Don’t Get Stuck — Torpor (Low motivation)

A high energy person sculpts the world. The buildings around us, the fashion, the entertainment — these are the creations of those that understand enough about their skills and can construct a system of action to turn passion and imagination into reality.

To create, a person — from their purpose and recognition of opportunity — uses their creative imagination, to form goals, plans, and maintain enough coherent focus, to see things through to completion. A creative person develops momentum by deconstructing their goal into a series of steps or a calculated approach, in which one achievement enables them the tools to access the next phase in the desire and incrementally builds the motivation to complete a project in its entirety.

Sloth & Torpor : Low energy, and low motivation.

What limits us? On the one hand, within us we have a metabolism with a certain efficiency in distributing energy and resources, which when combined with the quality of our nutritional intake, limits our available energy in the day — low energy is a state of sloth.

On the other hand, we have a relationship to our set-backs that control how they affect us. Our sense of self-identity (what we consider fixed vs what is malleable), our world narratives, our processing paradigms — these psychological features control whether we are learning, growing, and overcoming our challenges. Torpor is the state where a person’s motivation may be so low that there seems little reason to get out of bed, or try any project.

Together, our state of motivation and level of available physical energy, limit our capability to deliver value and be accountable. These concepts go hand-in-hand, as they create and reinforce each other. We will talk about Sloth, and how to boost our metabolic systems of energy, in Part 3.

A narcissist destroys their power in a sloth & torpor doom spiral

When a person narrative locks, they can spiral in

As an extreme example, here are the potential stages of a narcissist stuck within a sloth and torpor self-reinforcing doom spiral:

1. Lack of effort: leads to a dullness of mind and a decay of the body.
2. Decay: Things are harder now, and so that is used to justify trying even less effort, and so things get worse.
3. Narrative locking: Blame is externalised as a pseudo-impossible force to overcome, leading to a build-up of despondency, and self-serving identity narratives.
4. Desperation: Inauthentic identity narratives progress to emotional blackmail and attempts at exploitation, to give away work. Relationships break down, as the unfairness is recognised.
5. Rock bottom: A person’s behaviours have given away their power. Potentially now, a person may be more receptive to change and help.

This is a trap that many have fallen into when thinking they are winning by getting others to do their work.

Low Motivation

Low motivation leads to a certain paralysis — and the body doesn’t stay the same. A growing despondency may impart the importance of some-kind of action, perhaps without clarity as to what is likely to be properly helpful or succesful. Ideas held to our attention can give us the meta-control to steer our ship of consciousness away from paths towards powerlessness.

What are the main sources of passionate energy? (i.e. dopamine, see part 1). Sexual desire is the strongest source, but otherwise, love, power, winning, money, status, music, friendship, fear, & alcohol. (See ‘Think and Grow Rich’, Napoleon Hill, 1988)

But where has the motivation gone?

Focusing on the negatives

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.” — Henry Ford.

A person that actively avoids effort, will focus on the negatives, and on the things they cannot change, blaming those things and attempts to convince others to accept their narrative. The consequence of focusing on the negatives are very predictable — getting stuck — with a loss of capability.

I spoke to a person who had been unemployed a long time, and they had been considering applying for a job. There was a single aspect of experience they were lacking, so they decided it wasn’t worth applying for then, as ‘surely they would be rejected’. The problem could be pessimism, or perfectionism, but either one, stops you from even starting.

Focusing on the negatives in your life depresses your serotonin. Negative ideas that seem complete truth, can be closer to self-fulfilling prophecies. A person filters their behaviour to not even consider what they regard as impossible. Where a confident person is continuously investing their thoughts into what they have control over, such as their creative ventures, the fearful person focuses their thoughts on the past and external boundaries — as in, that which we have no power to change.

How many lost chances in this world are due to lack of confidence? But what are we afraid of?

A past experience, like being bitten by a dog, or a rejection, can create a negative encoding in our brain — a place now to avoid, even though the dog may be long gone. Although time helps heal many injuries, our brains don’t always simply unlearn an encoding that has become obsolete — partly we must undo the mental knot ourselves with private thinking time to emotionally process a blocking idea or memory.

The Buddhism based approach to processing/undoing a blocking idea (‘mental knot’) is the R.A.I.N. technique to mindfulness.

R — Recognize what is happening

A — Allow life to be just as it is

I — Investigate inner experience

N — Non-Identification

Ultimately, we want to shift our thoughts away from the past, and other things we cannot change, to the present — to be engaged in the now.

The ‘Mario Kart’ style of relating to failure is an interesting demonstration of apparent high confidence. A set back when crashing a car in an electronic racing game doesn’t result in any long term feelings of shame, or that you are cursed, or insulted. We don’t self-identify with the mistake of crashing the kart. Rather, we quickly want to ‘play again’, and do better next time.

