How to Feel Inspired When You’ve Lost Motivation 

UNMOTIVATED? ✅ UNINSPIRED ✅ Feeling that way got me researching "inspiration", and I became fascinated about the "inspired by"/"inspired to" connection. I hope this video is helpful, and FWIW, reading and walking were more helpful for getting out of my rut than... lying on the couch trying to fall asleep holding a drink bottle 🤷🏻‍♀️

I have had clinical depression so long, being unmotivated feels like the natural thing. Would not even wish it upon an enemy.

As I've gotten older I've had a much harder time with motivation. When I was young and didn't know anything, I would start things and just do them to see where it would lead. Now that I'm older and better at planning and visualizing things, knowing the enormity of a task before it starts is hugely demotivating because I can see all of the work ahead, except now I see it all at once.

I subscribe to the teachings of Mark Manson. Inspiration, motivation, action is not linear. It is circular and you can start anywhere within the circle because one always results in the other. In other words, just start doing (action) something and that will create inspiration which results in motivation. Inspiration does NOT need to come first. Many years ago I was a personal trainer and some of my clients had a hard time going to the gym. My greatest successful tool was making them promise to do nothing other than JUST go to the gym. No workout at all, just drive to the parking lot 3 times a week. Then drive to the gym, go inside and use the restroom and leave 3 times a week. 100% successful. The simple act of just going to the gym inspired and motivated them.

I was motivated to say thanks for making these wonderful videos and being a great science advocate.

Think inspiration is part: having a deadline; working very purposefully on the problem; letting go and doing something brainless; and then having free time to play with ideas. I think this because that's what happened one weekend when I was supposed to come up with a team project idea. I was on vacation, and I didn't feel like doing anything outdoorsy because I'm a complete flop in that department. Result. I stayed inside and glutted myself on science fiction movies ( I know, a little sad). When even I couldn't stand to see even one more I was alone with paper and pen and came up with an idea for a 5 - part project. Think this follows your video pretty much but without the sleeping bit. Different parts of the brain working together.

As an artist I've spent my life finding inspiration & being inspired to. Interestingly I found N-1 as a youth. Breton called it "Conscious Dreaming". It is a state where all the inspiring moments of the "day" collapse into that stream of creation... Nowadays it's much easier. I've developed a sense of awareness to how the process works. If I'm unmotivated it's because I want to be. I think it's better to "veg out" once in a while and accept it rather than to feel guilty for lack of productivity. Inside I have faith things will come around and the entire process will begin again. Maybe while taking a walk at dawn. Anyway, great video, as usual. Thank you for what you do. I always enjoy listening to your informed observations. Stay safe.

Edison's other method for finding inspiration was stealing from Nikola Tesla. But I don't think that's as useful to the rest of us.

I struggle more with actually getting inspired to do what I want than I do figuring out what I want to do. A large part of that is a fear about things not becoming exactly what I want.

It actually makes sense, when I have to find the solution to a problem in university I try to focus and get nothing unless I’m putting in some hardcore concentration ; and sometimes I just decide to forget about it for a while and look into the window with dead eyes laying on my chair to suddenly come up with an actually insightful idea. It makes me think “But I was wasting my time, how could this happen?”

I find myself having constant "inspired to" moments. especially in that intertemporal moment between space and sleep. However they are really unwanted since I have sleeping issues :) and I want to immediately work on them. The " inspired by" is harder to pin down , a lot of my ideas come from questions or problems that I face. Or "I wish" statements. I have many moments when I am doing something repetitive like cleaning, grinding in a video game, folding laundry, etc. But I never actually DO any of them. I forget to carry a notebook or open the notes app on my phone. Or I don't/can't interrupt what I am doing to note it down. Or I forget to look at the notes I've previously taken. Or if I had a way to write it down, remembered to write it down, and remembered to look at it later I find I have too many ideas. I can't decide what to do. Yes i know about executive dysfunction but multiple psychiatrists do not agree that I have any condition associated with it.

