Last week I was in a funk. And not a “we got the funk” by George Clinton & Parliament kind of way. It wasn’t a whole week funk, just one day in particular. I couldn’t write. I can’t get motivated! I wanted to work out. I can’t get motivated. I wanted to accomplish SOMETHING. But…

I CAN’T GET MOTIVATED!!!

I decided it was useless to try any of the above, after all, I just couldn’t get motivated. So I went and had a nap, or tried to. But as I started to nod off in an attempt to rid myself of my lack of motivation, traffic and noises outside kept me awake. So I decided to read instead.

My wife recently read Dan Erickson’s book “The Happiness of Simple” (free download, btw). I wanted to read it too, in fact I started to at one point, but Dan recommends reading it in one sitting so I put it down at the time. But now I was motivated to read it.

Dan, talks about simplifying things in his book, specifically your perspective, and how a simple thing like raking leaves can help do exactly that. His book changed my perspective on stuff for the rest of the day. All that stuff that was compounding my lack of motivation – that all went away. It blew away like a leaf in the fall.

You see, I’m a dweller. I dwell on things. I don’t know why, I just do sometimes. Reading a book like this lets me take a few minutes to step away from my dwelling thoughts and play journalist with said thoughts; who, what, where, when and why is this stuff affecting my thoughts so much?

GET IT OUT OF YOUR HEAD!

Sometimes you need to suck it up, so to speak. Changing your perspective on stuff can go a long way, especially when you can’t get motivated.  When you sit there and dwell on stuff it starts to fester. It becomes much worse in your head than it actually is. Often, it’s why we sometimes can’t get motivated to do stuff. So change what you have control over.

Dan’s book takes under an hour to read, and I highly recommend you read it. And when you’re done reading it don’t delete it from your stash. Come back to it in a few months and read it again for those times when you need to put things back into perspective. Times when you can’t get motivated. And guess what? After reading the book I got up and went to the gym. I got motivated.

You can download a free copy of Dan Erickson’s book and gain other tidbits of helpful advice from his website: HipDiggs.com.

Now go sell all your stuff and get motivated!