Give it 15 Minutes.

You have to at least give it a chance. You have to be willing to at least try, make an attempt, show up. I recently heard someone say that on days she is unmotivated, she forces herself to go to the gym, but makes a deal with herself that if she still isn’t having it after 15 minutes, she can leave. The premise of this is that all it truly takes is to show up. Once you show up, you will hardly find yourself leaving once that 15 minutes is up. This concept is not just about exercising, but it can apply to life in general as well.

When you don’t feel like doing something, just give it a try. You never know what is waiting for you on the other side of fear. You may be unmotivated, afraid, lazy, tired, etc. You may have every excuse in the book stacked up in support of you just staying in bed and avoiding the thing you don’t want to do. Force yourself to give it 15 minutes. Make yourself get up, get dressed, get ready, and go do the thing you don’t want to do. If you arrive and 15 minutes pass and you still feel that you can't get it done, then go home and get back in bed... at least you gave it a try, right?

In most scenarios, you won't go home after 15 minutes. In most cases, once you get up and go, you’ll be fine. Most of the time, the issue is not the thing itself. It’s the process of getting from point A to point B. It’s forcing your body to get out of bed when you hear the alarm go off (which I personally have been struggling with the past few weeks), it’s making yourself go to the gym, it’s getting off the couch on a cold and rainy day to go grocery shopping, it’s gaining the discipline to make it to your 8 am lecture on time. It’s getting up and making breakfast for your family before you rush out of the door to get to work on time, it’s doing laundry when the basket is overflowing with dirty clothes, it’s carpooling your kids from school to sports to their friends house to extracurriculars only to go back home and have to make dinner for everyone. It’s all the little things you may dread doing, but simply need to get done. Just give it 15 minutes.

I have a feeling that once you get yourself out of bed, once you get dressed, once you eat a little snack, once you refuel, once you arrive at your destination… once you spend at least 15 minutes doing what you don’t want to do… in this moment, you will succeed in your task. In this moment, you will display discipline, strength, and courage to get stuff done. It just takes a little extra push to get you going, but once you are 15 minutes deep into the workout, the drive, the grocery shopping, the laundry, cooking, etc., you will be fine. Just give it 15 minutes, I have a pretty good feeling once you make it to 15 minutes, you’ll finish your task and be proud you decided to get it done.

Xoxo, Kaci