I'm surprised you haven't explored meditation in order to get into a disengaged state! Thank you for the fantastic content! I love your work.

The facts in this video feels like a validation of the experiences of a lot of people with ADHD. The condition could be described as having a harder time with reaching and maintaining executive brain mode but an easier time with that disengaged mode. That might explain the anecdotal observations that people with ADHD feel inspired often and seem more likely to start their own businesses.

Great video. I find myself "inspired by" a lot but then can struggle to translate those to the "inspired to" stage. This helps me get some understanding of what's going on my head. Too many long walks and sunsets! :D

I have always found inspiration by reading not about great accomplishments, but by reading about those persons who achieved the success. One of the most inspirational people to me is Ernest Shackleton. During my lifetime of 65 years, I have frequently picked up, and re-read the book "South" and find myself ready to tackle my next project or idea everytime.

sunsets are a great inspiration whenever i want to hide behind the horizon

I've started walking daily outdoors whenever possible. This has turned into a really good way of sort of meditating. I'm aware of my surroundings so car, streetlight etc. but I'm also not consciously paying attention to them. I take the same route every day and do it on autopilot.

Walking does wonders for my creativity, I usually bring a small notebook to jot great ideas down.

As a chef I get inspired by looking at Google Reviews looking at the different ways people plate their food.

There was a time about a month ago I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning - and I had a RU-vid vlog idea stuck in my head (I did crap RU-vid vlogs around 10 years ago), and it just wouldn't go away... So I got out of bed, and then spent the next two and a half hours writing up a script in a Word document... It was fun! I have never felt so inspired in my life, and I have no idea why my brain was so fixated on something I have not done in ages - maybe it is linked to the fact I was sleeping like you mentioned in your video. Except it was more like the end of sleep rather than the beginning...

I listen to my favorite songs while doing things i like, as a digital artist i always carry a little notebook and pen, when i'm jogging, skating, showering, gaming or reading, i always find myself having new ideas for projects.

This is something that I think about a lot. The secret is to find an inspiring goal. I disagree that we are inspired by the N1 sleep stage. Ideas are created subconsciously and N1 is simply a gateway between conscious and subconscious. As a student of Jung, I would classify unconscious (but ego-syntonic) ideation as Introverted intuition. This is my dominant cognitive function so I observe how I use it: 1 - an nebulous goal 2- divergent exploration for remotely connected information motivated by general curiosity. 3 - reflection on the information such that it fills your subconscious thoughts 4 - sleep to consolidate information I to memory. The brain makes remote associations during this process. 5 - Do something relaxing that clears our minds thus allowing ideas flow into consciousness. 6 - repeat until you have an insight, a-ha! Moment, epiphany, realization, discovery, or Eureka moment. 💡💡💡

Beautiful work and lovely execution as always! Thank you for relaying such important information in such a palatable and applicable way 💚

I drift off into my brain all times of the day solving whatever things I’m working on, as for motivation.. that takes effort on my part but more importantly for me having several projects I’m working on allows me to not get bored or frustrated with one thing.

Your brother has a nice home, and a nice cat! Thanks for this video that inspires me to not be affraid to be disengaged

Okay but... What if you have ADHD and are constantly battling executive dysfunction? I feel inspired BY so many things, all the time, my note pads and sketchbooks are overflowing with concepts and ideas. But when it comes down to going through with those ideas... Either I see every step of the task ahead and it's too overwhelming, or I am too driven by perfectionism to choose what idea to follow through on! Or I feel guilty for working on something creative when I have other chores to do, even if I can do those chores later.

