It’s easy to get overwhelmed, to lose motivation and stuck yourself in being lazy. But laziness is not moving you anywhere in life.

Motivation comes and goes. That’s normal. That’s why you should not depend on emotions in order to navigate your life.

However, sometimes we can get really lazy. We can lose motivation and it can affect our whole life. Lack of motivation and laziness often go hand in hand. They are making you unwilling to take action, or do anything.

It can also lead to depression, if we stay inactive for long period of time.

If you are feeling unmotivated or depressed, professional help might be right for you. You can speak with a licensed counselor with in person therapy, or even virtual therapy.

But if you think that you are just having a momentary laziness hit, here are 3 unusual ways you can stop being lazy and find motivation that most therapists don’t even know.

3 Ways How to Get Motivated and Stop Being Lazy:

1. Embrace being lazy.

Yeah, literally stop fighting it.

We are all lazy at certain times. And some people might identify themselves as lazy people. But laziness is a behavior that is learned, and it can be unlearned.

You are not lazy, you have chosen to be lazy many times and now it feels natural to you.

While most people will tell you to train your discipline, to do the things you have to do even when you don’t feel like it, we have a different tactic for you.

Be lazy when you feel lazy. Embrace it fully.

What we discovered is that when you don’t fight your emotions, they tend to go away quickly.

Most people stick with laziness because they are playing on the border, they are lazy, but they don’t want to be, so they force themselves to kind of do something, while being lazy, and they don’t want to… it’s a loop that keeps them stuck in laziness.

When I feel lazy and like I don’t want to do anything, that’s exactly what I do, nothing.

I let myself be lazy. Fully. I just sit.

I don’t touch my phone, I don’t watch a movie, I don’t even talk. I just sit. I go one extra step further than laziness to the point when my laziness is tired of me being lazy.

And what I found out is that it quickly goes away. When I say quickly I mean in minutes. And you naturally want to do something. Motivation naturally comes.

2. Expose yourself to cold water.

Who wants to enter cold water?

Nobody.

You might train yourself to have a habit of cold exposure, but you always feel this resistance before you enter the cold pool or the icy bath.

Every cell of your body is against you entering the cold. But when you expose yourself, your body has no other option but to adapt.

And as it adapts powerful processes occur within that boost your mood and motivation.

So the quickest shortcut to better mood and motivation is cold exposure. Few seconds are enough to wake you, shake you and push you into action.

And according to many doctors and piling research papers, it’s also healthy for your body.

3. Eliminate pending tasks.

Most often, we lose motivation and get lazy when we have a pile of pending tasks in front of us.

You are excited, motivated, you take on many things on your plate, and then… motivation is gone, the plate is overwhelming, and you get lazy.

You can solve this in two ways, either tackle the hardest tasks on your plate, finish them and as you finish them you will get even more motivated to take on the smaller ones.

But if you are lazy this is a problem. It’s easy to say “just do it” but we know that when you are lazy this is not really helping you.

That’s why you can go the opposite way. Eliminate the unnecessary burden from your plate.

What are the priorities? What is the most important task? What is not necessary?

When you answer these questions keep 1 or 2 most important tasks, and just eliminate the rest.

You do’t have to do everything. Do only the things that are actually moving your forward in live toward your purpose, toward what’s important for you.

Everything else is a side mission. Just like in games, focus on the main missions. Forget about the side missions.

See if you can delegate or automatize. Find the unnecessary tasks and simply eliminate them. Your plate will feel lighter. And you will make room for motivation. Laziness will be gone.

When you have 1 thing to do instead of 9 it’s easy to get motivated and take right action.