Immaturity & short-cuts

Within our immaturity, we want things for nothing. We want the shortcut — the easy way, in which serendipity gives to us all we need, for no effort. This desire for the exploit saps your willpower to do hard work. Your mind thinks about how to escape from the moment, to find the trick, rather than how we can embrace the moment and be good at the task at hand — which might require many steps in a row.

To achieve something glorious, part of the day-to-day process will involve doing monotonous labour — and within our immaturity is the desire to skip all that, somehow, but the quest for a short-cut is generally how a person gets exploited. Lottery tickets sell so well on the dream of something for nearly nothing — but that nearly nothing, adds up to a lot of money in the end for the purchaser.

The world is perfectly happy to exploit our dreams of escaping from work, but the sooner dreams about random lucky chances are set aside, the more you can coherently allocate your time and thoughts in a way that will realistically pay-off for you in the long term.

To coherently flow towards our goals requires forgetting about the ideas of getting things without effort. The essence of value that is rewarded by this world is accountability — which is not created via short-cutting — but instead, by doing all that is necessary.

The energy for doing things for less effort can be channeled into upgrading tools and getting better processes — a growth of effectiveness and automation — as opposed to, skipping out on duty.

Embrace accountability and the world will reward you with wealth.

Low Passion & Wasting energy

A person with low passion may be trapped, wasting their energy in some repetitive activity. An empowered person, re-channels the ways they have been wasting their energy, to make good use of ultimately finite resources — by recognising reward imitations for what they are, and overcoming fears and obstacles.

What is the need for urgency in this modern world? That certainly depends on what we want — but people can have a bad habit of wanting things that they didn’t work for. Desires can be formed in moments — for things that take years to create.

The more prosperous a society, the easier it is for people to conceive how they can ‘let someone else do the hard work’. As it goes, if you let others do the hard work, they are the ones that earn the rewards.

Life isn’t about always working hard, but if a person mistakenly makes their goal as the absence of work, they may succeed at this for a time, but all this accomplishes is the acceleration of self-decay.

When we accomplish a primary goal, like getting a partner, or gaining employment, people can quickly ‘rest-on-their-laurels’, but life doesn’t end when we succeed at one of our goals. A healthy person maintains passions — as a vital flame within you. Our lives are brief. Our bodies are sculpted by the challenges they undergo — the art is in finding the right level of challenge, that grows us.

What is the spark for curiosity and exploration? What ignites the growth of purpose, focus, and confidence to get us through?

We need arousal, to some degree, toward something important enough to raise dopamine and to create goals, even if the end goal happens to be delusional. The important thing isn’t that an athlete’s goal is reasonable, but rather, at least having the confidence to try.

Arousal — that which grows the flame of attention and energy, comes from stimuli. When you wash your body, and open the curtains, filling your room with light, the stimuli creates changes in the brain, raising serotonin — giving you confidence. Sometimes, just that little extra confidence, is all we need to get over a threshold…

Igniting passion: The song of love and growth

There is a duality with passion. Well-springing from within our sense of purpose and importance, we create the outer — that which brings us joy to see realised. Passion is both, the inner state of mind, and relationship, but also the outer action, and progression. With a foundational feeling that the stakes matter, an anticipation of an important future raises dopamine, and fuels creative strategic imagination for understanding ‘what is forward?’ within the now.

We can be passionate about many things — audacious societal changing goals, or personal relationships, or hobbies — but ultimately, it is that which we are pouring our energy into — honouring with our attentional focus. To properly be passionate, partly involves safeguarding our energy from being wasted in the many ways the world would love to distract or control us.

A person may well want to be reimbursed financially for what they do, but this can require ‘crossing a long dessert’ of failure. People do what they want to do, but an artist loves their craft, as they know that this relationship (this inner song) is the energy for the path of incremental step-wise growth, and eventual skillful expertise.

The more a person authentically loves what they are doing, the more they can enjoy the tactile process of the hear-and-now. Sensory engagement involves a tagging of how interesting and pleasant a sensation should be regarded, even though a brush from an insect might be physically little different to the light caress of a lover.

Exploration nurtures excitement, confidence and anticipation. Trying a new exercise will boost self confidence, and create a new neural pathway that reduces reliance on old habits. A more confident person is willing to make more eye contact with others, and say more audacious things — opening up more opportunities, and creating more positive feedback.

Expertise in one area of life, builds a platform and a paradigm for learning more skills. The same energy used to do the things of deepest love, can be nurtured and re-focused to be used for a new project.

To sustain passion takes energy — but the flame of passion builds energy. In part 3 of the Don’t Get Stuck series, we will talk about Sloth, low energy, and how to build up your metabolically available energy. I hope you will join us.

References

Napolean Hill & Arthur R. Pell (2004). “Think and Grow Rich”, The 10 Mind Stimuli