It might not be for everyone, but I find ASMR videos great for this. As a self-employed R&D engineer, I often watch them late at night before going to bed when I'm stuck on some design problem. I find that helps my brain "phase out" a bit, which allows me to kind of "reset" my thoughts on a problem, approach it from another angle, and get ideas I wouldn't have had in the day while I was focused and my mind was framed a certain way. I guess it relates to the "twilight zone" that is explained in the video, just another way to put the brain into this half-asleep state. Your mileage may vary though, ASMR appears to have very different effects on different people, fortunately, there is now a huge variety of genres available on youtube for everyone to try out. Funny thing is, I'm not even at all into meditation and stuff, I found about ASMR by accident years ago while studying how the brain constructs sound spatialization using different clues in the signals received by the ears (fascinating stuff), but I ended up getting a lot more out of this study than I expected.

I've been a Lucid Dreamer (LD) for as long as I can remember. I have distinct early memories of drifting to sleep while being read a bedtime story, then "walking into" the story and continuing it in my dreams. Combined with this has been the **awareness** that I was dreaming, a small slice of my consciousness monitoring and even intervening to guide the dream. I consciously used LD for entertainment throughout my school years, particularly as an adjunct to my SciFi addiction. Reading a story, setting a scene in my mind, then drifting into it as I fell asleep became a refuge from the day's troubles and stresses. It wasn't until I entered university that I consciously tried to use LD to help me avoid drowning under my freshman year course load. Initially, I used it as a memory aid: The night before an exam I'd review my sheet of key items then repeat it to myself as I fell asleep. This worked well enough to keep using the technique, though it did have the unfortunate side effect of also having me dream about my worry of forgetting something. During my upper division course work I used LD specifically to explore complex problems, where I'd prime my mind with what I knew about the problem, then fall asleep while casually pondering it (rather than being actively focused on trying to solve it). This was **immensely** useful, directly leading to key advancement on projects, including even getting me added as an author on a research paper as the only undergrad among the authors! I continued to use this ability during my early career, only to choose to stop as I entered my mid-30s: My sleep quality was being negatively affected, and it became more important to be fresh for the next day, sleep quality mattering more than any single problem. Still, to this day I will use LD when truly necessary. I'd say it would take an average of a week of LD attempts to make noticeable progress, though success was never guaranteed. It was also the case that I only occasionally remembered an insight the next morning. But I did wake with a hunch that an insight either had occurred or was immanent, giving me renewed hope and a positive attitude for the next day, which itself often yielded direct results. When I was in therapy for depression, I was able to use LD to greatly accelerate my progress in CBT (Cognitive Behavorial Therapy). My therapist and I both worked to better understand LD as a therapeutic tool, but we made little progress there, though my other results were great! (That LD application alone is worth its own long comment.) Yes, I'm a walking, talking anecdote. Has there been applicable research to fostering and enhancing LD in folks not "born" with it?

I have just begun a new job after a rollercoaster of the past 10 months trying to get back into a stable condition after grad school. As long as I can stay motivated and stick with this for a few months, I think I’ll be in very good standing. Thanks for making the video

When I am in need of motivation I turn on some upbeat music and dance around to it to get my blood moving before starting the work. Then I continue to listen to the music while I work. I think the music gives me a pace to work at and helps to occupy my brain during mundane tasks like doing the dishes. Then as I work my mind starts drifting into ideas and thoughts like you mention in the video. Thanks for the video, I think recognizing my process will help me obtain motivation in the future.

I needed this . Thanks !

wow, love this channel. thnx for recommending.

As a writer, I see inspiration everywhere. I just don't have the motivation or ambition I used to.

I really missed videos like this that have useful information instead of only stories about your life. By the way, your outfit is amazing 😍

Love your videos. They inspire me "by" the different subjects covered.

I am a stay at home dad and a woodworker. I feel like my brain is almost always in the creative, idea generating mode!

Glad you engaged and were inspired to create this video, Vanessa. Just as I was engaged by it and inspired by you and this content. I've been battling a lack of inspiration and near crippling ennui, like many others commenting on this video, it seems. BTW, I'm still working on the better habits for sleep routines inspired to some extent by your past posts on that subject. Any plans to revisit that topic again--besides what you touched on in this video? It's funny how being disengaged can lead to inspiration. I've been reading more and listening to music a lot more. Same with getting out in nature. All have been major passions in my life and rekindling those passions does help fan my inner ember back to a flame. Thanks for the video, as always.

