#70: How Do I Motivate Myself When I Can't Be Bothered? Summer Sessions no.2

Feeling unmotivated? Struggling to get started on tasks you know you need to do? 

In the second episode of the Summer Sessions, we dive into the psychology of motivation and what to do when you just “can’t be bothered.” Whether you're facing burnout, procrastination, or low energy, you'll learn five evidence-based strategies to overcome mental blocks and take action—even when you’re not in the mood.

This is your practical guide to boosting motivation, breaking through resistance, and building momentum, one small step at a time.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✅ Why waiting to "feel motivated" is a trap - and what to do instead
✅ 5 proven strategies to kickstart action when you're stuck
✅ How to make overwhelming tasks feel manageable
✅ Why visualizing the process (not just the outcome) drives better results
✅ How your core values play a key role in increasing motivation 
✅ A powerful mindset shift to break out of the motivation slump fast

Who This Episode Is For:
This episode is perfect for anyone who:

• Feels stuck in a rut
• Struggles with procrastination
• Wants to learn how to self-motivate on tough days
• Is interested in the psychology of motivation and behaviour change

Highlights Include:
1:34 Breaking down the motivation question
3:37 The wedding cake approach
5:33 Values and the drive system
10:03 The game-changer: action despite feelings

✨Find it hard to make those big life decisions? My new online course can help! ✨

If you want to build skills to make decisions with confidence and ditch the self doubt, join the waitlist now for early access and 10% off. 

If overthinking and worry is draining you, start with my 30-minute mini course How to Stop Spiralling. It gives you the exact tools I teach clients to interrupt thought loops in real time.

 If you want something for the moments you’re already anxious or overwhelmed, the Spiral Rescue Kit has guided audios and a printable SOS plan you can use anywhere.

 → Get both HERE (get £5 off when you buy both or gift it to a friend!)

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The Hello Therapy podcast and the information provided by Dr Liz White (DClinPsy, CPsychol, AFBPsS, CSci, HCPC reg.), is solely intended for informational and educational purposes and does not constitute personalised advice. Please reach out to your GP or a mental health professional if you need support. 

Transcript

Welcome to Hello Therapy

Dr Liz White 0:02

If you're looking to improve your mental health and well-being, then keep listening. I'm Dr Liz White, a consultant clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience. Whether you're a frazzled parent, a stressed out professional or finding your way through the challenges of midlife, you're in the right place. Through a mix of solo episodes and insightful conversations with expert psychologists and therapists, I'm bringing you evidence-based tools and strategies to help you navigate life's ups and downs with confidence, clarity and compassion. With confidence, clarity and compassion this is your space to feel seen, supported and empowered. Welcome to Hello Therapy. Hello, and a warm welcome to the second instalment of the Summer Sessions, a series designed to help you with those burning questions we all have run through our minds from time to time. Last week, in episode 69, we focused on how can I be more confident in myself? This week's question is such a common one and it's one that I regularly ask myself and I get asked in my therapy room how do I motivate myself when I can't be bothered? And I'm going to share a few practical tips, but I've saved the absolute best one until last. It's one I use and it never fails to help me, so let's dive in.

Dr Liz White 1:41

There can be many reasons why we might lack motivation or we feel that we've lost our get up and go. We feel flat and like we just can't be bothered to do the things we either want or need to do. Now I'm not going to get into all the reasons today, although I will touch on them as we go through, but if you want a separate episode on that, you can now text me. There is a link in the show notes that says what do you think of this episode? So just click there and let me know. So here are my tips for helping motivation.

The Wedding Cake Approach

Dr Liz White 2:14

Number one consider whether you are just a bit bored or feeling stagnant in life with the same routine, the same activities that you do day in, day out, and maybe it's time for a re -evaluation of your aspirations and your goals. So I'm not even really talking about big goals here. It could be something like you go to hot yoga on a Tuesday each week and you find it really difficult to physically get there because you just don't feel motivated anymore. So change it up, do a different class, try something new. Or let's say, work feels like a bit like wading through treacle each day. You feel so uninspired and like you just don't care about the work that you do. Sometimes that can indicate burnout and I would recommend Dr Claire Plumley's book Burnout if you have an inkling that this might be the case and if you want to know a bit more about burnout. I actually had a chat with Claire in episode 25 of the podcast, so go and check it out. But if it is more boredom with the same routine, can you introduce a slight challenge or something different to your workday? Is there some training that you've always wanted to do that could rejuvenate your different to your work day? Is there some training that you've always wanted to do that could rejuvenate your interest in your work? Is there a project that you could get involved with that kind of stretches you a little and gives you a challenge to focus on? Sometimes all that's needed is we just need to breathe a little life into our usual routine.

Dr Liz White 3:41

My second tip is to think about the task that you need or want to do as a large wedding cake, the kind that has lots of tears, has very elaborate icing and decorations, and the kind of cake where it takes three people to carry it to the table in the reception room of a wedding. You know the kind I mean. This beautiful wedding cake is the thing that you have to do, be it exercise, writing that email, tidying the house, doing your year-end accounts, whatever, it doesn't matter. You would never eat a whole tiered wedding cake in one go, would you? No, it's usually cut up into smaller pieces, and this is one of the ways to hack your motivation Break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces. Make it a micro goal. So let's take the example of going to the gym. The gym is this giant wedding cake and it feels such a humongous task. But what if you cut a tiny piece of the cake? What would that actually look like? Maybe that would mean just doing a five minute warm up, or even tinier. Just get your gym clothes on. And here is the important part Don't have a go at yourself for only doing that. That is your inner critic, sabotaging your progress. Doing that, that is your inner critic, sabotaging your progress. And instead congratulate yourself, because that is one thing more than you were doing before. Then, the next day or the next week, break off another piece and do six minutes instead of five, or ten minutes instead of five. You get the idea. It's about incrementally increasing what you're doing.

