How to Get Back On the Wagon
Date Posted: November 22nd, 2010
After an unintended two-week vacation from updating the blog, I’m getting back to it this week.
And on that note, here’s a quick post on how to get back on the wagon.
Guilt / Shame
It’s natural to feel guilty or shameful after having gotten off the wagon. You had hopes for yourself. You thought you could trust yourself. You disappointed yourself. You want to fix things, so you wallow in guilt because it seems like guilt should be a good motivator.
“I’m ashamed of myself” –> “I don’t want to feel ashamed of myself” –> “I do things to avoid this feeling in the future.”
The problem is it doesn’t work this way. It certainly hasn’t for me.
Here’s the thought progression I go through:
“I’m ashamed of myself” –> “I don’t want to feel ashamed of myself” –> “I really don’t want to do things because I’m shamed into them.” –> “I’m stuck.”
Sometimes I end up doing the things I’ve been shamed into, but it’s usually for reasons other than shame. Example: I have homework assigned on Monday that’s due on Friday. Monday – Thursday I feel guilty about not having done my homework yet since I’ve had plenty of time. Thursday evening I finally do my homework. I do it because I don’t want to fail. I don’t do it because of the guilt/shame.
Step 1: Notice When You’re Feeling Guilty. Ask yourself when guilt has been useful to you in the past. Guilt is used so often that it can be hard to wrap your mind around that idea that it doesn’t work. That’s why you need to take an honest look at how guilt and shame have affected your productivity in the past. I’ll bet that more often than not it’s paralyzed you rather than motivated you.
Also, really, do you want to use hating yourself as motivation to do good things? Do you want to do good things out of fear of self-punishment?
Why Did You Get On the Wagon?
You had some sort of motivation for getting on the wagon in the first place. What was it? Get in touch with that feeling… with the excitement.
Maybe the reason you started to work on your painting was because you had this beautiful image in your mind’s eye that you wanted to see on canvas. Maybe you stopped painting because you forgot how beautiful the end result will be. Reveling in the future beauty can be enough of a motivator to get you back to your easel and your paints.
Step 2: Figure out what your original, intrinsic motivation was. Feel the excitement. Start moving.
Given the choice between motivation by guilt and being motivated by the excitement that got me started…
Similarly, let’s say you were the recipient of volunteer work. Who would rather receive services from: Someone doing it because they were guilted into it or someone doing it because they genuinely wanted to?
Let go
Maybe the reason you want to do your homework early is because it’s what you’re “supposed” to do. You can hear your parents’ saying how they wished you’d work on your homework as soon as you got it, but the voice is always theirs, not yours. You got off the “doing your homework early” wagon because it wasn’t your wagon. It was your parents’. You had a not-very-compelling extrinsic motivation, not an intrinsic one.
Step 3: If you don’t have an intrinsic motivation, let go of your guilt. It’s not your problem. This step is harder than it sounds.
In the Middle
Many times the situation won’t be clear. You may realize you’re primarily motivated for extrinsic reasons, but you still feel compelled to keep trying. Or maybe you have good intrinsic motivations but you keep feeling stuck. In these cases, look deeper until you find a fear or an intrinsic motivation or both.
Going back to the school example. Maybe you look further and find that you do actually like learning. When you get into the homework, you don’t mind doing it, and most of the time you actually enjoy yourself. However, you’re afraid if you don’t take the time right after school to watch TV you won’t watch any TV by the time you go to sleep. So you procrastinate on the school work and it’s hard to muster up the energy to do homework after the fun of TV is over.
Some possible solutions might be to try limiting the time you spend on not-due-tomorrow homework. Maybe spend only an hour on it each day right after school, and promise to spend at least an hour each day doing something purely fun. Or something. The next time you get off the wagon, you can ask yourself if you’ve been getting enough time to yourself and you can remind yourself of how much you love and want to learn. You have a place to start.
Once you figure out what the underlying fear is and what the intrinsic motivation is, coming up with things to try is straightforward. Just think of a solution that might work, feels alright, and try it.
The homework example has both an intrinsic motivation and a fear, and I think most of the time we get off the wagon, it’s because of a combination of the two. There’s some reason we got started. There’s some fear that this change in behavior is aggravating.
Step 4: If you’re motivation isn’t compelling enough but you can’t let go, look for the fear that’s stopping you and the intrinsic motivation that’s keeping you from quitting.
If you’re really stuck ask a friend to help you out. They may be able to see what you’re afraid to admit.
A Bit More On Analyzing Failure
Analyzing failure has it’s place, but it shouldn’t be the default thing you do. Instead your default action should be to figure out what it is you’re trying to do.
If your goal is to get back on the wagon, then it’s much more fruitful to remember why you got on it in the first place.
If your goal is to prevent getting off the wagon in the future, then analyzing why you got off is useful.
It’s tempting to start analyzing first. It feels good to figure out why you failed. But knowing why you failed won’t help you get started again. Use the right tool for the job.
Apologize and Move On
It’s more important to move on than it is to apologize. If someone hasn’t updated their blog in months, and out of the blue starts again with no explanation for why they left and why they’re back again, it’s easy to forgive them if they just start updating regularly. On the other hand if they write a long apology including plans for the future and then the blog goes silent…. well. Empty apology, much?
The same goes for promises to yourself. If you exercises for 3 months straight and then stop for no reason, it’s way better to just start up again without formally apologizing to yourself than it is to apologize, make more promises, and then not do anything. In fact not doing anything at all is better than an empty apology.
If you have a history of making empty apologies, try this instead. Try getting back on the wagon, and don’t explain yourself. Just do it. After some specified amount of time, allow yourself to go back and apologize for that gap. Use apologizing as an incentive to actually make the change.
Good Luck!
I’m trying not to feel too guilty about it.
Because of that we should have just about everything done by Pennsic. 