Thanks heaps, clever lass!

Thanks, neat video. reminds me that I was a lot more inspired, in my late teens and early 20's, And then I had to be more engaged, in some faulty work environment. I like taking walks, and plan to do that more often in the future. OK, bye.

Getting inspired is not easy. Need to really have intrest in what we do

Good content. Recently picked up this channel. Keep up the good work

I would like to say I am inspired by the fantasy litrpg books like , such as dakota krouts the ritualist, since after I am done listening to a good one I often want to write something of my own, but that desire quickly is forgotten since it conflicts the reality that I have trouble concentrating on making up the details of stories, particularly when it comes to writing characters that are not a self insert.

Great video, thanks Vanessa!

Since February I have been so unmotivated. It's the depression mainly.

The point about sleep is very interesting. I like to write, and I've recently found that a good way to improve my writing sessions is to lie on my bed for 20min with my eyes closed before I start putting words down. I've thought of it as a way to cut off other demands on attention, and to let my brain wander around the scenes to come without doing the work of choosing words.

This reminds me loosely of the MacGyver Secret by Lee Zlotoff, which I have found to be surprisingly effective. Basically, you write down a problem that you need to solve, asking yourself to come up with a solution, which can be as simple as coming up with an idea for a story. Layout your criteria, ask the question, then forget about it, and go about your day doing as mundane tasks as you have. Then later come back to the question and start writing. Let whatever thoughts your brain has flow out on paper and surprisingly, your mind has been working on the problem without you even realizing it. I thought it was hokey at first, but with a little bit of practice, I've come up with some great solutions to some stories I was working on. Seems like it's engaging both parts of your brain as you mentioned.

The thing about inspiration is that it isn't something you can force. You have to be open to it.

I like this channel very much cause it’s helpful to me

Thank you for going on lateral with Tom Scott because now I have found your channel and I don’t think I’m leaving

A recent quote I heard "A good question informs. A great question inspires!"

Driving is the big one for me. Active enough that I'm not usually super bored but easy enough that my mind can wander. I have a problem of being so bored all I can think about is how freaking bored I am. This happens at such times as waiting 1 minute for the microwave or walking down the block. So finding things that occupy me enough to not be overwhelmed with boredom but not too much that they occupy my mind is difficult. Then I've got a problem that when my mind lays fallow depression oft takes hold. It's a serious issue. Can't be inspired if I don't give myself space to think but if I do I spend 90% of that time in agony ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To find motivation I actually watch people do things, not motivational quotes and other bullshit but actions that I want to make done by someone else.

This is a big reason people love float therapy so much

Thank you for this video. This is a critical question for me right now.. I've been trying to write. I've completed the actual story but now need to back and fix plot holes, make dialogue more snappy and delete waffle. But while ideas seemed flow before they just don't come now

My company puts a lot of effort into talking about taking the time to be inspired, fostering innovation… does it work? Guess we’ll see if we’re still here in another 120 years!

Thanx

6:35 I go on reddit and ask others questions related to it lol works

Generally I get inspired and best ideas at the weirdest hours of the day, namely during the night when I go to the toilet. I sometimes really have to focus on not letting my brain throw all these ideas at me, when I still need 4 hours of sleep. And I regularly fail and my brain wins, so I have to write things down or look things up. I've written down lots of work ideas, personal thoughts and could have written songs, melodies and poems, all by just waking up and going to the toilet. But maybe that time as also sort of a twilight Anyways, I think there's a quote saying something like, don't wait for inspiration to start doing something, start doing something to get inspired. That mostly works for me to get motivated do achieve things I need or want to do.

This to was a good video.