Values and the Drive System

Dr Liz White 5:24

My third tip is that whatever micro goal you're focused on, next, visualize yourself doing it first. Now, a really interesting study gave students instructions to either visualize the specific process of studying for an exam or in another group. They were told to visualize seeing themselves standing in front of the board where the list of grades was posted and seeing that they received an A on the exam and the last group received no instructions at all. They found that the group that visualized the process of studying actually started studying earlier, they studied for more hours and their exam grade was higher than the other two groups. So the key takeaway from this is that don't just visualize the outcome, like I know being out of breath if, if the goal is exercise, but visualize the process of you reaching the goal of having exercised. Visualize the steps that you need to take to get there, and that will help.

Dr Liz White 6:29

Now, my fourth tip is all about values. I can't talk about coping with low motivation without bringing the conversation to values, what's truly deep down important to us, and we can use our values to help us with low motivation. Why? Well, according to the three systems model of human emotion from compassion focused therapy, paul Gilbert, we have a part of our brain that's responsible for helping us get things, pursue rewards, achieve things and get resources, and this is our drive system. When we are using our drive system, we can feel excitement and joy and that energised feeling we get when we win or succeed at something. Nowadays we often overuse our drive systems because society is so focused on being the best and succeeding in life and being in constant competition with each other, and this can lead us to relentlessly striving, which can lead to anxiety, distress, exhaustion and that word burnout. But a healthy drive system helps us achieve and do things we want in a sustainable, balanced way. So one way to activate our drive system is to connect with our values, the things in our lives that matter to us and bring meaning and a sense of purpose.

Dr Liz White 7:55

So try this have a think about the different areas of your life so your working life, social life, family life or relationships, self-care and health and for all of these areas, ask yourself this question what is my intention in this area? What do I value? And it can be helpful to complete the following sentence when you're trying to identify your values. So, for example, in my working life, I want to be a person who and then you would put the word. So let's take family life. So in my family life, I want to be someone who is present and engaged with my two teenagers and I want to be a mum who models kindness and respect. So my values are being present, engaged or connected, being kind and respectful to others. So then you need to ask yourself what would help me move towards these valued aims in the short and the long term. So for me, in the short term, I could spend the weekend not scrolling on social media when I'm with my kids. In the long term, I could build the habit of putting my phone somewhere each evening or at mealtimes, or each month spending time with each of my kids doing something that they want to do with me to really foster that connection.

Dr Liz White 9:15

So what I'm saying here is you, you know, for each domain of your life, each area of your life, identifying a key value. You know the kind of person that you want to be within that area, and then identifying or generating some ideas about well, what does that look like in real life, like how can I move towards that, what actions do I need to take? And when we connect with our values in that way, it can really help that feeling of not feeling motivated, because it sort of gives you a sense of purpose, doesn't it Like? It gives you a reason for actually doing the thing. So I've saved the best till last and this was an absolute game changer for me personally when I got my head around this early on in my psychology career.

Dr Liz White 10:03

One thing you need to know about motivation is that the thought I can't be bothered and the feeling that comes along with that thought so you know low energy, lower mood perhaps, or lethargy they are all separate from any actions you do and this is CBT, or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy 101, that thoughts, feelings and behaviours are different aspects of your experience, but they all influence each other. So what this means is that, regardless of how you are feeling or how you are thinking, you can still get up and do the thing. So I can have the thought no one is going to listen to this podcast episode and I can feel frustrated with that and maybe a bit sad. But I can still do the podcast episode, I can still record it. Even if those thoughts and feelings are really strong and at the forefront of my mind, I can do the episode anyway. Forefront of my mind, I can do the episode anyway.

Dr Liz White 11:12

So even if you have negative thoughts like I can't be bothered, I don't want to, what's the point? It's all hopeless you can move your body to do the thing with those thoughts and feelings alongside. So you don't need to do any fancy mental gymnastics, just acknowledge that those thoughts are there. It's a bit like well, you could actually say, oh, I see you. You know, here's a negative thought, here's an anxious thought. Then redirect your focus or your attention to the thing that you need to do and just start.

Dr Liz White 11:44

Usually what you find is that once you are immersed in the activity, usually what you find is that once you are immersed in the activity, those thoughts and feelings just aren't so strong. And this is because, if we go back to CBT 101, if we change one of the three elements of our experience and in this case we've changed the behavior part it influences our thoughts and our feelings. Ie, when we doing the task, maybe we start to feel better, or maybe we feel relieved, we're getting a sense of achievement, maybe even enjoyment, and then maybe we start having other thoughts like, oh great, I'm finally doing it. Or this is hard, but it feels good actually doing it, and this can spur us on to keep going. So I hope that's inspired you a little and at least given you some ideas of how to manage when your motivation is low or non-existent. If you do try some of what I've suggested, let me know how you get on. You can DM me on Instagram at harleyclinical, or if you're on our email list, you can just hit reply to the email that we send out.

Closing and Next Episode Preview

Dr Liz White 12:48

With this episode next week, I'm going to answer a question that anyone at any age can ask themselves how do I figure out what I really want in life? It's a bit of a big one, that one, isn't it? I'll see you then. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of hello Therapy. We'd love for you to join our growing community over on Substack. You can sign up for free or become a paid subscriber for access to exclusive perks like never before seen video interviews and downloadable guides designed to support your mental health. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe so you never miss a new release, and if you got value from this episode, it would mean the world if you left a five star review. As always, check the show notes for my full disclaimer. Thanks again for listening.