"...so don't you ever quit! You hear me? There are generations waiting for you! Your children count on you! Posterity counts on you! The world is waiting for a change, and that change, that change is you."
You've watched videos like this before, and after watching, you jumped up from your chair, or bed, pumped, full of adrenaline, dreams, goals, perhaps even tears. Yet many years later, you're not even the change you're waiting for yet, how much more the world. So what happened?
There is a gap between getting motivated to break past your limits and actually setting out to break past those limits. This gap is what I love to call Motivational Limbo. It usually arises as a result of a lack of further motivation or drive, a lack of discipline, a lack of knowledge, a lack of the necessary structures, or a combination of one or more of the above. What usually happens after a good motivational speech is that the motivated one lands on any of the following stages:
You get up to go get it done, only to realise you don't know how to go get it done, so you continue with your motions and routines.
You realise it takes effort to research on how you can go get it done, but you've never liked studying or reading, so you decide to relax.
You decide to research, but you're not even sure where to start, so you get stuck.
You eventually do get valuable information, but then you realise it takes real effort to get it done, so you rest.
You get past that stage, try to get something done, only to fail, so you quit.
You continue past failures and mistakes, and actually win.
Only a few get to number six, and it's quite a sad reality. The five stages of motivational limbo have trapped endless destinies and goals, reducing potential world altering individuals to casual reactors and envy driven haters, who curse at the successful, blaming some unfortunate event, perhaps their birth circumstance, for their own condition.
It is not good for a person to fail, and it is not expected even of their Maker that they fail. There truly are people depending on the success of any given individual, but you already know this, so what now?
The truth is that there are many reasons why people get stuck in the five stages of motivational limbo, beyond laziness. Some of them are;
Isolation
"It is not good for the man to be alone" - God.
Isolation is a silent success killer. Man is a social being, so there is no way for him to achieve anything outside of socialisation. I fell prey to this earlier in life. I was isolated from friends, from social media, from fellow church members, from extended family, from everything. Why? I naturally love silence and quiet. I love being with myself, yet I also wanted to be a world changer. Nice dream. Very nice dream. Yet it was a nice dream crippled by my own hermit lifestyle. Thank God I eventually realised I was only hurting myself. Now, the shell is finally breaking, and I'm beginning to enjoy talking with people. Why? Because it is simply not good, for the man, to be alone.
Isolation can cut you out from once in a lifetime opportunities. One meetup can be the change your life has been waiting for. One connection, one follow, a random status update, yes. A friend of mine made a random status update once that made me realise the product I was building wasn't production ready. It was simply a celebration on his part, celebrating a new work flow he discovered. By not isolating myself from him that day, I discovered the work flow with him, instantly upgrading my product from toy to industry tool. Yes, it is that easy. A random comment might be your ticket out of the pit. Your friend might know a friend, who might have an elder sister, who's married to a man, who has a sister that can help you. Yes, it's that simple.
Ego
"For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." - Jesus.
Ego is easily one of the strongest binding cords in the layers of motivation limbo. The effects of Ego are plentiful, but one major thing it can cause is the unwillingness to learn, from anything. Even ego resists experience as a teacher, raising its haughty head against it. This is why two people can experience the same thing, one comes out transformed positively, the other comes out as a creature that, we just can't understand.
What will it take to make you learn, my brother?
Even when ego sees opportunities, ego does not deign to demean itself to such levels, having a twisted understanding of reality itself. Ego transcends wisdom, proclaiming itself as more than enough, and that 'all these people don't know what they're saying. I alone am supreme.' People like this are left aside by the world, since they are essentially too good for it anyway. In their old age, they get bitter, and curse at, yes, you guessed it, the government, and the rich, while downing beers at local pubs.
If you wonder why it seems I know the specific effects of ego, it might be because I battled for too long. That sense of superiority cut me off from too much, and I try not to regret the years I spent looking down on others. My only hope is to help some other person out there quickly come out of it, so they can actually do something with their life. Remember, being overly proud will make people avoid you, and if people should avoid you, then you have no chance at winning.
Pressure
Pressure turns coal into diamonds, or so we were told (sigh, secondary school science teachers though). But not every piece of carbon completes the journey. Some get stuck in the middle, not knowing exactly what they have become. Pressure can be good, but too much can break you, and make you collapse. They key is in a balance. Enough pressure to keep you going, but not enough to break you. Too much is devious. I remember when I applied so much pressure on my self that I literally began to crumble. My health failed. My mind spiralled. I was not at all in a good place. But the Lord found me (amen!) and made me realise just how naive I was to assume that more pressure meant better results.
Pressure should be applied on oneself, but pressure should be evenly split across time. Too much pressure in a small time window is the fastest way to quit, and end up stuck in limbo. A hot sword can be hammered with intense force all at once, but that won't create a good work. Instead, the Blacksmith hammers it methodically, over time, with precision, ensuring it doesn't get damaged. Because, if it should get damaged, it would need to be reforged. A little bit of impatience could waste years of effort.
Have peace, my comrade. "Peace I give unto you. Do not let your heart be troubled." - Jesus
Lack of knowledge
"My people, they perish because they don't have knowledge." - God
Many people lack something called 'upgrade literacy'. Upgrade literacy is knowing what to upgrade (about themselves), when to upgrade it, and how to upgrade it. [I'll do you one better, why to upgrade it]
What this results in is a lot a persons stuck in a stage where they just can't continue, because the path before them just doesn't seem to continue. 'Now that I'm here, what should I do?' This is where the matter of isolation and association returns as a good cure. Books are nice, very nice. I enjoy reading, but I dare to say that you can learn more from reading people that from reading books. Isolating yourself in your room for a year reading books is nice. Alternating between books and making good associates is better. This can easily break your lack of knowledge barrier, as a simple line you hear somewhere can be the extra kilometre your path had been missing. It truly is not good to he alone.
Shyness
Let it be known that bringing about any change at all means selling that change. And contrary to what my fellow shy brethren might think, you can't sell anything without actually doing the dreadful work of becoming very visible. Yes, we all wish we could do this without exposure, but life unfortunately doesn't work that way. If you want a change, you have to sell it. If you want to sell it, you have to be exposed. If you want to be exposed, you have to learn how to endear yourself to various audiences. If you must learn this, you must come out more. If you come out more, you will embarrass yourself a lot. If you don't embarrass yourself, you cannot sell yourself. It's a harsh truth, but earth doesn't like to play by any other rules.
Even if you want to 'influence from the background', you still will have to expose yourself to the right persons and the right rooms. You still will have to be bold about your ideas and propositions, choosing not to cower in the face of any opposition to your words, which will definitely come, that I can promise you. You will be opposed. You will be mocked at. You will be dragged through the deepest mud. If you're the shy type, then you really can't get through this, at all. As with any hit you suffer, you'll find yourself retreating to your shell, complaining that, 'this is why I didn't want to go out in the first place.'
And the cure for shyness, get out, get embarrassed, cry, break your ego, and continue. That's it. You can't solve shyness by positive confessions and affirmations.
There are many more reasons that cause people to be perpetually stuck in motivational limbo, at least I think there should be, but the above ones should be able to make someone still stuck there have at least, a little light on how to exit it. The path to achieving dreams and goals can never be said to be easy, and honestly, if anyone chooses to not become successful by the usual world definition, they're not to be blamed. Some just want a simple life. Others though, like me, will find this writeup very helpful.
Selah.
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