Is there a way to obtain motivation? When I was younger, I had

I think for most people having a single goal or idea to drive you is a bad idea, unless it's some wide spread concept or something. A bunch of little, more reasonable goals might be better than putting all your effort into one thing.

Just for obtaining motivation in general what helps me best is having reasonable expectations and forming habits.

Often I lose motivation when I work towards a goal with too high an expectation for the outcome. I become a perfectionist and start fearing failure, which leads to procrastination. Now I try to put more value into the work I put in towards the goal rather then the outcome, because the outcome is always less then what I wanted.

For example I had a piano recital a few weeks that I worked my ass off for, but fucked up mid performance in such a way that I basically had to restart the whole section of the piece. Instead of letting that demotivate me I congratulate myself on how hard I worked for it. Looking at the effort you put in is a much better way to motivate than looking at the results, at least in my experience.

And building habits is really strong for building motivation. I'd recommend starting with this because you don't need a driving goal or idea. Just a pick a few things: read for 30 minutes each day, get a good nights rest, take a walk outside everyday, etc. It doesn't really matter what you do, what matters is you do it; well it should at least be somewhat healthy. Don't worry about why or what you're trying to achieve, and don't make it anything to difficult at first. The point is you'll feel better about yourself and find more motivation to do stuff.

I think my point is that you don't have to have some big raison d'être to center your life upon. You can just start with feeling good about yourself, then maybe figure out what you want to do from there.

Sorry if this is a little rambly, I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately. Hopefully you'll find something useful here.

>>17449597
Maybe you can go full nihilist and start believing you are your only idol and god, or you can accept that those idols you had back then were absolutely false, then search for new ones that are actually real. Maybe religion could help you. As well as Nietzsche. Idk.
The only concrete advice I give you is: read. Anything. But Philosophy is a must. I'm not implying you don't read, but if you do, just keep it up. Also, lift. Working out helps finding some purpose, at least for me. Do you fap really often? Then stop.

>>17449743
I don't know why but it's very hard hard to form habits for me. I really want to do it but my brain doesn't like to work for me. I've tried rewards, demotivation, praising, and even self harm at times but nothing really seems to work after a while.

It's also even hard for me to do small goals since my motivation is so fucked.

I dunno what's really wrong with me.

>>17449762
I personally wouldn't like to go full nihilist since I kind of went through a sociopathic phase when I was settling into some medication. I'm quite sure I would go full edgelord.

Also, religion doesn't really help me since it feels like the higher ups are a bit disappointed in me because I can't do anything properly and regularly. I tried to celebrate some holidays and it ended with me sleeping and laying in bed.

I tried working out too but always ended with me setting a very simple goal and struggling to do it.

I haven't read anything in a while but I'll get back into it. I'm not really a philosophy person, though. It was always so stuffy and reminded me of sermons I used to have in church: just stuff I didn't believe in or gave other people hope and motivation I never really had.

>>17449791
>I don't know why but it's very hard hard to form habits for me

It's hard for pretty much everyone, at least as far as I can tell. I always try to form practicing habits for my instruments but it often fizzles after a few weeks. The thing to do is after the routine breaks down to try again, cause once you really get a habit started it's harder to stop than to let it keep going.

Simplest example: toilet training. I'd at least hope you have the habit of using a toilet. It doesn't feel like any significant effort to use a toilet, unless you have some serious constipation issues in which case see a doctor.

From what I've found if you keep trying eventually some habits will stick and they'll become just as easy as taking a shit. Then you can try building from there.

Also just in more general do you have a therapist or a group of friends you can rely on? If you're legit depressed then alleviating that should be your first priority.

>even self harm at times

Don't do that.

>>17449845
I have a therapist but I haven't really been going to them that often. I might ask to increase the the appointments but I feel kinda bad because it seemed like I was getting better.

>Don't do that.
Why not?

It helped even helped me get good grades at a point. I was pretty social when I had burns on my arm to focus on and not stay in head. Nothing really else helped. No other punishment could really work on me so I went with something harsher.

