger effect is
a huge relief!

3 4
THE BUSINESS BAKERY THE BUSINESS BAKERY
 2. THIS MICROACTION IS
TOO HARD FOR ME
You know more than you think
1 When your Microaction feels too hard, it’s difficult to
get started. And when you don’t know how to begin,
your motivation quickly disappears.
2 But just start, and take one tiny step at a time. You know
more than you think, and you’ll be surprised how once
you start the path becomes clear.
WHY IT WORKS
Because your subconscious is busy running your body it doesn’t pay
much attention to problems you may take on. Once you start taking
action though, your subconscious knows that you’re serious about the
project and it starts working to solve the puzzle.
5 6
THE BUSINESS BAKERY
3. PROCESS VISUALISATION
See it!
This technique is used by sports people but it also works
super-well for any tricky microaction or project.
1 Picture each of the actions you need to do to complete
your microaction or project.
2 Picture yourself pushing through the hard parts.
3 Picture yourself feeling motivated and focused.
4 Picture yourself dealing with the setbacks.
WHY IT WORKS
When you picture yourself completing all the actions in your
microaction or project, your brain generates an impulse that tells
your neurons to ‘perform’ the movement. This creates a new neural
pathway in your brain that prepares you to act in that way when
you do the activity in real life.
In other words, imagining yourself doing the work is like a practise
run, and the practise run makes you feel more confident when you
do the real thing.
THE BUSINESS BAKERY
 ION SQU
AT IS
IV

H
MO

ER
4. MORNING PAGES
“I didn’t know what I thought until I saw what I wrote”
REC
IPES
This technique is used by sports people but it also works
super-well for any tricky microaction or project.

1 Write, by hand, three A4 pages of ‘stuff’ first thing in

B. Stress the morning.

2 Don’t worry about what the ‘stuff’ is, just put pen to
paper and allow a stream of consciousness to come
out.
4 Morning pages 3 This technique is called ‘Morning Pages’ and it’s the
brainchild of writer Julia Cameron.
5 Dear Universe

6 Meditation
WHY IT WORKS
Sometimes when you’re stressed you don’t know what’s really
bothering you. And while it’s sitting inside eating away at you, you
can’t fix it because you don’t know what it is. Writing Morning Pages
gets this worry out from inside your head. And as you start to write
you’ll discover both the problem and the solution pouring out onto the
page. It is a very magic stress releaser!

7 8
THE BUSINESS BAKERY THE BUSINESS BAKERY
 5. D E AR U NIV ER SE
A letter destresser
1 Write a one/two page letter to the Universe.
2 Start it with “Dear Universe, this is what I’m doing and
this is where I need help”.
WHY IT WORKS
Feeling stuck or helpless can make you feel very stressed, and while
the best antidote to this is taking action, sometimes you don’t know
what action to take. Writing a letter to the Universe will help get the
worries out of your subconscious and you’ll also find that as you start
to write the letter, the path you need to take will become clear.
Is it a spot of Universe magic, or just your subconscious waking up?
Maybe a bit of both.
9 10
THE BUSINESS BAKERY
6. M EDITATION
Pause
1 Try a simple meditation to quieten your mind.
2 If you’re an experienced meditator, continue doing what
you normally do, but if you’ve not meditated before here’s
a simple way to begin.
☞ Sit or lie comfortably.
☞ Close your eyes.
☞ Breathe naturally.
☞ Focus your attention on your breath.
☞ Count ‘one’ on your breath in and two on your breath
out. Continue until you reach number ten and then start
again from one.
☞ N otice how your body moves with each breath in,
and breath out.
☞ If your mind wanders (which it probably will at first),
return your focus back to your breath.
3 To start with do this meditation practice for two minutes,
and then try it for longer periods.
WHY IT WORKS
Meditating helps in many ways but as a destresser it refreshes your mind
and helps you let go of your negative thoughts.
THE BUSINESS BAKERY
 ION SQU
AT IS
IV

H
MO

ER
7. RETR AIN YOUR B R AIN
Pause
REC
IPES
1 Use Positive Affirmations to train your brain away
from negative self talk.

2 You can create your own affirmations (see

C. Negative One Minute Motivators #60) or use one from
the Affirmations Worksheet.
Motivational
self talk WHY IT WORKS
It’s easy to fall into the trap of talking negatively to yourself about
motivation. Unfortunately your brain is very literal and when it hears
you say something like “I’m not motivated” it believes that you actually
don’t want to be motivated so it switches the Dopamine off and actively
7 Retrain your Brain discourages you from getting on with your work.

To stop this cycle you need to retrain your brain away from negative
self-talk into a positive frame of mind. And it really is retraining. All that
negative self-talk has created deep neural pathways in your brain so that
‘not feeling motivated’ is actually embedded within you.

Retraining the brain requires consistent positive self talk. And that’s where
Positive Affirmations come in. Positive Affirmations are short sentences
you say every day to replace the negative ones and they create useful,
motivational neural pathways in the brain.

11 12
THE BUSINESS BAKERY THE BUSINESS BAKERY