Amazing content as always!!! What inspires me? I guess, I always love seeing people struggle through what I am also struggling with and finding an answer that suits them. Its cathartic to see someone solve their own problems. Gives me hope that I too can also overcome my own problems x

thankyou so much 😭❤️

Yeah I completely understand what she's saying honestly when you're inspired is that passion and it's just like nothing cuz you I mean you'll do nothing to stop at it you may even be scared and have a little bit of fear and have to gain some courage but I promise you that you're you're only worst enemy so you can inspire by someone and all that I'm just saying I get what she's saying about that but the thing is no you can have Sarah long haha moments which is amazing and but that passion that burning fire that's your purpose and just keep on doing it cuz sometimes when you don't even understand why you want to do something that's what it's like oh okay I see

What's thy song that plays at 0:36 ? Sounds so familiar...

I thought you did a real good job with this video, Vanessa. Not only was it informational but the editing was very good, to the point of not being noticeable.

I'm not sure if it works for everything, but when I'm trying to write a story for a role-playing game I think of a random thing (it can be anything, like a cup of tea) and then I try to fit that thing into the rest of the story, that usually gives me enough to mold the rest of the story.

I'm always on the brink of falling asleep, but it seems to never inspired

but is it all worth while in the end or is ot only wrth while for the few ?

Imagine getting a heart from vanessa

Now I'm inspired to sleep 🥲

I'm inspired to watch this... Later..

I heard the Edison anecdote about Salvador Dalí.

Wow! This is a lot of dense powerful information here! My behaviors are validated, and awareness of my difficult circumstances, and the importance of this inspiration process to navigate a high difficulty level, can now be a healing resource. Thank you, you have no “idea” how much this helps me (pun intended).

The outside footage with the plants behind you had some strange compression artefacts, as if it was recorded at a low bitrate. Interesting that it didn't reflect the quality of the rest of the footage in the video. A different camera?

NOW I really feel inspided 💗

I can fall asleep and not drop what I'm holding. Being unmotivated is an issue.

Inspired by: not being inspired Inspired to: make an amazing video about inspiration

Completely random, but the background at 6:18 looks so much like my hometown of Bangalore, India that I was thrown off for a second. Is this north Australia somewhere? Ive heard the climate and vegetation there are very similar to southern India's.

Inspiration doesn't help motivation though.

A sail asea, aliasing as a kind of fun Over sweet, sweat waters deep Buoys my mind to bound and leap As countless waves sparkle in the sun

İs this your house? Awesome place!

ill watch is later

I dunno about inspiration, but for motivation I'm trying antidepressants. Jury's still out

Get out of my head! 😂

So, meditate? Cool.

what do i do to disengage? I'm disengaged by default cause I have ADHD.

I'm curious at what point in your struggle for inspiration did you suddenly realize that that, itself, was a topic that could inspire you for this video. 😁

No? But, as once Zarathustra spake, the images as you speak are not compelling yet rich in platinum and spirit cut made for Bugatti diamonds. Get it?

it is easy, after you wake up, STAY IN BAD WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED for a 1h hour, you will start to have the WILDEST idea like a madman.

So… ADHD. I heard it’s an executive funciton disorder. Is it, in some way, that folks with ADHD are stuck in the disengaged state and have a hard time getting into the executive state? This would make sense to me (I have ADHD), because my brain comes up with random sh*t like, all the time (jury is out on any of it is actually any good). But getting it down on paper is the hard part. I know it’s probably not that simple, but is that part of it?

DMT, Psilocybin, THC, LSD, Mescaline, Ketomine, and other psychedelics of the like

Motivation? What's that, can you eat it?

I've been demotivated all day... Healp

I need help with the "inspired to" part lol

I just need motivation do anything in my life 😫

Hmmmmmmm... soooo... I still got to go get groceries then ..

Are you telling me the sims4 methods to get inspired are actually real? Lmao

Can't forget that Edison was also "inspired" by other people's inventions. So don't go thinking that you have to be as good as Edison.

I think I've seen you somewhere. Are you the cast on 123GoSchool?

peewwwdiepie

Bad motivator means your Mom has to send you back to the Jawas and replace you with an R2 unit.