Right now I only do scratching to try and get some motivation but I often think about going back to burn to get some stuff done again.

>>17449866
Ignoring the psychological effects, you're damaging your body. Also it's not sustainable, cause like drugs if you do it regularly you'll probably develop a tolerance and have to go more extreme for the same effects.

In high school I used to crush up my adderall capsules for quick highs to get papers done that were due the next day. It worked better for motivating me than anything I tried before, and anything I've tried since actually. But I realized pretty quick the road I'd go down if I kept it up. I was burning through the meds way too fast. There's no feasible way I could've kept up my motivation with just stimulants and all it would have left me with is a meth addiction.

Something like building habits might not work as quickly or even as effectively, but it's not going to hurt you and it's something you can maintain. You won't be able to rely on self harm as your only method of motivation.

I admit I'm sort of projecting my own drug experiences into a subject I'm not personally familiar with, but from the people I've talked to who have self harmed and from the (admittedly limited) knowledge I have it's something you should probably work towards moving away from.

>>17449942
I know I was damaging my body but the burns weren't severe. I made sure of that. I didn't want anyone to notice something was wrong.

I basically used it to build my habits. If, let's say, I wanted to exercise everyday, I would basically force myself into doing a thing mentally and if that didn't work, I would go to self harm for a pick me up.

If I needed to study and my brain was fucking up, a nice burn seemed to get the blood flowing. I even managed to talk to a professor after multiple days of chickening out due to my anxiety even after multiple techniques of trying to avoid such a thing. That took a harsher burn but didn't really last that long either. I just needed it to last long enough to step in front of the door.

I know it's bad and I tried to move away from it. But to be quite honest, it's the only thing that works currently when I want to get shit done.

>>17449968
>I even managed to talk to a professor after multiple days of chickening out due to my anxiety
Fuck do I know this feeling. I still get nervous with stuff like checking email.

>But to be quite honest, it's the only thing that works currently when I want to get shit done.

What might help is to try to change this view. Convince yourself that other things can work, even if it feels like you're tricking yourself. A method will only help if you actually think it will. Outlook changing is hard but I think it's possible. I've managed to do it to some degree, with some help from people and stuff happening to me.

Though I think at this point this is stuff you should talk to your therapist about, or maybe find a book about. You'll probably find more tested and well thought out solutions than the anons of /adv/.

Actually if anybody knows of good books on motivation I'd be interested.

>>17450048
>What might help is to try to change this view. Convince yourself that other things can work, even if it feels like you're tricking yourself. A method will only help if you actually think it will. Outlook changing is hard but I think it's possible. I've managed to do it to some degree, with some help from people and stuff happening to me.

Tried that stuff. Doesn't seem to work. Tried positive outlooks, negative outlooks, and even "fuck it" outlooks. Doesn't seem to help and I go back to my homeostasis of "Jesus fuck, I should just chug a bottle of bleach" in about a week or so.

I've been thinking about talking to my therapist but they seem so uncomfortable when I talk to them about it. I can't even use dark humor or joke around because they barely crack a smile. I'm thinking about changing when if I can get a job that won't make me want to walk into the fucking street.

>>17450075
So if none that works I'm out of ideas, sorry. I legitimately hope you find something though.

But yeah if you don't connect with your therapist there's no point in having one. I wasted a lot of time (and a lot of my parents money) as a kid because I didn't want to admit I didn't like my therapist. I'd say change sooner rather than later.

Also out of curiosity what kind of job is it?

>>17450091
I dunno. Probably just part time thing. Probably just being a cashier. If I can, I'll try to find something that doesn't have me talking to customers. People are annoying and last time I was a cashier, I was getting heart palpitations from the stress and anxiety. But I had money, so that was cool.

>>17450097
Oh I misunderstood then. Thought you were saying you had a job that made you want to walk into a street and wanted to change to different one.

Good luck figuring that out anyways. No idea on what do for that seeing as I've barely worked a real job myself.